Chair's message

Dear CEE alumni and friends,

We are well into the Fall 2024 semester and the campus is busy with student energy, including the recent annual Bridge Competition in the junior-level Structural Analysis class. Each fall brings new people into the Tufts CEE community, new majors, new graduate students, and this year new faculty. This year we welcome Lauryn Spearing under a new cluster hiring program, Connecting the Community of Tufts Scholars (CCTS). The goal of CCTS is to increase the number and impact of faculty across the university whose work centers race, equity, and disadvantaged communities in the US and/or globally.

Dr. Lauryn Spearing received her PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and comes to Tufts as an Assistant Professor. Spearing uses a systems thinking approach, involving both qualitative and quantitative methods, to understand complex problems at the intersection of technical, social, and natural systems. Her research is focused on infrastructure management during uncertain contexts with projects in sustainable water technology adoption. She will also contribute to our curriculum in infrastructure management sustainable systems analysis.

Already this fall, we are engaged in conversation around curriculum and teaching, research, and community engagement. One significant theme for the department this year is career pathways for all  our students. We have just launched a department LinkedIn page – so please connect with us. We are actively participating in a new Graduate Co-op program connecting MS students to co-op opportunities. Our graduate seminar series this year also has a theme of connecting students to a broad range of career paths. In our first seminar of the year, Assistant Professor Deborah Sunter talked to students about her recent experience serving as the Senior Advisor of Energy Justice Policy and Analysis at the US Department of Energy. 

In research, our faculty and graduate students are actively engaged in projects related to offshore wind on topics including structural health monitoring and nature inclusive design; geohazards and coastal communities; and air pollution and health. In my eighth year as department chair, we will be having conversations around collaborative research with a focus on our research themes: climate and energy; health and the environment; and resilient systems. Read on to discover some highlights from the past year.

Sincerely,

Laurie Gaskins Baise

Professor and Chair