Photo Credit: Rensselaer/Mark McCarty

Libby Stehr has a vision of a greener, more sustainable future.

The civil engineering major will graduate this month with a near-perfect grade point average and clearly determined to change our perception of the buildings in which we live, work, and study.

“When engineers, architects, and planners design a built environment, they have to ask themselves if that environment is a place future generations will want to live in, or if it will be regretted,” Stehr said. “I don't want to participate in designing anything my children would regret, and that calls for a willingness to create radical change in how we view the structures around us.”

Skyscrapers are an artifact of the 20th century, Stehr said, and instead of height and capacity, the next century of design and architecture will focus on energy efficiency, curbing supply chain energy costs, and smart planning. 

“I think that engineers haven’t been looking toward the future enough,” she said. “We need a big change in how we approach buildings, and as part of that change we should set really ambitious goals for sustainability.”

A native of Corvallis, Ore., Stehr from a young age was interested in building things. Partially prompted by a natural scientific curiosity, and partially fostered by her parents’ passion for preserving historic homes, Stehr took quickly to architecture and design. In high school, however, she gravitated toward mathematics and engineering. 

“I really wasn’t content with designing things and not knowing how they worked,” Stehr said. “I realized I was more interested in the science side of things.”

At Rensselaer, Stehr joined the research group of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Michael Symans. Her undergraduate research program involved analyzing data related to wooden structures in earthquake-prone locations, and will be used as the basis for a study to develop a new method for assessing the performance of earthquake-proofing technologies for wood buildings.

“Based on my interactions with Libby, it is clear that she has a very strong work ethic and is driven to achieve high levels of performance in whatever she sets out to do,” Symans said. “I am certain that she will continue to find success in her academic studies at the graduate school level and will experience great success in her future as a civil engineer.”

Stehr is an active student member of the Society of Women Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engineers, and served in a student leadership capacity as secretary and then co-president of the Engineers for a Sustainable World. She has also been on the Dean’s List every semester of her Rensselaer career, and is a member of the Chi Epsilon national civil engineering honor society and the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. Stehr received the Rensselaer Leadership Award as well as the Rensselaer Medal for excellence in mathematics and science.

Outside of class and the lab, Stehr is a member and student leader of the campus a cappella group Partial Credit. Along with singing, she has played piano since the age of 6, and — when time permits — volunteers as an accompanist for on- and off-campus groups. 

Stehr will join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the fall as a graduate student. Looking beyond her academic career, she said she is interested participating in Engineers Without Borders, an international nonprofit group that sends engineers around the world to help solve a spectrum of challenges, from installing lighting systems in an orphanage to building clean water stations, with low-cost, sustainable solutions.

Stehr will embark on another journey this summer, when she marries fiancé and fellow Rensselaer senior Michael Hsu, who is majoring in economics. The couple has set a date, August 14, and plan to wed in Oregon at the Portland Classical Chinese Garden.