Now a graduate of the accelerated five-year bachelor’s and master’s program in Civil Engineering, Megan Butcher won Graduate Student of the Year in Spring 2024 for her notable achievements, hard work and dedication in the field. ADVANCING SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS RESEARCH
As an undergraduate, Butcher completed an internship called the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Research Experience for Undergraduates, an initiative of the NSF. The first Embry‑Riddle student to be awarded the internship, Butcher studied performance and design parameters for a sustainable form of construction known as mass timber. A 10-story mass timber test building named the NHERI TallWood test structure — constructed on an earthquake simulation device called the Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table at the University of California San Diego — is one such project. Butcher was a member of an all- woman research team, interviewing representatives of companies partnered on TallWood to get information about
the mass timber industry and its potential for high-rise buildings that can withstand seismic activity. “It helped me expand my skillset, as I had to reach out to different companies and conduct informative interviews, which is not usually in the wheelhouse of traditional engineering,” Butcher said. Butcher’s involvement continued on campus in the American Society of Civil Engineers, where she served as vice president as an undergraduate and conference chair as a graduate student. During her time as a graduate student, she was also awarded the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship and the ASCE East Central Branch Legacy Endowment Scholarship. In 2023, she co-authored a paper that won the Engineering Structures Best Paper Award.
Now, Butcher is gaining experience as a construction project development process engineer in training at FINROCK, a design-builder based in Central Florida. Through this role, Butcher is able to engage in practical engineering experience with the support of a supervisor before entering the workforce as an independent engineer.
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