Page 46 - Senior Link Magazine Spring 2025 - Online Magazine
P. 46

Exceptional



                                                                                               SENIORS




                                                                          Educator




                                                                  & Engineer




                                                    Extraordinaire





                                                      Kishor Mehta





                                                                                        by Barbara Jensen




           ome educators are born, raised, and live their entire   From New York, Kishor took a train to Ann Arbor,
           lives in one area, knowing the people, the culture,   Michigan, where the University of Michigan had given
       Sand the protocols, without even having to think       him credit for some of his college education in India, and
       about it. For others, early experiences are a series of   where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
       lifestyle changes, meeting new people with new cultures,   civil engineering.
       and learning new protocols.
                                                              After college, Kishor worked for a large construction
       Such is the case with Kishor Mehta, a native of India,   company, first in New York, and then in Arizona, where
       whose research into wind, the damage it can cause, and   he worked on the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam.
       what can be done to prevent that damage created the    There he met Mary Ann Gaffney, a nurse from Watertown,
       benchmark for determining how to build structures to   New York. They dated for six months and decided to
       withstand winds.                                       marry. This created more changes in lifestyle, like when
                                                              he informed his family in India where arranged marriages
       In Kishor’s youth, much of the world was owned by      are the norm, and they said they already had six girls
       Europeans. India was controlled by Great Britain, and   picked out for him to choose from. He also learned
       although he spoke English, much of his upbringing was   that he had to get Mary Ann’s father’s permission for
       still Indian, including his religion, his vegetarian diet, and   the marriage, which involved a pay phone and a short
       the structure of the patriarchal society where his father’s   conversation.
       suggestions were followed. After two years of college in
       Bombay (now Mumbai) his father suggested he become an   Marriage created a change in direction for Kishor, as a
       engineer and offered him an education abroad. Kishor’s   construction village was no place to raise children, so he
       travels to the USA to study began with a few days in   decided to get his PhD in Engineering and go to work for
       England where the first changes of his lifestyle began as   an engineering consulting firm. They moved to Austin,
       he learned to use a knife and fork, because in India those   Texas, and he attended the University of Texas where
                                                              he also worked as a teaching assistant. The teaching
       utensils were not often used. He took a flight to New York   experience changed his trajectory from working for a
       and lived for a short time at the YMCA, where, in the   consulting company to becoming a teacher. His advisor
       cafeteria, he had to learn the names and flavors of various   at UT suggested that he might be interested in Texas
       meats, although it took some time before those became a   Technological College, which had a new engineering
       regular part of his life.                              program expanding into graduate studies and research.






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