Exceptional Faculty - Mary J.S. Roth
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“I wasn’t interested in coming here, but he had gone here for a semester before he was drafted into the Army,” says Roth, who is now in her 17th year on the faculty at her alma mater. She has made a distinctive mark on the school she “wasn’t interested in.”
Called by at least one of her students “the quintessential Lafayette professor,” Roth has received the College’s Marquis Distinguished Teaching Award and James P. Crawford Award for teaching.
After graduating from Lafayette with a B.S. in civil engineering, Roth earned an M.S. at Cornell in 1986. She returned to Lafayette as an instructor in 1991 while completing her Ph.D. at the University of Maine. The following year, she became assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and was promoted to associate professor in 1999 and to full professor in 2005. In 2006, she was named to the Simon Cameron Long Professorship.
“I just like students”
“I just like students,” Roth says. “It’s fun getting to know them and to work with them. I really appreciate what I got as a Lafayette student in terms of one-on-one attention from faculty. I didn’t find that at the schools where I received my advanced degrees.”
Including students in her research projects has been one of Roth’s top priorities as an educator. “My philosophy is to give students a lot of freedom, so they feel very responsible for the project. It’s important to give students as much freedom as possible to find their own insights, which can be very valuable,” she says.
She has received six National Science Foundation grants and a Fulbright fellowship to support her research and enhance student learning opportunities and has been honored twice as Engineer of the Year by professional engineers in the Lehigh Valley.
A specialist in geotechnical engineering, she has conducted extensive research on the use of multi-electrode earth resistivity testing to find rock fractures, contaminants, sinkholes, and other subsurface features in soil. The Norwegian Geotechnical Institute invited her spend the 2000-01 academic year in Oslo as a Fulbright Research Scholar, evaluating the effectiveness of this testing method on Norwegian soils and on permafrost.
She has co-authored more than 15 articles and conference papers with students, including Brian Guzas ’00, who went on to earn a master’s in civil engineering at Johns Hopkins. “She gave me the opportunity to take the research in the direction I wanted and to present our results in publications and conferences. I always felt like I was working with her, not for her,” he says.
Karen Tuomi Marosi ’94, associate dean of Bucknell University’s College of Engineering, did an honors thesis under Roth’s direction before earning a Ph.D. “I felt very well prepared for graduate school. I was exposed to everything in my master’s level classes due to my work with Mary. As a woman academic in my field, she has been tremendously helpful whenever I've sought her advice.”
Exclusively Focused on Undergraduates
Currently serving as interim associate provost, co-chairing the College’s Middle States Re-accreditation Committee, and as interim director of engineering, Roth will become associate provost for academic services August 1. She co-authored a report on undergraduate research opportunities at the College that won the American Society for Engineering Education’s Glenn L. Martin Award.
“The opportunity for students to conduct one-on-one research with a faculty member is a strength of the Lafayette College environment,” the paper says. “Lafayette encourages undergraduate research in all disciplines through a variety of programs, including independent studies, honors theses, and paid research assistantships (called the EXCEL Scholars program).”
Lafayette ranks No. 5 among colleges and universities nationally in the percentage of tenured or tenure-track engineering faculty members who are women, according to the ASEE. With women comprising 21.9 percent of its tenured or tenure-track engineering faculty, Lafayette is ahead of the overall representation of tenured/tenure-track women faculty in engineering, which is listed as 11.3 percent in the latest edition of ASEE’s Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges.
“Many of these faculty members are very interested in being in an environment that has both high academic standards and a focus on undergraduate students,” Roth says.
