Prof. Kristen Sanford Bernhardt Receives National Engineering Honor

Kristen Sanford Bernhardt is this year’s recipient of the George K. Wadlin Distinguished Service Award given by the Civil Engineering Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). Sanford Bernhardt, who accepted the award at the ASEE annual conference held this June in Indianapolis, is the first woman to receive the award in its 27-year history.

Kristen Sanford Bernhardt

The Wadlin award recognizes “sustained and distinguished service to the Civil Engineering Division of ASEE, support of its activities, and notable contributions to civil engineering education.” Sanford Bernhardt has served ASEE’s Civil Engineering Division in multiple capacities, including as director, program chair, chair, and awards chair. She also serves on the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)’s Education Committee, which works closely with ASEE, and its Faculty Development Committee. She regularly presents at ASEE conferences, and several of her papers published with colleagues have earned ASEE awards.

“I am an engineering educator. I believe I have an obligation to contribute not only to my own students’ education but also to the larger professional civil engineering education community,” says Sanford Bernhardt, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and chair of the engineering studies program. “I also learn a lot through my interaction with colleagues in these organizations, and I share what I learn with my colleagues here at Lafayette.”

Sanford Bernhardt is a founding member of the National Transportation Curriculum Project, a collaborative project with colleagues across the country that is working to develop learning outcomes and supporting activities to promote conceptual learning in introductory transportation engineering courses, which are required in most undergraduate civil engineering programs. (At Lafayette, this course is Introduction to Transportation Systems.)

She also frequently mentors undergraduate students in research projects. Currently, Sanford Bernhardt is collaborating with Aly Tawfik, assistant professor of civil and geomatics engineering at California State University, Fresno, and former visiting instructor at Lafayette, on how transportation art (public art in transportation facilities) can affect changes in travel behavior. Civil engineering major Christina Marzocca ’15 (Lakewood, N.J.) has been working on the project and presented a paper on her work at ASCE’s Transportation and Development Institute Congress held this June in Orlando.

“I enjoy helping students figure out where their strengths and interests lie and how to pursue them,” says Sanford Bernhardt. “Students bring interesting questions and perspectives to research because they are often novices when they begin; they see things differently, and those perspectives are often valuable – they can help to move the project forward or take the project in a different direction.”