It’s finals week at Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Ashley Morales-Cartagena is working late again. Eight-hour days easily turn into 12-hour days. Tonight, it’s been more like 15.
Which is fine. Morales-Cartagena always has time for her students. As the youngest female director of a civil engineering department in the Dominican Republic, she knows her position as a role...
Monica Morales grew up in Reno, the daughter of parents who each work at casinos. So it was probably inevitable that her career path would come down to a game of chance.
As a senior in high school, Morales was excited to be headed for college. The only question was what to study. Everything from medicine to fashion design was under consideration.
Then one day, a...
Mariah Peart’s career in civil engineering has been a little bit like building a house.
And, listen, we’re not employing metaphor here to create some kind of literary effect. It’s the literal truth.
Peart’s parents’ desire to design and build their own house goes back a decade. Middle-school aged Mariah, growing up in Brunswick, GA, took note.
“I loved to look at home design books and blueprints...
Siddhartha Roy came to the United States in 2012 for a graduate degree that would put him in position to someday use civil engineering to, as he put it, “reduce avoidable human suffering and help people.”
Little did he know just how soon that “someday” would turn out to be.
As a graduate student at Virginia Tech, Roy joined a team of researchers led by Tech...
Life for Garit Poire falls into two boxes. There are the days before Nov. 16, 2014, and those that have followed.
And that day in the middle, the line of demarcation?
On Nov. 16, 2014, Garit, then a civil engineering student at Florida State University, was visiting Atlanta for his mom’s birthday. He didn’t feel well. He thought perhaps he’d accidentally eaten some gluten and triggered...
This is a question that I get from civil engineering students almost daily. Should they seek full-time employment immediately after completing their undergraduate studies or pursue a master’s degree?
Let me preface my answer with two statements. First, graduate school and professional engineering licensure are invaluable tools for any civil engineer – as noted in ASCE’s Engineer Tomorrow initiative – but, as with any career, it’s more...
Prior to joining UW in 2008, Tinjum was a consulting engineer for CH2M HILL and RMT Inc. Having an in-depth knowledge of civil engineering practice, he seeks to advance engineering practice through research, by sharing the results through graduate-student and continuing education programs for professional engineers, and by employing novel methods to increase public awareness and social responsibility. He has focused his efforts on...
“The devil’s in the detail” is an idiom that is very relevant to civil engineers, and one to think about as you plan for the new year. In the world of civil engineering projects and technical design, details matter, and you should spend your time ensuring that those details are correct. However, when it comes to your professional development plan, the opposite may be...
We all know the joke about the difference between the extroverted and the introverted engineer when they talk to someone. Introverted engineers look at their shoes, and extroverted engineers look at your shoes. Funny, unless you’re an engineer trying to break away from this career stereotype like I did.
An introvert is defined as a shy, reticent person. Engineer or not, these characteristics do pose...
Franklin Sherkow, P.E., ENV SP, is an ASCE Fellow and Life Member, and former President of ASCE’s Oregon Section. He was on the civil engineering faculty at Oregon State University for six years before returning to consulting. In today’s Member Voices, he examines how the lessons learned from the attack on Pearl Harbor seven decades ago can help us today.
Can we learn lessons from...
