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Domenico Grasso will lead Smith College's new engineering program. Remarkable Alumnae Honored at Celebration of the Liberal Arts Gift Supports Novel Faculty Projects
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Founding Director Will Shape College's Engineering Program His name is Domenico Grasso. He is a distinguished environmental engineer who headed the department of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Connecticut prior to being selected to lead Smith College's new engineering program, the first full-fledged engineering department ever established at a women's college. Grasso, an authority on the remediation of environmental contaminants, is the Rosemary Bradford Hewlett Professor and Chair of the Picker Engineering Program at Smith, a post he assumes in January 2000. In addition, he is a passionate advocate for teaching engineering in a liberal arts environment and is looking forward to what he terms "a unique opportunity to build a program and a curriculum from the ground up." "Some schools have attempted to teach engineering this way," he explained, "but haven't fully capitalized on it. The market is in dire need both of women engineers and engineers generally who are well grounded in their understanding of the human condition." As the founding director who will shape the first engineering program at a women's college, Grasso is committed to building a rigorous curriculum, based firmly in engineering science and engineering practice. The result, he says, will be that Smith students can expect to be heavily recruited by top graduate schools and major employers in industry. A graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Grasso holds a master's degree from Purdue University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He is a registered professional engineer in the states of Connecticut and Texas and has been a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, a NATO Fellow, and an invited technical expert to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna. Grasso serves on the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as well as on the boards of directors of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors and of Sea Change, a nonprofit environmental advisory group. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Engineering Science. In 1998 Professor Grasso served on the World Bank-funded international team of scholars that established the first environmental engineering program in Argentina. Smith's engineering program, established by the board of trustees in February with funding from longtime Smith supporter Harvey Picker and from Rosemary Bradford Hewlett '40 and the William R. Hewlett Trust, is expected to produce its first engineering graduates in 2004. |
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