Honors College student and civil engineering major Ben Rouleau '14 has been awarded a 2013 Goldwater Scholarship. He is one of 271 students nationwide who has received this highly competitive and prestigious award.
 
The Goldwater Scholarship, named for former Senator Barry M. Goldwater, was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of science, mathematics and engineering (STEM). The award is the premier undergraduate award of its type in STEM fields. The University of Vermont can nominate up to four students to participate in the competition each year. Chemistry Professor Rory Waterman, UVM’s Goldwater faculty representative, oversees the advising and nomination process for the scholarship.

“It is great to see Ben as a representative of our engineering students bringing in such a prestigious STEM award to UVM,” Waterman says.

At UVM, Rouleau has been heavily involved in research on transportation planning and understanding better ways of incorporating non-motorized transportation into established infrastructure. Since his first year at UVM, he has been a research assistant in UVM’s Vermont Transportation Research Center. He has contributed to work being done on several projects related to pedestrian and cycling traffic in Chittenden County, and he has also performed analysis work on traffic flow patterns in intersections and roundabouts. In 2012 he received the Reginald Milbank Award from UVM’s College of Engineering and Mathematics.

Currently, Rouleau is interning at Local Motion, a Burlington non-profit dedicated to promoting cycling, walking, and other forms of people-powered transportation. At Local Motion, Rouleau is mapping proposed bike and pedestrian trails in Chittenden County. Next fall, he is also planning to pursue an honors thesis analyzing environmental factors that influence pedestrian, cycling and other non-motorized traffic in rural Vermont.

A Green & Gold Scholar from Barre Vt., Rouleau aspires to pursue a doctorate in civil engineering and conduct research on safety, efficiency and sustainability of transportation planning.

Rouleau is the fifth UVM student to win the Goldwater since 2007. Susan Leggett ’13, a biochemistry major from Salem, N.H., received the award in 2012. Isabel Kloumann ’11, a physics and math major from South Burlington, Vt., received the award in 2009. Dan Koenemann ’10, a biological sciences major, received the award in 2008. Laura Balzer, an applied mathematics major, received the award in 2007.