Academy of Distinguished Alumni
Franklin J. Agardy Ph.D., P.E.
Inducted to the Academy of Distinguished Alumni on
Franklin J. Agardy received his M.S. (1958) and Ph.D. (1962) degrees in Civil (Sanitary) Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He also received a B.S. (1955) in Civil Engineering from the City College of New York. Dr. Agardy served in the United States Army during the 1950s and subsequently as a reserve officer in the United States Public Service, retiring in 2000 with the rank of Captain. During his tenure in the Army, Lt. Agardy served as an interpreter during the Hungarian revolution as well as commandant of the English speaking school at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey.
Dr. Agardy was a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at San Jose State University during the 1960s and left academia as a tenured full professor. During that time, he spent summers teaching as a consultant to the Department of Defense college faculty, at Berkeley and at the University of Hawaii, the theory and practice of protective construction and nuclear defense strategies. Dr. Agardy joined URS Corporation in 1972 as the company’s first Principal Environmental Engineer. He retired from URS in 1989 as its President and Chief Operating Officer. During this period, Dr. Agardy was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as a Presidential envoy (along with several other corporate executives) to the Government of Japan. During the 1970s, he served as the President of the California Water Pollution Control Association and subsequently as Chairman of the California/Nevada/ Hawaii Section of the American Water Works Association. Dr. Agardy currently practices as a forensic expert in the area of environmental contamination and serves on the board of three privately held companies in the fields of solar energy, energy control technology, and architecture/construction management.
Dr. Agardy has been a prolific writer during his career, authoring or co-authoring a number of professional texts, including Strategies of Industrial and Hazardous Waste Management, Environmental Engineering (3 volumes), America’s Threatened Drinking Water: Hazards and Solutions, and Practical Environmental Forensics: Process and Case Histories. Dr. Agardy served as one of the founding members of the Advisory Council for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. In 2005, he received the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the U.C. Berkeley College of Engineering.