It’s different than the military, where failure often isn’t an option. Georgia Tech civil engineer Lauren Stewart learned about that difference early in her career. 

She recalls an experiment with her first two graduate students, who were Army officers. After months of preparation, nothing in the tests worked the way they had expected. It was a setback, and one student took it hard. 

“I wasn’t a big deal to me at all. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.’ And he said, ‘In my world, if I fail, people die,’” Stewart said. 

“It’s stuck with me ever since. I have taken it to heart with every other student because it made me understand how different his experience was. And that’s part of how I advise and mentor students now: to warn them about what can happen and show it’s not failure.”

Active-duty military members and veterans have become a hallmark of Stewart’s lab in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). Her team has one of the highest concentrations of veterans and military members at Georgia Tech. Since those first two Ph.D. students, about half of her graduate students at any given time have served in the armed forces or are currently commissioned.

Read the full story on the College of Engineering website.