Benjamin Douglass
Ben has long been fascinated by complex and large scale structures, especially when combined with great art such as in the great cathedrals of Europe and the Americas. He became interested in Architectual Engineering as a career while attending Long Beach Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, CA, as a way to combine these interests in both structures and art. Ideally, the structures should be the art, such as in the cathedrals, the Eiffel Tower, or the Golden Gate Bridge. However, Ben is content to design skeletons which will soon be hidden as architects hang their art upon them.
Ben is now a fifth year student in Penn State Architectural Engineering, a 5 year ABET accredited degree program, and will graduate in May 2007 with an integrated Bachalor's and Master's degree in AE, with an emphasis on structures. He is a member of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, and has earned several scholarships, most notably the Robert J. McNamara scholarship in 2006. In the Summer of 2006, Ben had an internship with Thornton Tomasetti (New York office) where he worked on structural design and development of major commercial projects, most notably the MGM City Center in Las Vegas, and gained valuable experience in structural modeling, among other things. This experience will be increased still further as he completes the senior thesis project this academic year.