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Marquis Scholar Susan Bowers ’05 (Williamsport, Pa.) recently became one of just four students to receive a competitive, $2,000 scholarship from the Central Pennsylvania Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The civil engineering major earned the honor based on her grade point average, honors and activities, a short summary of career goals, and a recommendation from adviser Roger Ruggles, associate professor and head of civil and environmental engineering.
Bowers, who studied last spring in a Lafayette faculty-led semester in Brussels, also has been invited to conduct research next summer with her Brussels mentor, Edmond Saliklis, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Lafayette. They plan on conducting experiments in a new structural engineering laboratory at Lafayette that has been funded by a $243,526 National Science Foundation grant. The lab is located in Acopian Engineering Center, a 90,000-square-foot complex that just received a massive renovation and modernization.
“She’s an outstanding student and a very nice person,” says Saliklis. “I’ve enjoyed working with her in the past and look forward to continuing in the future. She’s very conscientious and hard-working. She’s also very gifted; it’s a great combination when a student is smart and works hard.”
Lafayette has an excellent record of attracting and retaining outstanding women engineering students like Bowers. Last year, women received about 31 percent of the degrees Lafayette awarded in engineering. Nationally, women make up approximately 19 percent of those receiving a bachelor’s degree in engineering, according to a 2002 National Science Foundation report.
“If I could go back and choose a college again, I would pick Lafayette in less than a heartbeat,” says Bowers, who received Lafayette’s Eugene P. Chase Phi Beta Kappa Prize for demonstrating scholarship as a first-year student. “I’m definitely very happy here.”
Some of her most valuable college experiences, she says, have involved working together with other civil engineering majors in group projects. Such collaboration is providing excellent preparation for a career in the field and offers other benefits, she notes.
“I’ve learned how to work well in a group,” says Bowers. “As a civil engineer, you have to learn to work in a group because once you’re in the field doing projects, that’s the situation you’re faced with. You learn a lot from group members in the process and get much more out of it. And it’s not just about learning material, but learning about other people and making friends.”
“It’s a good preview of what it’s going to be like in the real world,” she adds. “That’s true of many of my classes and professors.”
Bowers recently worked in a group to construct a small-scale model steel bridge for the Fundamentals of Structural Engineering course taught by Steve Kurtz, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. Although just a couple feet long, the bridge supported 1,300 pounds, she says.
“I’m interested in the structural aspects of civil engineering,” says Bowers. “Professor Kurtz is really good and makes the class exciting.”
Along with other Lafayette students, she will extend her learning on a team that will enter the annual National Steel Bridge Competition sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction.
“Hopefully, we’ll take a good bridge to the competition,” she says. “That’s one thing I’m excited about.”
A Dean’s List student for all four college semesters, Bowers feels very prepared for the “real world” she’ll encounter after graduation.
“I’ve had excellent experiences with my professors,” she says. “They are really willing to help; you can go to them for everything. They’re excited about students learning and doing extra projects and research with them.”
Her time in Belgium last semester was an “invaluable experience” academically, culturally, emotionally, and spiritually, she adds.
“My visits throughout Brussels as well as other cities in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic were educational, fun, and priceless,” says Bowers. “Walking through the Coliseum in Rome and attending a mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris are only a few of my most favorite events[I also] had the unique and eye-opening opportunity to see the various feelings and reactions to Americans in many parts of Europe during a time of war. I strongly believe that my overall experience abroad has become a vital piece of the liberal arts component of my Lafayette civil engineering program.”
She has worked with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation over the past two summers, assisting a bridge construction project this year through surveying, concrete testing, and inspection. In 2002, she helped with bridge inspection efforts.
A member of the student chapter of American Society of Civil Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers, Bowers describes Lafayette’s civil engineering majors as a “tight, close-knit group, depending on each other a lot.”
She also an engineering peer tutor and a participant in Tennis Club, playing as top seed in a match against Princeton’s club. In addition, she has signed up to be a Lunch Buddy, which means spending an hour each week with an at-risk Easton middle school student through the program, which is coordinated by Lafayette’s Landis Community Outreach Center.
“It’s about being a role model,” explains Bowers. “These children are picked because their lives are not totally stable; they’re not as fortunate as we are. Lunch Buddies need to go every week because these children already have had a lot of people drop out of their lives.”
A graduate of Loyalsock Township High School, Bowers also has competed on Crew Club, tutored Lafayette calculus students, and volunteered as a summer camp counselor for the Landis Center’s Kids in the Community program.
“There’s a lot at Lafayette that you can do to reach out to the community and build relationships with friends,” she says.
Lafayette has gained national recognition for its success in attracting and retaining outstanding women engineering students. Last year, women earned about 31% of the bachelor’s degrees the College awarded in engineering. Nationally women make up approximately 19% of engineering B.S. graduates, according to a 2002 National Science Foundation report.
The American Society for Engineering Education featured the College in the cover story of the March 2001 issue of its Prism magazine, entitled “Getting it Right: Attracting Women to Engineering is Tough, but Some Schools Have Found a Formula that Seems to Work.” Prism cites Lafayette among nine engineering schools nationwide that have “excelled in upping the ranks of women in their midst.” The other schools are Michigan State, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Purdue, Tufts, Tulane, and the universities of Colorado and Oklahoma.
In addition, Lafayette received a grant of $151,875 from the National Science Foundation to build on this success and further strengthen recruitment and retention of both women and minority engineering students.
“In addition to becoming an engineer, I want to become a role model for younger women who enjoy math and science, but are often at risk of being discouraged by their male counterparts,” says Bowers, who has participated in several programs encouraging younger women to pursue careers in math and science. “I plan to continue contributing to these programs and relaying my confidence that being female does not preclude me from succeeding in any traditionally male-dominated field.”
Lafayette ranks No. 1 among all U.S. colleges that grant only bachelor’s degrees in the number of graduates who went on to earn doctorates in engineering between 1920-1995, according to the Franklin and Marshall College study “Baccalaureate Origins of Doctoral Recipients.”
As a national leader in undergraduate research, Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Over the past five years, more than 130 Lafayette students have presented results from research with faculty mentors, or under their guidance, at the conference.