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National Engineers Week 2019: My Path to Transportation Engineering

By Dr. Beverly Kuhn P.E., PTOE, PMP posted 02-21-2019 10:56 AM

  
When I think back to try and identify why I became an engineer, I find it difficult to pinpoint one single event or person that inspired me.  My memories are pretty vague and fuzzy for a professional who deals in the concrete (no pun intended!) and practical!  I believe engineering was on my mind fairly early on.  In fact, a childhood friend told me a few years ago that she recalled me telling her that I wanted to be a civil engineer in 7th grade.  I don't even remember that!  

Rather than one single moment in time, it was likely just a series of seemingly ordinary events that spoke to me and pushed me in the engineering direction.  For example, it may have been the time in 5th grade when my classmate's father brought a model of the future space shuttle to share with the class (I am certainly dating myself here).  You see, many of the parents in our town worked for NASA and helped put us on the moon.  To us, however, they were just parents.  It may have been my amazing 7th grade math teacher, Mrs. Platt, who was our UIL math team coach.  I have a pile of trophies in a trunk somewhere from those 3 years on the math team (I really liked the mental math competition).  It may have been my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Banowsky, who was also the JETS sponsor.  Or it could have been my father who saw limitless opportunity in all of his daughters and encouraged engineering as a logical choice for his youngest who excelled at math and science.  More than likely, however, it was simply the fact that I had been playing with Legos since I was a toddler and had older (and influential) sisters who always pushed me.  They were the best cheerleaders!

The common elements across all of these events was the early and constant exposure to math and science, the mentoring from teachers and family members, and the support to pursue a career that played to my strengths.  Combined with my family's core belief that we should give back to the community and leave the world a better place, engineering - and particularly civil engineering - was the place for me.  My path to transportation engineering was very similar through the mentoring and encouragement from professors at Texas A&M University and the opportunity to work for the Texas A&M Transportation Institute as an undergraduate student.  Mentors like Neil Rowan, Don Woods, Joe Blaschke, Dan Fambro, Ray Krammes, Virgil Stover, John Mason, and Martin Pietrucha guided me along the way, and made Transportation exciting.  I am a better engineer because of them, and I have never looked back.  Engineering has offered me the chance to travel the world, and if I have accomplished even one small thing to help make our transportation system better and improve the life of even one person in some way, then I would consider myself a success.

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