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Marquis Scholar Susan Bowers ’05 of Williamsport, Pa., recently won a competitive engineering scholarship and two engineering prizes, and is one of just a dozen students in the nation to be accepted into a bridge engineering research program funded by the National Science Foundation.
A civil engineering major with a minor in mathematics, she received the Jack W. Weber Scholarship from the CIB Foundation, awarded to outstanding undergraduate students demonstrating a career goal in becoming practicing engineers, architects, inspectors, technicians, and constructors for the “built environment.”
It’s the second scholarship awarded to Bowers in less than a year. Last fall, she received a competitive award from the Central Pennsylvania Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
In April, Lafayette honored Bowers with its Russell C. Brinker Prize in Civil Engineering, awarded to the junior in the department deemed most deserving on the basis of self-reliance, scholarship, and student activities, and Carroll Phillips Bassett Prize for Juniors in Civil Engineering, awarded annually to students for outstanding work.
She is among a dozen students from Princeton University, University of Massachusetts, Smith College, and other institutions who are participating in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates program hosted by the University of Delaware.
The Program in Bridge Engineering will be run by the university’s Center for Innovative Bridge Engineering June 6-Aug. 13. The students will work with faculty and graduate students in the lab and/or the field on designated research projects matched to their interests. Midway through the program, students will give brief presentations on their work; at the end of the 10-week period, they will give longer presentations in a mini-research symposium. The students are expected to gather at least the base material for a paper or conference presentation by the end of the summer.
The experience will include trips to the International Bridge Conference in Pittsburgh, Delaware Department of Transportation headquarters, a consulting firm, fabricator sites, New York City, and Delaware Memorial Bridge, the world’s longest twin-span bridge.
The Center for Innovative Bridge Engineering serves as a resource for highway and railroad bridge owners in the United States and worldwide, providing knowledge and experts to address problems in the design, construction, evaluation, maintenance, and rehabilitation of bridges and related structures.
Bowers was inducted into the Pi Mu Epsilon mathematics honor society in March and is a member of the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, serving as secretary of Lafayette’s student chapter. She has received the Lehigh Valley Section of the Society of Women Engineers Scholarship and Lafayette’s Eugene P. Chase Phi Beta Kappa Prize, awarded to sophomores who have demonstrated scholarship as first-year students.
In the Program in Bridge Engineering, she hopes to work on application of graphical probability models in bridge management or a project that involves monitoring and evaluating bridges using data from monitoring devices.
“I have always been an aspiring structural engineer,” says Bowers, who plans on starting a yearlong, independent research project this fall in pursuit of honors in civil engineering. “My experiences working in PennDOT’s bridge inspection and construction units over the past two summers have taught me a lot about bridge construction and maintenance. My job last summer as a bridge construction inspector on the Route 15 expansion project involving four different bridges near Mansfield, Pennsylvania, was especially informative and fun. Throughout the summer I observed and learned field construction and inspection procedures including concrete testing and rebar inspection.”
Last fall, Bowers applied some of her bridge experience in a mini-steel bridge competition between the two lab sections of the Fundamentals of Structural Engineering class taught by Steve Kurtz, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.
“The semester-long process of designing a steel bridge prototype, with attention to constructability, cost, and fabrication feasibility given the available resources, was challenging and enlightening,” she says. “Progression through unavoidable difficulties and compromises of planning and fabricating a successful bridge enabled me to better understand real-world implications of bridge design and construction.”
Bowers also attended the American Institute of Steel Construction’s Steel Bridge Competition at Penn State University this spring to cheer on Lafayette’s team and observe bridges created by other colleges and universities.
“As a result of my time at PennDOT and further coursework at Lafayette, I have become interested in transportation as well as structural engineering,” she says. “Accordingly, bridges are directly involved in both of these sub-areas of civil engineering. I will have the opportunity to further investigate my interest in transportation (and structural) engineering through my upcoming summer research on bridge management and monitoring at the University of Delaware.”
Bowers studied in Brussels, Belgium, during the spring semester of her sophomore year in a program led by Lafayette faculty. She was among more than 150 Lafayette students who took special three-week, faculty-led courses around the world during the past January interim session. She joined a class of 28 students in Modern Sub-Saharan Africa: Kenya and Tanzania, taught by Kofi Opoku, professor of religious studies, and Rexford Ahene, professor of economics and business, co-coordinators of Africana studies.
She is secretary of the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a member of Society of Women Engineers. Through Lafayette’s Landis Community Outreach Center, Bowers serves as a Lunch Buddy, spending an hour each week with an at-risk Easton middle school student, and was a counselor in the Landis Center’s Kids in the Community summer camp. She competes on the Tennis Club, and as an admissions representative, she hosts overnight visits by high school girls interested in civil engineering. She also has tutored Lafayette calculus students and competed on the Crew Club.
Lafayette has an excellent record of attracting and retaining outstanding women engineering students like Bowers. In 2002-03, 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, a graduate of Loyalsock Township High School. “I’ve had excellent experiences with my professors. 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.”
In a cover story of its Prism magazine, the American Society for Engineering Education cited Lafayette among nine engineering schools nationwide that have “excelled in upping the ranks of women in their midst.” 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 young 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.”
She plans to attend graduate school to earn a master’s in structural engineering.
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.”
Chosen from among Lafayette’s most promising applicants, Bowers and the College’s other Marquis Scholars receive special financial aid and distinctive educational experience and benefits, including a three-week, Lafayette-funded study-abroad course during January’s interim session between regular semesters. Marquis Scholars also participate in cultural activities in major cities and on campus, and mentoring programs with Lafayette faculty.