Gawelko named spring student marshal for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
4/10/2019
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Alexis Gawelko has been named the student marshal for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Penn State’s College of Engineering spring commencement ceremony on May 3. Gawelko participated in the Integrated Undergraduate-Graduate Program and will receive both a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree in civil engineering.
She has chosen Shelley Stoffels, professor of civil engineering, to be her faculty escort.
College of Engineering student marshals are selected for their outstanding academic achievement and contributions to engineering student life.
Gawelko was a member of the Schreyer Honors College. The title of her thesis was “Can Meta-Soil Attenuate Seismic Waves?” where she designed and executed numerical simulations with the ultimate goal of cloaking structures from earthquakes.
She received the Penn State President's Freshman Award and multiple scholarships including the Schreyer Honors College Academic Excellence Scholarship, the Walter J. Kinsey Honors Scholarship, the Poole Honors Scholarship in Engineering, the Chevron Scholarship, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Central PA Scholarship and the American Society of Highway Engineers Clearfield Scholarship.
While at Penn State, Gawelko was a member of ASCE's 2017 and 2018 Concrete Canoe Team, which won third place in 2017 and second place in 2018, and was a member of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) 2018 Pervious Concrete Cylinder Team, which was the first all-women leadership/competition team. She was also the vice president of the ASCE student organization (2018); vice president of the ACI student organization (2018); treasurer of the Concrete Canoe Team (2017-2019); professional development lead (2018), mentor (2017) and envoy (2016) for the Women in Engineering Program; and career envoy for Engineering Career Services (2016-2019). She was also involved with intramural soccer (2016-2018), intermural basketball (2018), Club Track and Field (2016) and the Society of Women Engineers (2015-2017).
Gawelko completed three engineering internships while at Penn State. She worked as a highway design intern for Johnson, Mirmiran & Thompson, where she assisted highway engineers with several key projects from design to construction completion. She worked as a site development intern for The Pidcock Company where she designed multi-acre sites including lot layout, grading, stormwater management and erosion control. And she worked as a geotechnical engineering intern for Gannett Fleming where she performed calculations, designs and construction observation of geotechnical structures.
Gawelko is daughter of Ed and Denise Gawelko of New Tripoli, Pennsylvania. She attended Northwestern Lehigh High School.
Following commencement, Gawelko will begin her career as a geotechnical engineer for Gannett Fleming.
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Civil engineering student Alexis Gawelko has been named the student marshal for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Penn State’s College of Engineering spring commencement ceremony in May.
