Archives: Faculties

Dr. Edward Minchin is currently Professor at the M.E. Rinker Sr. School of Construction Management at the University of Florida.  In a 34-year career, Dr. Minchin has worked as part of eight major areas of the construction process.  He has been a laborer, construction contractor, designer, inspector, construction owner, researcher, consultant, and adjudicator.

After earning Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Florida, Dr. Minchin worked as a construction estimator for Couch Construction Company in Tampa, and later for the Florida Department of Transportation, where he rose to the position of Chief Area Construction.  After 14 years in industry, he obtained a PhD in Civil Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, and a Master’s degree in Liberal Arts from Harvard University.

Dr. Minchin has over 140 publications, including two books, and seven book chapters.  He served as External Examiner, and committee member for a doctoral thesis in the Department of Civil Engineering; Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain, as well as Northeastern University.  He currently simultaneously holds three professorships:  the UF Term, UF Research Foundation, and Holland Professorships.  He has served as was a Visiting Scholar at Northeastern University in 2015-16, and was selected as a Keynote Speaker at four international Construction Conferences in the last 10 years, in Panama, China, Canada, and Thailand.

Larry C. Muszynski is an Associate Professor in the M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction. Management. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Purdue University in 1978. Since his time as a tenure-track assistant professor and tenured associate professor in M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management, his teaching duties over the last 24 years have been in the area of the “structures” group.  These classes consist of construction materials; mechanics; concrete construction and formwork; and soils and foundations. He has revised the BCN 1210, Construction Materials class to focus on the materials of construction such as soils, concrete, asphalt, timber, masonry, steel and sustainable practices for each of these materials.  This past semester he has developed a new class called ‘The Building Envelope’ that evolved from the previous ‘Roofing Class’ that covers the all of the elements of a building envelope that are exposed to the outside environment.

He has been teaching BCN 3223, the Soils and Concrete Construction class that requires students to work in groups during seven different laboratory exercises and manages a Ph.D. student as the laboratory supervisor. He works with the American Concrete Institute, the Florida Department of Transportation and the Florida Concrete Products Association to make the laboratory exercises relevant to the real world of construction. His areas of research include: cement and concrete material properties, utilizing waste materials in blended cements, chemical and mineral admixtures, sustainable concrete, and corrosion of steel in concrete.

He has been an effective advisor and mentor to both undergraduate and graduate BCN students. He encourages and helps students procure internships and permanent jobs with organizations that he has had contact with and helps students determine what they want to do in life and instruct them on how they might get there.

Eileen Pesantes-Tavares, PhD, graduated with a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez in 1994. She earned a M.E. in Structural Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley in 1995. After working as a structural engineer, she decided to pursue a construction degree and went back to school. She earned a MS in Construction Engineering and Management from Stanford University in 1998. While teaching at her Alma Mater, she decided to pursue a PhD in Construction Engineering and Management at the University of Florida. She graduated in 2011.

Pesantes worked as a research engineer with the US Army Corp of Engineers at their Engineer Research and Development Center before graduate school. After completing two Master’s degrees, she worked in two different construction companies in the San Francisco Bay Area in projects that ranged from a small office remodeling up to a complete new campus for a major Hi-tech Company. When she moved back to Puerto Rico, she was offered a teaching position at her Alma Mater. Teaching was something that Pesantes always contemplated as a career path. After six years of teaching, she went back to graduate school. After finishing her PhD, she taught as an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering at UF, as a lecturer and academic advisor at the School of Engineering at UNF and, currently as a lecturer at the Rinker School of Construction Management at UF.

The courses Pesantes teaches are varied. Construction Materials and Temporary Structures focus on the design and materials side of construction. International Sustainable Design focuses in key concepts related to sustainable development worldwide. Introduction to Construction presents first year students the different types of work they can do in construction through weekly guest lectures that include professionals from the construction industry.