James R. Schaaf Civil Engineering Scholarship

When I was fourteen, one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in California's history destroyed my home, my town, and the entire area I grew up in. That disaster was the Camp Fire, which started due to a failure of the power infrastructure around the area, a hook that hadn't been maintained for fifty years falling and causing a spark on drought-dry land. It became even more deadly because the road infrastructure in the town was not prepared for a disaster that demanded the whole town evacuate at once and it led to people being trapped on the roads in the fire. I experienced this just a year after experiencing the failure of the Oroville dam's spillway. These are just small parts of the United States infrastructure systems which consistently score a failing grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers on several aspects. I have personally seen and suffered the consequences of neglecting this critical public infrastructure, as have many others in other parts of the country. These consequences get worse with every year with climate change. This is what motivates me to pursue a career in civil engineering. I believe that the United States can be a leader in preparing for the challenges that climate change is bringing within our infrastructure if we are dedicated to it. I am motivated to become a civil engineer because I am dedicated to it, because I have personal experience driving me to care more than a lot of people do about how civil engineering can impact people, and how much it can help them. I know just how badly civil engineering can fail, so it motivates me to make sure that we work toward a future where it doesn't, or at least doesn't quite so spectacularly. This is also what motivates me to pursue disaster recovery in civil engineering. I plan to use my civil engineering degree to help communities affected by natural disasters by aiding them in rebuilding in the wake of these disasters. I plan to use my career in civil engineering to go to communities that have been affected by natural disasters and work with them to rebuild failed dams, levees, bridges, and other parts of their infrastructure after they have been damaged by disasters. I also want to use my degree to go into research, into how we can make our infrastructure, such as our dams and bridges, that fail during these natural disasters more resilient and more sustainable. I want to use research such as this to build back communities that are impacted by disasters in a way that will help to mitigate the impacts of natural disasters in the future. I am going to use my degree to help communities after disasters rebuild their infrastructure in a way that can endure the coming worsening disasters due to climate change, as well as contribute less to worsening climate change. I will help communities that are impacted by natural disasters to rebuild the infrastructure that is vital to recovery from disasters, and that will lessen that impact in the next disaster.