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This fall, Theresa Kearney ’04 (Pearl River, N.J.) led fellow civil engineering majors in helping construct a float for the Oct. 11 Crayola Centennial Parade in Easton.They used welded wires, fabric, PVC pipe, and wood to assist chiropractor Nalyn Marcus of Wilson Borough in building a float resembling both a saxophone and a human spine.
Over the past year, Kearney has learned that engineering involves much more than just design work through research on Boston’s massive Central Artery/Tunnel Project or “Big Dig”, an internship with a construction-management firm, and an externship at an engineering consulting firm.
She spent the spring semester as an EXCEL Scholar with David Veshosky, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, analyzing communications about the Big Dig. In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students are paid a stipend to assist a faculty member with research. Lafayette is a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 180 students who participate in EXCEL each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
Kearney’s research involved using a coding system devised earlier by other EXCEL Scholars to analyze how information flowed among property owners, contractors, engineers, and others involved in the “Big Dig.” The project is generally described as the largest and most complex highway project ever undertaken in the core of an American city.
“There were a lot of issues that posed problems,” Kearney says, explaining that the coding system separated each document according to its size and whether it contained written information, numerical data, or “knowledge” — background information.
“I worked primarily on an Excel spreadsheet, breaking the coded documents out by quarters of the year,” she says, explaining that, when possible, she identified patterns associated with the flow of correspondence.
“She was very detail-oriented, but also kept a broader perspective,” Veshosky says, adding that he’s been pleased with Kearney’s work in the classroom as well. “She’s a good student, she’s a pleasure to work with, and she contributes a lot to the classroom environment and the laboratory experience.”
Veshosky has shared his research through articles in scientific journals, book chapters, and papers presented at conferences in the United States and Canada. He is a member of the research faculty at the Engineering Research Center for Advanced Technology for Large Structural Systems and a research associate at the Center for Innovation Management Studies. His past roles include researcher at the NATO Oceanographic Research Center in La Spezia, Italy; port and transportation industry consultant; and project manager for port studies in the United States, Kenya, and Egypt.
Kearney says she enjoyed working with Veshosky and has been happy with the wealth of experiences offered at Lafayette.
“I think it’s a great place to do research because the professors are really there to help you,” she says. “At a bigger school, you really can’t get that attention from your professors.”
This summer, Kearney worked at Torcon Inc. of Westfield, N.J., which is handling site management for a new Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories plant in Pearl River. During her internship, she examined information from subcontractors at the plant construction site.
“They have to abide by what the architect wants and what Torcon contracted them to do,” she says. “They would send plans and we would check them against the architect’s drawings and against the contract to make sure they were submitting the right things.”
Kearney, who learned about the paid internship at a Lafayette career fair, says she learned to read the symbols on architectural drawings – and to understand just how much is involved in a construction project.
“It was interesting,” she says. “I never knew what the expect every day.”
During her January interim session externship at Malcolm Pirnie Inc. in White Plains, N.Y., Kearney helped Dennis Jackson ’93 gather information on environmental engineering projects he planned to work on following a transfer to Atlanta.
In addition to her “real-world” and research experiences, Kearney studied with other Lafayette engineering majors in Brussels, Belgium, during her sophomore year. On campus, she’s treasurer of the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and a lifeguard, swim instructor, and supervisor at the Easton Area YMCA. She lived on the Keefe volunteer residential floor during her sophomore and junior years, and volunteered at Easton’s Third Street Alliance for Women and Children during her junior year.
She is a 2000 graduate of Pearl River High School.
Lafayette has gained national recognition for its success in attracting and retaining outstanding women engineering students like Kearney. 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 Lafayette in a cover story 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.
The opportunity to conduct meaningful research with faculty is a major advantage for these students. 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 conducted with faculty mentors, or under their guidance, at the conference.
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.”