pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

Kamilah Buker is a student of transportation engineering in Oregon State University’s Master’s program. Kamilah was recently awarded first place in the Oregon Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Bill Kloos Memorial Scholarship.

This scholarship is named after William C. Kloos, who was the Signals and Street Light Manager at the City of Portland for 25 years. Bill was a talented leader, innovative problem solver and mentor to many throughout his career. One of Bill’s unique talents was public speaking and presenting technical information to a wide range of audiences. This scholarship was developed in order to promote the innovative thinking and communication skills of the future transportation professionals.

Candidates were evaluated based on a scholarship “Application” in the form of an essay, presentation/poster, Powerpoint presentation, or video that focuses on transportation/traffic engineering. Format of Application was left to the discretion of candidate. The intent of the scholarship application is to encourage students to think outside the box and showcase their communications skills. Therefore, the format and content of the “Application” is up to the applicant.

This year, Kamilah created a children’s book titled Traveling Safely to School. This twelve page short story told the epic journeys of three elementary school kids getting safely to school; one walking, one biking, and one taking the bus. The book showed the important role of the traffic engineer in this process. But don’t let me spoil the whole story, read it here.

Congratulations Kamilah, job well done!