Profile: Lucy Jen

PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE, DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

A love of teaching is at the heart of Professor Lucy Jen’s practice, both in and out of the classroom. With her career as a geotechnical consultant largely for construction projects, Professor Jen has taught all over the Boston area, from Tufts to MIT to Northeastern. She has even been involved with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Green Line extension that is expected to open this year, providing her expertise on its potential impacts to the environment.

The unique role of a Professor of the Practice at Tufts allows Professor Jen to bring that expertise to the classroom and beyond directly to students. “In the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), we’re professors who have extensive consulting experience. The idea is we bring some of those experiences into the classroom and show students how what they’re learning is applied in the professional realm.” Those contacts and experiences extend beyond the classroom itself.

“I actually make a point to bring the students to construction sites and get their boots dirty. Hopefully we go out on cold winter days so they realize the difficulty and gain respect for the people who have to work and build all of the beautiful infrastructure that we take for granted most of the time.”

Consulting work also goes beyond just the job site. Professor Jen taught her dream course recently, titled Forensic Geotechnical Engineering, which drew from her experiences as an expert witness in various court cases throughout the years. “If, in an engineering project, something moved more than it was supposed to move and two parties end up in litigation, I work as a consultant to help investigate and explain that…The idea is to have engineering students be aware that their designs have implications.”

As for the community at Tufts, Professor Jen is “extremely happy” to be here. “It’s just the nicest group of people…It’s a great environment to work in.” Students here introduced her to the concept of compliment sandwiches, where when you are giving someone a critique on a project, you start and finish with a compliment. When she first heard about it, she said, “I just paused and was like, wait, all my life I’ve never received any compliment sandwiches!” Her advice to prospective students is to make the most of the community. “Calculus is calculus, but what you’re going to remember is who is sitting next to you on a daily basis. That’s your friend. And that person is going to be with you and grow with you for the rest of your life” Tufts students are supportive, kind, and collaborative. With the environment that instructors like Professor Jen create, it’s no surprise that Jumbos find that they can thrive here.