Modern Steel Construction • June 2021 • A Stable Job

UMass engineering professor and structural stability expert Kara Peterman takes the long view on life.

Field Notes is Modern Steel Construction’s podcast series, where we interview people from all corners of the structural steel industry with interesting stories to tell. Listen in at modernsteel.com/podcasts.

MANY PEOPLE STRUGGLE to identify their, well, identity. Not so with Kara Peterman. The assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst has several identities (none of them secret): professor, engineer, and musician, to name a few— and also recent AISC Terry Peshia Early Career Faculty Award winner and Structural Stability Research Council (SSRC) McGuire Award for Junior Researchers winner.

“Life is long,” she observed more than once in our interview, emphasizing the importance of a well-rounded life, as well as the possibility that careers can—and sometimes should—switch. And it’s a lesson, in addition to structural education, that she passes along to her students. In this month’s Field Notes interview podcast, she discusses how an art history class spurred her to explore the field of structural engineering, her thoughts on the present and future of stability research, and how she’s stuck with the clarinet for more than two decades.

I grew up in Hong Kong when it was still a British colony, and then after five years, my folks moved to Fairfax, Va., where I spent the rest of my childhood.

Essentially, my father was working for Apple. And my parents have a lot of history in Southeast Asia, and both spoke Chinese very well.

I went into college knowing that I wanted to be an engineer, but I had no idea what type of engineer. I was all over the map, considering fields like nuclear engineering and electrical engineering. But then I took an art history class and saw a picture of a Gothic cathedral’s ceiling vault, and I was just really amazed by how they managed to do that back in the 1200s and how that structure worked. And suddenly, the focus began to sharpen on what I really wanted to do, and I dedicated myself to structures after that.

I love the irony of becoming interested in engineering based on an art class! Switching gears, can you talk a little bit about your activities with the SSRC?

I got involved in stability research through my master’s and my PhD work at Johns Hopkins—I did most of my studies in cold-formed steel—and my first-ever conference presentation was at NASCC, where I gave a talk at the SSRC sessions in 2010 or 2011. After I finished my PhD, I was doing post-doctoral work at Northeastern University, and I was asked to take on the role of vice-chair for the thin-walled structures task group of SSRC, then quickly went on to become chair, and I recently finished my twoyear term as chair of that task group. And just recently, I was voted to be on the executive committee for SSRC. The group has been really welcoming from the very beginning when I was a 23-yearold researcher straight out of college, and it’s helped me advance in my career.

What do you see as some important upcoming topics when it comes to stability research?

I think the types of problems that we apply stability solutions to will continue to broaden. I know there’s a lot of exciting work in the energy industry where there’s a structural stability solution to make more efficient wind turbines, for example, and I think we’ll continue to see development there. I think there’s quite a bit to be done in terms of improving building information modeling (BIM) when it comes to stability information. And I think advanced manufacturing techniques like 3D printing also have a role to play. For example, how do steel and other metals that are printed behave differently from traditional steel?

Let’s talk a bit about your career at UMass. What made you decide to go into teaching?

There are a lot of ways a structural engineer can impact the world, and designing a building that is used and loved and an essential part of the community is a fantastic way to do that. And being able to teach people what I do and sort of give back in that sense was very important to me. The research lens is obviously very important as well. I think about how I can take the tools I learned in my studies and make the world a better place. My PhD advisor, Ben Schafer, recently told me a quote: “You’re much more likely to teach a genius than to be one.” I can say that I’m a capable structural engineer, but I’m much more likely to teach somebody over my career who’s going to invent the society-changing thing or the start-up that turns into the big multinational company, and that’s exciting.

Historically, I taught strength of materials, which is super-fun, and advanced steel designs. And then I recently switched over to teaching statics, which is also fun, and I developed a new course called unified structural design, which is a structural systems class. We look at arches, repetitively framed buildings, cable-supported structures, and the design of tall buildings.

Are you able to talk about some of the current research you’re involved in?

Absolutely. I’m doing a lot in diaphragms right now. And I have a project where, hopefully in the next year or so, I will be doing some shake table tests of cold-formed steel. We’re looking at a couple of new proposed structural systems and what we’re calling a dual-skin system, which looks at cold-formed steel joists with steel deck with a fiber cement board or panel on top of that, and that’s been pretty exciting. I’ve also spent some time doing thermal modeling work for cold-formed steel. We’ve been trying to make our steel buildings as sustainable as possible, and we have a couple of collaborations with some architects at UMass to try and push that forward.

Back to teaching, do you have advice for engineering students going out into the world?

I think there’s a lot of pressure on young folks these days to have it all figured out as soon as possible. But there’s an important bit of perspective that needs to come into play, which is that life is long, and I think that bit of advice can be useful at various points in your career. A lot of my students are 18 years old. How can you possibly have it all figured out at 18? So I’ve always been an advocate for trying out different types of internships and taking a wide range of classes. People can expect to work between 30 and 40 years or even more, and that’s an awfully long time to do just one thing.

I understand you’ve been teaching at UMass for almost five years. What do you like most about Amherst?

I think what I like most is the self-sufficiency of the community and western Massachusetts in general. We have a huge amount of local stuff, like food and manufacturing, and it speaks to a larger sense of self-sufficiency than I’ve seen elsewhere—like all of my food for the week is farmed within 50 miles of where I live. I would also say that the quaintness of New England is not something I’ve ever gotten over.

Yes, I have been playing since I was ten, so for 23 years. When I think about my identity, I think about myself as an engineer and I think about myself as a musician, but I’ve been thinking about myself as a musician for way longer. I play in a wind ensemble called the Valley Winds, and I also play in a symphony orchestra, the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra, and it’s just something I love to do. I’ve always been completely addicted to playing with other people, and I’ve never found a reason to stop, no matter how busy life got. I’ve always prioritized it.

This article is excerpted from my conversation with Kara. To hear more, including Kara’s thoughts on her students’ and her own recent NASCC presentations—and her love of dim sum—visit modernsteel.com/podcasts.