Enterprising Scholar builds clothing company

JOHNSON RETIRES AFTER impacTful penn sTaTe career

peggy Johnson applied to work and teach at penn State four times. There were no openings available during the first three occasions, but “I just could not think of any more perfect place to live and work,” she said.

When a teaching position in hydraulic engineering opened up in 1996, Johnson applied again, this time landing a job as an associate professor. And, in the years since, she has not been disappointed.

“I felt like I was always inspired by my faculty peers to do more,” she said. “It’s like being a runner — being with fast, incredible runners inspires you to keep going, and that’s how I felt about my position as a professor in engineering.”

Peggy Johnson with 2020 Luchinsky Lecture speaker Jeanine Staples, a Penn State education professor.

Johnson retired in August after 25 years at Penn State, including the last four as the dean of the Schreyer Honors College. As a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the former head of that department, she led research efforts and received recognition for her role as a mentor to female engineering students and junior faculty. As the dean of the Honors College, she worked to create a more inclusive environment for Scholars and to break down the distinctions between first-year entrants and second- and third-year entrants to the College.

This spring, the College honored those efforts. Gifts from the External Advisory Board, the Scholar Alumni Society Board, and the Schreyer Parents Council endowed the Dean Peggy A. Johnson Educational Equity Honors Scholarship, which will support students with a demonstrated financial need who contribute to the diversity of the College’s student body, a fitting tribute to nearly three decades of service and leadership.

Johnson grew up in Bradford Woods, a small borough north of Pittsburgh. She took more than three years off after graduating from high school, repairing vending machines, waiting tables, and ultimately deciding she wanted more direction. She found it as an undergraduate at New Mexico State University, where she studied geology — and started her family.

After graduating, she taught high school math part-time in Maine, but five years later decided she wanted to pursue a graduate degree in civil engineering at the University of Maryland.

“I wanted to solve problems. I wanted to somehow be useful and helpful,” she said. “And I wanted to be in the area of water resources, so I thought doing that from the civil engineering end would fulfill all those things.”

In 2006, Johnson became the head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Penn State. During the next nine years, she would recruit world-class faculty, revise the undergraduate curriculum to meet the needs of the civil and environmental engineering professions, lead the department through accreditation twice, and develop new research initiatives. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASCE-EWRI (Environmental & Water Resources Institute) and the ASCE Hans Albert Einstein Award (2016) and was named the ASCE-EWRI Outstanding Woman of the Year in 2012.

“It was mind-boggling. I felt like I was sitting on a gold mine. I couldn’t believe all the incredible research our faculty and students were doing,” she said. “I felt like I was better at leading that pack and opening doors for them than competing for research.”

When she heard the Honors College was looking for a replacement for former dean Christian Brady, she was intrigued. Johnson had worked with Schreyer Scholars for several years before joining the College but said she was pleasantly surprised to discover all of the support and programs the College offered Scholars. She credits the staff for its collective cooperation and willingness to help her implement new ideas.

“I think I was really taken by how much everybody in the College wanted the same thing,” she said. “Everybody’s walking down the same path, trying to make life great for this group of selected Scholars.”

Johnson had planned to hike in Switzerland during the summer of 2020 and had those plans halted by the pandemic, so she hopes to make that trip in 2022. First, she will drive across the country to visit her daughter in Bishop, California, and then take a different route back, stopping frequently to see sights, hike, and take photographs in both directions. She looks forward to the down time that comes with retirement but is grateful for the time she spent with students, faculty, and staff in the Honors College, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the University at-large.

“I will certainly miss the intellectual atmosphere,” she said, “Just being around people who are thinking and doing and generating ideas and all the energy that goes with that.”

Make a gift to the Dean peggy A. Johnson Educational Equity Honors Scholarship at raise.psu.edu/DeanpeggyJohnson