Walsh exemplifies the “balanced excellence” sought by the Laird selection committee, and, like the 30 previous recipients of the award, she combines intellectual capability with such human qualities as character, maturity, sense of humor, creativity, ingenuity and imagination.
Just as the Laird award is not a typical graduate fellowship, Walsh is not a typical graduate student. She completed her bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 2007, 15 years after taking her first college course as a student at Cape Henlopen High School in Lewes, Del. Along the way, she completed an associate's degree at Delaware Technical and Community College and worked in the construction industry as a surveyor, an inspector and a project manager. Walsh is also married, which brings additional challenges to her life as a student.
She plans to use the money from the Laird award to take her 83-year-old grandmother, who emigrated to the U.S. from Japan in 1951, back to visit her native country. They will spend a week or so in Kokura, the rural area where her grandmother lived, catching up with family and friends, and a second week touring Tokyo and other attractions on the main island. “This is not only a gift to her,” Walsh says, “but also a gift to me to be able to make the trip with her.”
With the rest of the money, Walsh plans to do a number of seemingly unrelated things--attend the national bull-riding championship, take a camping trip and hold a doggie birthday party. The common theme? “I want to have one big adventure, which is the trip to Japan, and then a series of little adventures,” she says.
“As a kid,” she continues, “I didn't have the chance to try a lot of new things, so now that I'm an adult I take every opportunity to have new experiences. I don't want to look back with regret at things I missed out on, and it's very important to me to involve the people who are close to me in these adventures.” Thus, she will share the trip to Japan with her grandmother, the camping trip with her younger sister, the bull-riding event with her husband, and the birthday party with her two Chesapeake Bay retrievers and several close friends who are also dog lovers.
The enriching experiences enabled by the Laird Fellowship will enable Walsh to not only broaden her horizons but also have some fun. Her current schedule does not leave her much time for that. Her husband, Christopher, is employed by the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT). The couple lives in Dover, and Nicole takes advantage of one of Christopher's DelDOT benefits--free public transportation on DART buses--to get to school every day in Newark.
Her commute is friendly on the budget but tough on her schedule; she spends four hours a day on the bus. She uses the time to catch up on sleep in the morning and on the news in the afternoon. “I listen to podcasts downloaded from the day before,” she says. “So I keep up with current events--but I'm always a day behind.”
Walsh may be behind on current events, but she's on top academically. Co-advised by Profs. Dov Leshchinsky and Chris Meehan, she is conducting her master's research on geotechnical issues associated with the Cherry Island Landfill in Wilmington, Del.
Located at the confluence of the Christina and Delaware rivers, the landfill is undergoing a major expansion to increase its capacity and service life. The expansion involves installation of a mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) wall, and Walsh is doing fieldwork to monitor strain as the wall is being built. In the next phase, she will do analytical work to assess stability, settlement and lateral movements and deformations.
“Nicole's research at the Cherry Island Landfill will help to ensure that this disposal site will safely provide additional waste capacity for years to come,” says Meehan. “Her research on this project, coupled with her insight and past work experience, makes her an outstanding model of achievement for other graduate students in our research group and across the University.”
Just two months before learning that she had been selected to receive the Laird Fellowship, Walsh was notified that she had won a scholarship from the Delaware Valley Geo-Institute (DGVI). The organization is a regional chapter of the Geo-Institute, a specialty group of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Walsh said her first thought upon learning about the scholarship wasn't about what she would do with the money--it was about what the recognition would do for the geotechnical engineering program at the University of Delaware.
“I think this shows that our program is producing students who can compete on a regional, and even national, scale,” she says. “Our lab is being rebuilt, we've gained a new faculty member and we're heavily recruiting students. The program has grown from just one student a couple of years ago to seven this year.”
The competitive award process for both the DGVI scholarship and the Laird Fellowship included submission of an essay. Walsh's autobiographical sketch relates her early interest in engineering, piqued by looking at old photos of her great-grandfather fine-grading new roads outside the Dover Air Base and listening to his stories about his work as an equipment operator and foreman for Wilson Contracting. In that same essay, she describes her view of the interplay between her work experience and her University education. “I enter the classroom knowing how a process works,” she says, “and I leave knowing why it works.”
In addition to ASCE, Walsh is a member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), the American Society of Highway Engineers (ASHE) and the Returning Adult Student Association (RASA). She has played a leadership role in RASA, serving as secretary and president during the 2005-06 and 2006-2007 terms, respectively, and was directly responsible for doubling the organization's membership during that period.
Walsh has won a number of other scholarships and awards, including the Duffield Associates Award, the ASHE Fred Mueller Memorial Scholarship, the Liston A. Houston Scholarship Award, the Margaret and Hyland P. George Scholarship Award for Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Edward Arlo Willing Scholarship Fund, the American Public Works Association-Delaware Chapter Scholarship, and a National Science Foundation Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematical Science Scholarship.
The Laird Fellowship was established in 1977 in memory of George W. Laird (BME '68, MMAE '71), who was killed in an accident at age 35. The large size of the monetary award and the unique objective of the program have combined to make the Laird competition fierce and the fellowship prestigious.
“I didn't think I had a chance to win,” Walsh says, “but I thought the process of applying would be a good experience. It allowed me to document some of the goals that I've already met and establish some new ones.”
But Tripp Shenton, interim chairperson of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was not at all surprised to learn that Walsh had won.
“Nicole is not only an excellent student,” Shenton says, “but she really exemplifies what the Laird family was looking for when they established the fellowship. In addition to being smart and creative, she has the practical skills, the perseverance and the common sense necessary to execute ideas. She was the perfect choice.”
Article by Diane S. Kukich