Maria Drawbaugh

Bridge builder: Maria Drawbaugh

School/College: College of Engineering
Degree: BS, civil engineering, 2021
Hometown: Hanover, Pennsylvania
Current Job Title: Civil associate—bridge
Current Employer: Michael Baker International

Engineering success. For Maria Drawbaugh, ENG ’21, building bridges isn’t metaphorical. It’s a vocation. As a civil associate for engineering firm Michael Baker International, Maria inspects and designs bridges, principally contracting with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation on road projects throughout the Delaware Valley.

Maria Drawbaugh smiles in front of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

While inspecting one overpass near the Philadelphia International Airport, Maria and a colleague noticed critical buckling in a beam and alerted PennDOT, preventing a potentially major mishap. But since going to work for Michael Baker in 2021 and obtaining additional certifications, she has moved toward design work. Presently, Maria is working on a project in the Lehigh Valley to construct bridges over a gorge, walking trail and road.

Draw ... baugh? bridge? When Maria was young, her peers combined her talkative nature and last name into a fitting moniker: Drawbridge. “Because my mouth never shut,” she laughs. But oddly enough, it put an idea into her head to one day build a bridge, a fitting career goal given her aptitude for math.

“It’s really crazy thinking about designing a bridge by yourself. Obviously, people are checking it. But at the end of the day, I’m designing every single piece of it, independently, from scratch. Beams, barriers, even little plates: ‘I want 15 bolts, spaced this far apart,’ I say. I love it!”

—Maria Drawbaugh
Civil associate—bridge

Turnpike to Temple. After finishing high school in a small town in South Central Pennsylvania, Maria knew she wanted to attend college in Philadelphia to be in a big city. But after applying to other area universities, she felt something intangible about Temple’s atmosphere drawing her toward North Broad. The instinct paid off: Maria found excellent mentors such as Sanghun Kim, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, who created a new course on bridge engineering just to satisfy the interests of Maria and several classmates.

A job as a student worker helping the fire marshal at Temple University Hospital showed Maria the value of the university’s alumni network. An engineer in the office was a fellow Owl, who knew another alum who worked for Michael Baker International. After a connection was made, Maria got a job with the company right out of college.