Parviz Ghavami

Parviz Ghavami was born in Shahr-e Kord, Iran on January 10, 1943 to Ali Agha Ghavami and Nosrat Ghavami. He was one of 7 children, and the only engineer in the family, getting a Bachelor of Science from Sharif University of Technology. His career began as a mechanical engineer working in the petroleum industry in Iran and the former Soviet Union (now Russia). In the late 1970s, despite having a stable career doing what he loved, Dr. Ghavami decided to take a gamble on the American dream, and emigrated to Portland, Oregon, where he would earn his Master of Science from the University of Portland on August 10, 1979.

He would later move to Harlingen, TX, where he was a college professor in Math and Science at Texas State Technical college for 25 years. He was never one to stay satisfied with knowing “just enough,” though. So he continued to educate himself, all while raising his son by himself, and would earn himself additional advanced degrees from the University of Houston, the University of Texas Pan-American, and most recently, Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

His hard work and self-sufficient mentality came to fruition when he earned his Professional Engineer license in 2010 from the State of Texas. This allowed him to start his own engineering consulting firm which certified buildings in the area for safety and structural integrity. He is survived by his son Reza, and his dear companion of over 20 years, Mary. Parviz was passionate about gardening, traveling, and cooking traditional dishes of his motherland. He also translated several science fiction books from English into his native Farsi language. His last publication was an English-language college textbook, Mechanics of Materials.