Bethany Gordon

University of Virginia
bmg6bt@virginia.edu
CV

Bethany Gordon received her bachelor’s degree in civil and environmental engineering in 2017 from the University of Virginia (UVA), where she is currently a PhD student in civil and environmental engineering. She is the creator and primary instructor of the UVA course Engineering Social Justice, which she designed to improve retention of underrepresented students. She has been a guest lecturer, panelist, and teaching assistant at UVA and is presently the Engineering Graduate Student Selections chair for the Raven Honor Society. She is the recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and also was granted the UVA Dean’s Fellowship and UVA Distinguished Fellowship. She was the first-place winner in the How to Change the World International Podcast Competition (2017) and was appointed to the National Executive Board of 500 Women Scientists. Her past research endeavors have been published in Nature Sustainability and Environmental Engineering Science. Her future research plan is to identify and address the behavioral biases that limit designers’ ability to advance climate equity and environmental justice. She says she will lead by example in her research, teaching and service, and believes in the idea that subjectivity and rigor can be complementary only with a cultural shift in the way engineering is taught.

Area of Research

Designer psychology for equitable civil engineering