The Tipping Point

The vision for what today is called the RELLIS Campus has been shaped by the thinking of many individuals. One of the key contributors to creating the RELLIS Master Plan is Kathy Banks, Dean of the Texas A&M College of Engineering and Vice Chancellor of Engineering and National Laboratories for the Texas A&M University System.

Banks arrived on the A&M campus in early 2012. As Vice Chancellor of Engineering, she is also head of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI). Thus she had a keen interest in what takes place on the site of the old Bryan Air Force Base.

What Banks found upon inspection of what was then called the Texas A&M University Riverside Campus was a venue at the tipping point.

As dean of the College of Engineering, and Vice Chancellor of Engineering and National Laboratories for the Texas A&M University System, Dr. M. Katherine Banks leads one of the largest engineering schools in the country, with more than 16,900 students and 500 faculty. Banks is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. She has received numerous awards including the American Society of Civil Engineers Petersen Outstanding Woman of the Year Award and the American Association of University Women Fellowship. Banks previously headed the School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. She received her Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Florida, Master of Science in Engineering from the University of North Carolina, and Doctorate of Philosophy in civil and environmental engineering from Duke University.