Dr. William (Bill) Sproule has almost fifty years of experience in government service, consulting, and university teaching and research in Canada and the United States. He is an alumnus of Michigan Tech (BSCE), the University of Toronto (M.Eng.), and Michigan State University (Ph.D.). Bill retired seven years ago and is Professor Emeritus in Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering at Michigan Technological University, where he taught and conducted research in transportation engineering, public transit, airport planning, and hockey history. Over the years, he has been active in several professional organizations including the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the Transportation Research Board, and the Society for International Hockey Research. He has served on several ASCE committees, has been the proceedings editor/co-editor for 10 ASCE International Conferences on Automated People Movers (APMs) and two ASCE International Air Transportation Conferences, has published several papers, and has made numerous presentations at ASCE conferences. In 2008, he was recognized with ASCE’s Robert Horonjeff Award for his leadership and work in airport engineering and planning.
Bill is a co-author of the airport textbook, Planning and Design of Airports, fifth edition (2010), and is the author of Copper Country Streetcars (2013). In his retirement, in addition to serving on the conference steering committees for ASCE APM-ATS conferences, he has been writing sports history articles and has published three books: Houghton – the Birthplace of Professional Hockey (2019), Michigan Tech Hockey – 100 Years of Memories (2021), and Michigan Tech Football: The First 100 Seasons (2022). He is also a frequent guest on Houghton radio sharing sports history stories.