Water Resources Professor Virginia Smith Makes a Splash at Villanova

Dr. Virginia Smith, assistant professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

In the space of two hours, Dr. Virginia Smith advises a student, is interviewed by a magazine editor, and visited separately by two fellow Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty with whom she’s collaborating. It’s just another day in the life of this busy assistant professor for whom teaching and research have proven to be a winning combination.

GROWING UP WITH A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Dr. Smith is still relatively new to academia, having come to Villanova University five years ago for her first teaching position. Prior to arriving on the Main Line, she spent several years in far different environs, first as an associate scientist for the Adapt Asia-Pacific project in Thailand, and later as the water coordinator for Afghanistan, overseeing water and natural resource management projects.

Growing up as the daughter of an Air Force officer, Dr. Smith is no stranger to life outside of the United States and the transformative opportunities it offers. In fact, it was while visiting Kenya in the eighth grade that she saw the impact of Peace Corps Volunteers, who impressed her with their grass roots efforts such that, “I just knew international development was for me.” Fast forward 10 years and Dr. Smith herself joined the Peace Corps after graduating from Georgia Tech with her bachelor’s degree, spending two years in Samoa where she served as a rural capacity development volunteer working on the National Water Project and village development. When she returned to the US, she earned her master’s degree at the Cockrell School of Engineering and PhD at the Jackson School of Geosciences, both at the University of Texas, Austin.

IMPARTING A PASSION FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Today, as the mother of 2- and 4-year-old daughters, Dr. Smith tries to limit her time spent traveling the globe, but that doesn’t mean she’s put her passion for international development on the back burner. Through the College of Engineering’s freshman year miniproject, which she teaches with her husband Bryan Enslein ’07 CE, PE—a professional engineer and former diplomat working in international development—honors students are being challenged to respond to natural disasters in Haiti through shelter design. At the same time, she’s advising teams of seniors on a capstone project benefitting Neema, an organization in Kenya that equips vulnerable young women with skills training to help them escape poverty. Given the growth of its technical school, the organization is considering a new campus and Villanova students are assisting with the civil engineering design. The project has grown over the past two years to include elements of environmental sustainability and what Dr. Smith calls “engineering design in the human context.” This February, Civil and Environmental Engineering students traveled to Kenya to assess the organization’s needs and available resources.

GRANTS SUPPORT WATER-RELATED RESEARCH

If it hasn’t been explicitly stated, Dr. Smith’s discipline is water. More specifically, her areas of expertise include hydrology, fluvial geomorphology and sediment transport. In the past five years, she has served as a principal investigator on projects that have received more than $3M in funding. Active research includes:

• Evaluating the comprehensive impacts of urbanization and restoration on stream processes

• Studying the use of fossils to model rivers through climate change

• Documenting department of transportation practices for integrated flood prediction and response systems

• Exploring the spatial relationship between roadway safety and wet condition risk factors

• Updating Pennsylvania’s Stormwater Best Management Practices Manual

In April 2020, Dr. Smith was recognized for her work in this field with an Early Career Award for Applied Research from the Universities Council on Water Resources.

FUNDING PROVIDED BY:

• National Cooperative Highway Research Program

• National Science Foundation

• PA Department of Environmental Protection

• PA Department of Transportation

• PA Sea Grant

VIRGINIA SMITH BY THE NUMBERS

1 Early Career Award for Applied Research

3 million dollars in grants for projects on which she’s a PI

10 countries lived in for 6 months or more

11 schools attended before college

14 graduate student alumni she advised

18 published papers

75 authored talks

IN HER WORDS

On what prompted her to study engineering: “Running. Out of the schools recruiting me to run track, Georgia Tech rose to the top as the best fit. Though my intention was to go to med school, I was advised to study engineering, for which the school is known. My interests turned to civil engineering and water.”

On sleeping in a coffin: “When I was in Vanuatu, a very nice family made me a western-style bed because they knew westerners liked beds that were elevated. It was a coffin that had four legs nailed to it. I spent the night in it and thought to myself, I’m too old for this.”

On teaching: “The Augustinian idea that you’re still learning as you teach really resonates with me. And, not to be too sappy, but teaching is also a big privilege. Training these very promising engineers to design the infrastructure that people will live their lives on is exciting, hugely challenging and a big responsibility. I really do think the students at Villanova will make the world a better place. It’s so rewarding and motivating to get to be involved in that.”

On her most defining characteristic: “Enthusiasm. I hear that a lot from students and colleagues. When I’m in front of a class, if I’m not excited about it it’s hard to get students excited about it, so I try to find things that make me excited about the topics I teach. And it hasn’t been hard!”

On the best piece of advice she’s received: “Don’t get too excited about the highs and too down about the lows. Life’s full of ups and downs and it all passes. If you can keep an even keel, in the long run you’ll be a lot happier.”

On the most interesting thing in her office: “A drawerful of thank you notes from students and colleagues. They make me smile when I think about them!”