Summer 2021

NSPE Today
Member Takes Helm as A&M President

NSPE member Kathy Banks, P.E., who rose through the ranks of engineering academia, has been named the 26th president of Texas A&M.

Before becoming president, Banks served for nine years as vice chancellor for engineering for the Texas A&M University System and dean of A&M’s Dwight Look College of Engineering. In those positions, she shepherded a bold initiative to more than double the university’s engineering enrollment to 25,000 students by 2025. She also established the university’s Engineering Medicine (EnMed) program, a first-of-its-kind engineering medical school program designed to educate physician-engineers who will create transformational technology for health care.

Prior to joining A&M, Banks was head of Purdue University’s civil engineering school.

As president, Banks also will carry the title Vice Chancellor of National Laboratories and National Security Strategic Initiatives because of her continued involvement with Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Bush Combat Development Complex at the RELLIS Campus.

An article about Banks in the April 2013 issue of PE noted her unlikely rise in engineering academia considering she had never met an engineer growing up and didn’t learn of the profession until she reached college. Calling it “fate perhaps,” she said, “I decided it appealed to me, took a class or two, and said that was it? I fell into it, thank goodness. I can’t imagine a better profession.”