As an educator, author, practicing engineer, and business owner in Illinois, Walter E. Hanson has been instrumental in promoting and advancing the engineering profession, researching new techniques and theories, and completing important infrastructure projects in Illinois and around the world.

Walter Hanson grew up on a farm south of Lyndon, Kansas, about 25 miles south of Topeka. He recalls a bridge being rebuilt about three miles north of his home as his first introduction to the engineering of infrastructure. Encouraged by his teachers to study engineering, he left home in 1935 after graduating from high school, and, using proceeds from the sale of the pigs he had been raising, enrolled at Kansas State University in a civil engineering program. He graduated from Kansas State in 1939, and, with the nation still recovering from the Great Depression, took a job "doodle bugging", i.e., searching for possible petroleum deposits. While working in that capacity in Oklahoma, he met and married Sue Roling. The new marriage needed stability, so the couple moved to Kansas City and Walter took a job as a draftsman and junior designer. His first assignment there involved drafting plans for a bridge across the Mississippi at Dubuque, Iowa— a site which would involve his firm in a similar project many years later.

In 1942, with the nation at war, Walter and his wife moved to Illinois so that he could do graduate work, and serve as an instructor, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The war was continuing, and in 1943 Walter enlisted in the U. S. Navy, training as an airborne radar officer. At the War’s end, he had just been assigned to train night fighter pilots in Hawaii; in February, 1946, he finally was able to return to his wife and daughter, Karen, who was born while he was oversees. He went back to the University of Illinois, finishing his masters’ degree work and becoming an associate professor of civil engineering. An important development during his tenure there was his co-authorship, with Ralph Peck and Thomas Thornburn, of a textbook, "Foundation Engineering", currently in its second edition and still widely used in both English and foreign translations.

Walter enjoyed academia and was respected by his colleagues. In 1951, however, he left UIUC and moved his family to Springfield to take a job as chief engineer of bridge and traffic structures for the State of Illinois. While he held that position, the first highway bridges using welded steel beams and prestressed concrete were designed and installed. Also, modern methods of soil investigation and foundation design were initiated.

In 1954, Walter was contacted by a college roommate whose firm had a major expressway job, involving tens of bridges, in Kansas. Rather than join that firm, however, Walter left State employ and founded his own firm in Springfield, W. E. Hanson & Associates, with two acquaintances from University of Illinois. The new firm designed 56 bridges and grade separations for the Kansas Turnpike project in the short space of six months. Once that project was complete, it became necessary to promote the capabilities of the firm, and, as time went on, the firm’s scope also broadened. Hanson Professional Services now employs 370 people, operates 15 offices nationwide, and provides a variety of engineering, architectural and management services. The firm still maintains strong linkages with the University of Illinois: Mr. Hanson says, "Education is important to me simply because I’ve been in education and in practice. There are too many barriers between the academic and professional world. I’d like to see more cooperation and partnering between the academic and the practice world. It should be done." Mr. Hanson, now retired from his firm, nonetheless has devoted himself to writing, speaking, and seeking to strengthen the ties between practicing engineers and engineering educators. Hanson Professional Services Inc. established a chair in his name in the University of Illinois Department of Civil Engineering in 1997, and also sponsors, each year, the Walter E. Hanson Graduate Study Award for a student in Civil or Environmental Engineering.

Mr. Hanson has been involved in no less than 15 professional and trade organizations, serving as an officer in many of them:

American Concrete Institute

American Consulting Engineers Council

American Council of Engineering

ACEC/Illinois

American Society of Civil Engineers

American Society for Engineering Education

ASCE- West Central Branch, Central Illinois Section

Illinois Engineering Council

Illinois Society of Professional Engineers

Illinois Structural Engineers Examining Committee

International Water Resources Association

National Academy of Forensic Engineers

National Society of Professional Engineers

Society for Illinois Scientific Surveys

Structural Engineers Association of Illinois

In addition, he has been active in a wide variety of state and community organizations and activities, including, among others:

Board of Natural Resources and Conservation, Illinois State Water Survey

Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce

Illinois Committee on Higher Education

Kansas State University Foundation

Kiwanis International, South Springfield Club

Sangamon State University Foundation

University of Illinois Civil Engineering Alumni Association

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Springfield

"Foundation Engineering," second edition, by Ralph B. Peck, Walter E. Hanson and Thomas H. Thornburn, Wiley (January 1974).

"Safety in Foundation Engineering—Unity of the WSD (ASD) and LRFD Methods,"

STRUCTURE magazine, December 2005, Walter E. Hanson, P.E., S.E., and Donald D. Oglesby, P.E., S.E.

"The Old and New Clark Bridge," with John E. Harms. Proceedings, Frontiers in Structural Engineering, a volume honoring Narbey Khachaturian, 1989.

"Geotechnical Practice from the Coal Mine to the Ash Pond," with Sergio A. Pecori, Donald D. Oglesby and John M. Healy. Proceedings, The Art and Science of Geotechnical Engineering, a volume honoring Ralph B. Peck, 1987.

"Small Dams-Particular Problems and Considerations," with David E. Daniels. Proceedings, Ohio River Valley Soils Seminar, Louisville, Ky., October 1977.

"Deformation Problems in Earth Dams." Society of American Military Engineers, March-April 1969, pp. 119-120.

"The Use and Performance of Quaternary Materials in the Loud Thunder Dam", Proceedings, Symposium on the Quaternary of Illinois, Illinois State Geological Survey and Department of Civil Engineering, University of Illinois (1968), with Leo J. Dondanville and John M. Healy.

"Problems in Earth Work Construction and Lessons Learned." Proceedings, Soils Symposium VI (1968), Cincinnati Section, ASCE.

"Constant Segment Method for Analysis of Non-Uniform Structural Members," with Wallace F. Wiley. Trans. ASCE, 1956.

"A Perspective on Analysis and Design." World Congress for Engineering Education. Journal ASEE, October 1966.

"A Consulting Engineer’s View on Continuing Education." Proceedings, Annual Meeting and Technical Conference. Central Illinois Section, ASCE, 1964.

Structural Engineering: American Yearbook, 1946 through 1950.