Academy of Distinguished Alumni

  • Alumni Image #1:
  • Image Caption Title #1: Windstorm Inspection Program
  • Image Caption #1: Wheat served as the department’s undergraduate advisor while continuing to teach classes and conduct research. He maintained a strong, close relationship with the Texas Department of Insurance Windstorm Inspection Program, serving on committees, presenting short courses; and traveling on field investigations for Hurricanes Claudette, Rita, and Ike.
  • Alumni Image #2:
  • Image Caption Title #2: Research at Ferguson Structural Engineering Laboratory
  • Image Caption #2: Wheat led a team to provide test data regarding the performance of wood shoring towers for the Department of Homeland Security. The project involved the investigation of two types of wood shoring systems under non-ideal loading conditions and the design is now used in urban search and rescue.
headshot of Dan L. Wheat

headshot of Dan Wheat

Dan L. Wheat

Ph.D., Colorado State University, 1980
M.S., University of Denver, 1973
B.S., University of Colorado, Boulder, 1969

A skilled professor and researcher in structural analysis and wood structural design and a dedicated and caring undergraduate advisor, Dan Wheat provided high-quality service that contributed to this department’s success for 35 years. He made numerous contributions to the area of behavior and design of wood structures, helped countless students succeed at UT Austin, and keenly introduced students and families to our department for the first time.

Wheat's years at UT Austin were filled with four disparate, sometimes overlapping experiences like floor and shoring research tests, computation related to nonlinear structural behavior and piezoelectric behavior of wood, field studies and undergraduate advising.

Arriving at The University of Texas at Austin in 1980, his primary research interests were in the modeling and testing of light-frame wood structures, and through work mostly at the Ferguson Structural Engineering Laboratory, where he developed one of the largest depositories on the empirical behavior of light-frame parallel-member floor, wall and roof systems

Wheat served as the department’s undergraduate advisor from 1996 to 2015 while continuing to teach classes and conduct research. He maintained a strong, close relationship with the Texas Department of Insurance’s Windstorm Inspection Program, serving on committees, presenting short courses and traveling on field investigations for Hurricanes Claudette, Rita and Ike.

Wheat helped countless students connect with their own resilience and self-confidence and develop strategies to improve academically; Wheat often went “beyond the call of duty” to help them successfully complete their undergraduate degrees. He is proud of his time as an undergraduate advisor, especially the personal communication with those undergraduate students who struggled but are now members of the profession.