A Cornerstone of Construction

For nearly 30 years, one Villanova Engineer has played a role in nearly every construction project on campus, from minor renovations to new buildings and major capital improvements.

“I’ve been here for a long time” says Marilou Smith ’84 EE, ’22 MBA, Villanova’s assistant vice president for Engineering and Construction.

“Looking back, its incredibly rewarding to have played a role in the revitalization or renovation of nearly every campus building.”

Each project, she says, has had a similar goal of supporting Villanova’s students, faculty and staff. With the Villanova Engineering expansion project, however, things feel a bit more personal to Smith, thanks to her direct connection to the College.

Smith grew up one of 10 in a Villanova family. Her father, a civil engineer, was a College of Engineering alum, as was her maternal grandfather. When it came time to pick a college, Smith had no doubt she’d attend Villanova.

At a time when few women pursued engineering, Smith received full encouragement from her parents.

“I never really looked at it like I was a woman in a man’s field,” she says. “My parents were very supportive of whatever we wanted to do, and so I never looked at that as an obstacle. My dad would say, ‘Be what you want, and if you want to be an engineer, be an engineer. Don’t let others discourage you from what you want to be. Be strong and independent so you don’t have to rely on someone to take care of you.’ Ultimately, that’s how each of us went through life.”

After graduating, Smith spent 13 years with an engineering firm working with Villanova as her primary client before joining the University as a project manager in 1996. Her tenure here has included overseeing construction of Driscoll Hall, home of the M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing, and the transformational Lancaster Avenue development, which included the Commons and the John and Joan Mullen Center for the Performing Arts, among other projects. She assumed her position of assistant vice president in 2021.

Much has changed in engineering in the decades since Smith completed her undergraduate degree, and many of those changes will be reflected in the new building, she says. “I love what Engineering is doing with the flipped classrooms approach,” she says. “We’re creating spaces designed for active learning, that is hands-on, problem-oriented and team-based, to facilitate 21st-century engineering education. Classrooms will be used for complex problems where students work together in teams as they would in industry. What good is engineering curriculum, such as calculus or the Laplace transforms, if you don’t know how to apply it to a real-life situation? This building will give students the opportunity to demonstrate those applications.

“I look at myself as a steward of Villanova University and providing each of our constituents with the best outcome that we can achieve,” she adds. “I think the new Engineering building will achieve that and more for future generations of engineers.”