Thinking Green

Dr. Bridget Wadzuk highlights her vision as the next director of Sustainable Engineering

This past fall, Bridget Wadzuk, PhD, ’00 CE, the Edward A. Daylor Chair Professor in Civil Engineering, assumed the role of director of Sustainable Engineering, taking the baton from the program’s founder, Bill Lorenz ’68 ChE. As associate director of the Villanova Center for Resilient Water Systems (VCRWS), Dr. Wadzuk brings to the position a deep background in research and interdisciplinary partnerships with expertise on the water resources side of Sustainable Engineering—a background that earned her Villanova’s Outstanding Faculty Research Award for 2024.

Q: What are you looking forward to in your new role?

A: I’m excited to work with students, faculty and staff from different academic backgrounds, and to build on the success of programs like the RISE Forum [Resilient Innovation through Sustainable Engineering] and SEED [Sustainable Enterprise Executive Education and Development]. Those types of programs are very effective—the industry partners love them, the students enjoy the educational experience, and they’re a model that could be used in other departments as well. I’m interested in seeing how we can continue to expand them and, in general, generate more momentum around sustainability education.

I’m also considering how in this role I can be a connector across the University on the research side— bringing more people together under the Sustainable Engineering umbrella to go for bigger, bolder, more audacious grants. The National Science Foundation has a lot of cross-cutting programs that are geared toward sustainability but require interdisciplinary work. My hope is to provide a home for some of these programs. For example, in grant proposals, faculty can say they will partner with Sustainable Engineering on educational efforts. This will be helpful in demonstrating that the College of Engineering is a leader in sustainability-aligned engineering research.

Q: How will your experience with VCRWS benefit you in Sustainable Engineering?

A: We’ve really grown the Villanova Center for Resilient Water Systems as an interdisciplinary research center, which is what we aim to do with Sustainable Engineering, too—expand not just the research side, but also the interdisciplinary aspect of the program. Both VCRWS and Sustainable Engineering are also quite aligned in their missions, and so having a role in both entities will further strengthen that tie.

Q: What goals do you have for Sustainable Engineering?

A: One of my hopes is to have Sustainable Engineering be more integrated with our other departments. The College believes that sustainability should not be this separate idea, but rather that every Villanova Engineer should be a sustainable engineer. Our previous project with the Lemelson Foundation and Engineering for One Planet worked with 16 faculty members to add a sustainability component into one of their courses. I’d like to build on this framework to incorporate these concepts into the whole undergraduate curriculum. For example, even if a project you’re working on isn’t environmentally focused, you can still choose products that are sustainable. It’s really about thinking of sustainability as a foundational design principle.