Engineering grad pens history of Civil Engineering department

It's official: No one knows the history of Auburn Engineering better than Art Slotkin.

The 1968 aerospace engineering graduate recently published another book on the history of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, "A Century and a Half of Civil Engineering at Auburn," in advance of the Department of Civil Engineering's 2021 sesquicentennial.

The book is the second in a series that Slotkin hopes will document the college's history, department by department.

In addition to earning a master's in civil engineering and flight structures from Columbia University, Slotkin holds master's degrees in sociology and the history of technology and science from Georgia Tech, which he earned after retiring from a diverse career in the computer services industry in 2003.

His first book on Auburn Engineering, "Biosystems Engineering at Auburn (One Hundred Years, 1919 to 2019)," was published last year to commemorate the Department of Biosystems Engineering centennial. 

"I wanted to write another book about Auburn Engineering after completing the biosystems engineering book," Slotkin said. "I noted the 150th anniversary of civil engineering at Auburn coincided with the establishment of Auburn as a land-grant college in 1872."

Slotkin pitched the idea of a book on civil engineering at Auburn to civil engineering department chair Andrzej Nowak. Nowak was on board. 

The rest is history.   

"Accumulating more knowledge about Auburn engineering with each research project made this, the second book about Auburn engineering, easier and more fun to write," Slotkin write's in the book's introduction. "It allowed me more time to dig deeper into areas of interest."

Slotkin's next book, a history of the college's Department of Mechanical Engineering, is slated for release next spring.