Leah Spradley(expects to obtain Ph.D. May 2008)

Department & Program: Civil and Environmental Engineering 

Hometown: Atlanta, Ga 

Undergraduate degree from: University of Virginia 

Outside interests/activities: I enjoy anything outdoors - camping, hiking, running, and tennis. Living in Nashville, I have caught the music bug and love going to see local live music at small venues around town. 

Why Vanderbilt: The interdisciplinary structure of both the Risk and Reliability Studies Program and the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies (VCEMS) attracted me.  VCEMS is one of the few graduate programs that give students the benefit of a curriculum tailored especially to their interests.     

Likes best about Vanderbilt Engineering: I like the collaborative nature of the graduate programs in Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.   It encourages knowledge sharing across disciplines.  My experience with the Risk and Reliability Studies Program has helped me gain skills to develop comprehensive life-cycle analyses of systems.  It has framed my mental model of environmental policy decisions as systems made up of heterogeneous actors with varying levels of resource use, demands, constraints and objectives. Characterization of such a system requires the incorporation of a broad range of uncertain environmental, technological, social, and economical variables.  Collaborating with graduate students who have expertise in each of these different areas has improved my ability to characterize systems in a holistic way.