Academics

Civil engineering's Johnson stepping down as department head

Peggy Johnson has served as department head of civil and environmental engineering for nine years. She has decided to step down and rejoin the faculty as a professor at Penn State. Credit: Jennifer SwalesAll Rights Reserved.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- After nine years as department head of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State, Peggy Johnson has officially stepped down.

“I feel like I’ve accomplished everything I set out to accomplish and the department is in really good shape,” Johnson said. “Now it's time to move in a different direction.”

Johnson will be taking a sabbatical through the fall semester and will rejoin the faculty as a professor in January when she will begin teaching fluid mechanics and open channel flow at the undergraduate level and river engineering and reliability at the graduate level.

She also plans to continue her research by building on the 13 channel stability indicators she developed for the Federal Highway Administration manual in 2012.

“I look at channel stability and find indicators that identify a problem that may threaten bridge safety,” Johnson said. “Now I want to take a somewhat different approach and look at ways to protect the bridge if the indicators are present.”

Additionally, she will be researching how communities respond to bridge disasters, the impacts of accreditation on academic programs, and will be more active in the American Society of Civil Engineers by chairing two committees.

Perhaps most of all, she is looking forward to spending more time with her family and doing her favorite hobbies—hiking, biking and backpacking.

But while Johnson is eager to start the next chapter of her career, she said she will certainly miss her role as department head.

“You have such a large influence on the climate of the department and the direction of the department,” she said. “You have the ability to make a lot of significant changes. That’s what I love about this job.”

Johnson said her favorite parts about serving as department head were seeing the faculty’s growth and development through the years and watching her students graduate.

“The highlight for me every single year is seeing those students moving on, so excited about their new lives,” she said. “I just love shaking all those hands and all the hugs. I’ve never gotten tired of that.”

She also loved working with the alumni.

“We have an amazing group of alumni,” she said. “They are so successful in their careers, and yet they also care so much about the department and have been fabulous resources in so many ways.”

But Johnson said there were some trying times in her role as well.

“Sometimes there is real conflict,” she said. “Some of the personnel issues are the hardest. You want people to have the right conditions to blossom and grow, whether they're students, faculty or staff, and those conditions can't always be met, for a host of reasons, and it’s your job to resolve it. Those situations are tough.”

Thankfully, she said, Penn State provided her with a great deal of resources to help her solve those conflicts.

In the end, Johnson said the rewards far outweighed the difficult times and she will miss the day-to-day social connections she had with the faculty, staff and students.

“There is a lot of interaction with people inside and outside of the department,” Johnson said. “I’ll really miss that.”

Replacing Johnson as department head is Patrick J. Fox, who previously taught geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering in the Department of Structural Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.

Last Updated August 21, 2015

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