Engineer of the Moment: Promoting Structural Engineering

Ethan Cotton, one of LERA’s newest Associates, was awarded a travel grant to attend the NCSEA Annual Conference for his outstanding efforts on behalf of SEAoNY and the structural engineering industry. Ethan joined SEAoNY in 2012 after participating in SEAoNY’s Structure Quest. He instantly became interested in joining this organization and helping them achieve their goals. One of the goals of SEAoNY is to introduce students to the field of structural engineering. Ethan created the “Shadow a Structural Engineer Day” program to enhance those goals and has acted as the matchmaker for this event since it’s inception three years ago. This program includes the pairing of a student with a professional engineer for a half-day and allows the student to get a full immersion into what structural engineers do. Ethan has also contributed to SEAoNY in numerous other ways. He has coordinated and added questions to the database for Structure Quest. He has also worked to get more professional engineers to attend Structure Quest. Recently, he presented at Columbia University and NYU Poly on how to have a successful interview. Ethan also leads a Structures ARE Preparation class which is offered at The Center for Architecture and other locations. The NCSEA Structural Engineering Summit was held in Las Vegas this year. Ethan was on hand to accept first place in the Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards for the Columbia Medical Center Graduate Education Building. Ethan performed on-site inspections for the post-tensioned concrete building as is was under construction.

A recent ARE prep course at the Center for Architecture.