Jean Griffith Hansen ’77, one of the first women to graduate with a degree in civil engineering, came to Union because of Professor Gil Harlow.
Decades later, the woman known by many as “Gigi,” is still sharing with others, particularly young women, the lessons she learned from Harlow. Harlow is a professor emeritus and a 2006 Founders Medal recipient for distinguished service to the College.
“I give Gil Harlow credit for everything,” Hansen said.
“Everything” is a construction management career that began at General Electric and took her to her current role in contract dispute resolution for The Nielsen-Wurster Group in Princeton, N.J. Along the way, she made stops at U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh and Gilbane Building Co. in Providence, R.I.
Hansen said, “[Professor Harlow] drilled into us that as an engineering student, you have earned the right to be licensed and nobody could take that away. He really made us proud.” With that bit of confidence, she went on to become licensed as a professional engineer, and later earned a Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute. For most of the past two decades at Nielsen-Wurster, she has resolved construction disputes, determining who is responsible for cost and schedule overruns. It is a job that requires a diverse array of skills—engineering, business, even law. Mostly, though, her job requires problem solving skills. That’s a lesson she passes on to young girls who are considering engineering. Hansen, who is past president of the New Jersey Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers, has long been active in promoting engineering with young women. At a program last summer at Middlesex (N.J.) Community College, she told two dozen young women about the value of engineering, even for those who don’t choose it as a profession.
“I tell them that engineering is very valuable because it prepares you to organize and approach problems. It’s a great background for business, law or medicine. I knew by the time I graduated from Union that those who graduated with a degree in engineering don’t necessarily go on with it,” Hansen said.
Hansen and her three sisters grew up in Goshen, N.Y. Her parents are both still working realtors. Her father, still working at 82, is also a commercial builder. Engineering, then a male-dominated field, fascinated her. She often joined her father at his work sites while growing up.
In her sophomore year of high school, her father tried to get her a job with a surveyor. “The surveyor looked at me and said, ‘No girl is going to work with this surveyor.’ I didn’t understand why until later.”
She then offered to work—for free—for the Orange County Planning Department. They accepted. Recently, she acted as the project engineer on her dad’s current project, assisting in resolving contractor problems and interacting with a bank.
Today, she tells young women, “Engineering is for all different types of people. Male, female, and now there’s a lot of different ethnic backgrounds. It’s for you.”
After applying to a number of colleges and universities, she came to visit Union on a lark. Once here, Harlow took her in. “He just charmed me,” Hansen recalls. “And the campus was so beautiful.”
Hansen also recalls a valuable lesson from William Aubrey, emeritus professor of mechanical engineering. Aubrey taught Hansen that what’s important is not solving the problem, but understanding the problem and laying out a solution. When she took Aubrey’s class in thermodynamics, the bane of many engineers, calculators were rare and Hansen had only a slide rule.
“He let me get away with setting up the problem and not doing the math. He knew I was never going to need that slide rule again,” Hansen said.
As one of the few women engineers at Union in the late 1970s, she found good company in Allison (Donenfeld) Nichols ’77, now a program manager at Harvard University. The two became close friends and shared housing one memorable summer before their senior year in the former Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house. Hansen interned with GE. Nichols worked with the Schenectady County Planning Department. The two are among the first women civil engineering alumnae to have attended Union all four years.
Hansen shares with young women one other thing she learned after Union: the importance of family. The mother of two boys, Jon, 21, and Thomas, 17, she has been married for 26 years to Ken Hansen. Her family, including her supportive in-laws, have made it possible for her to continue her career full-time. Her life rounds out with church activities, being an elder and chairwoman of the Building Commission of the Somerset Presbyterian Church.
“There are a lot of reasons you progress in life,” she said. “But a strong family is very important.”