University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Grainger College of Engineering
Civil & Environmental Engineering

Wilbur Greer

Wilbur Greer
Wilbur Greer
  • Adjunct Instructor

Biography

W. Charles Greer Jr. spent a 42-year career at Law Engineering in Atlanta (now known as Wood PLC), retiring in 2015. He rose from Staff Geotechnical and Materials Engineer to Director of Engineering.  He holds BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois and is a registered Professional Engineer in Georgia and Florida.  He has served on the Civil Engineering Advisory Board for the combined engineering school for Florida State University and Florida A&M University.  He taught the inaugural course entitled “Maintenance Management of Built Assets” for the Masters Degree Program in Facilities Management at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. Greer has served as an Adjunct Lecturer in CEE at Illinois since 2016.

He has worked on a broad range of civil engineering projects across the U.S. and countries abroad including China, Hong Kong, Costa Rica, Cayman Islands, Barbados, Turks and Caicos Islands, Netherlands Antilles, Columbia and England.  He was the C. C. Wiley Award Winner in 1972 while at the U of I.  The Georgia Society of Professional Engineers named him Engineer of the Year in Georgia (1987) in recognition of his technical and professional accomplishments and presented him with the 2021 Lifetime Achievement in Engineering Award. 

Greer was a senior technical reviewer for LAW’s services as the Engineer of Record for the Relocation of the Cape Hatteras Light Station which won ASCE’s Outstanding Project Award for 2000.  This project involved moving a 200’ tall masonry light house that weighed approximately 10 million pounds across 2900 feet of loose dune sand to a new location and new foundation. He serves on numerous national and international technical committees for technical organizations that include TRB, ASCE, ACI, and ISCP.  His publications and presentations on a broad range of engineering topics number more than 100.  He has been an invited speaker for the Mack-Blackwell Transportation Center Distinguished Lecture Series at the University of Arkansas in 2001 and the Kirlin Distinguished Seminar Series at the University of Maryland in 2011.