East Tennessee ASHRAE Members,
We will hold our September 2026 chapter meeting on Thursday, September 17th at Calhoun’s on the River near UT Campus. Dinner will be served at 7:00pm. Please feel free to arrive as early as 6:00pm to socialize with other members, spouses, and friends of the HVAC industry. Calhoun’s is located at 400 Neyland Dr. Dinner cost will be $35/person and will be payable by credit card check or cash at the banquet room. Water and Tea are included with the dinner cost; however, all other drinks may be purchased at the cash bar.
We plan to have a short ceremony installing this year’s officers before we have the honor of hearing from our speaker for the evening Mr. Jack Hopkins. Our topic will be Architecture, Engineering, and ASHRAE
He will discuss areas where architecture and engineering weave together and ASHRAE’s impact on both disciplines. Think about building science, passive vs. active design, loads and energy analysis, and building systems coordination - dosed with commentary about education in general and the impact of artificial intelligence on it.
Jack first joined ASHRAE in 1981 as a student member. He completed his mechanical engineering degree at Georgia Tech as a co-op student, working alternate academic quarters as a mechanical designer for a leading A/E firm in Atlanta. It was in those early years that he developed a desire to reconcile the theory of heat transfer with the practical need to select and apply correct equipment to a design. His early experience included Fortran 77 programming for load calculations based on the ASHRAE CLTD method, to be only applied within a small radius of Atlanta.
Now (mostly) retired, he enjoyed a 44-year career as a mechanical designer/engineer. Since 1995, he has led Applied Engineering here in Knoxville, completing projects in the commercial, industrial, automotive, health care, and higher education market sectors.
Post-retirement, Jack now serves as an adjunct professor for the School of Architecture at the University of Tennessee. He teaches building systems and integrations to fourth-year and graduate level architectural students and is a two-time Gensler Zero|Spec lecturer. His research interests include building load calculations, psychrometrics and equipment selection, indoor air quality and public health, and the practical relationships between them.
East TN ASHRAE Chapter Meeting - September 17 2026
Thank you,
Jared Murrell
ETN Chapter President 2025-27