Pursuing an environmental engineering degree was the perfect way for Sarah van den Heuvel (BEng’22) to turn her love for the outdoors into a career addressing global issues such as climate change.

Van den Heuvel is a climate resilience and coastal engineer in training with CBLC. Working in collaboration with the company’s climate resilience and coastal engineering teams, her position includes climate risk assessments and coastal analysis.

“We develop projections of the climate for the future, and then we use those to complete risk assessments for the clients’ infrastructures,” she explains. “We do risk assessments to inform the client as to what aspects of their project or infrastructure might be impacted by the climate changing. Then we make recommendations on how to make their assets more climate resilient.”

Assessing coasts, home and abroad

Hired in the spring of 2022 following her graduation from Dal’s environmental engineering program, van den Heuvel says her she loves working in a fast-paced environment that can vary so much daily.

“The range of projects is just incredibly captivating to me. One day I could be contributing to a flood study in my hometown of Antigonish and the next day I could be working on a coastal protection project in the Caribbean or collecting data for global climate resilience projects,” she says. “I really feel like I’m doing meaningful work”.

Van den Heuvel’s contributions and global influence span beyond her work with CBCL. As an engineering student, she played a key role in student life initiatives, both on Dal’s Agricultural Campus in Truro where she started her engineering degree, and later, on Halifax’ Sexton Campus.

“In Truro I was involved with everything. I was very active in student life and gained a lot of valuable experience. In my second year I was really involved with the engineering society and held a co-president position,” she explains. “When I got to Halifax, I was able to leverage my experiences on the Agricultural Campus to continue growing.”

On a global mission

In May of 2022, she led a team of engineering students to Honduras to help design a new water system for a local community in need. The mission was a part of project by Dalhousie Engineering Global Brigades, a chapter of the larger non-profit organization, Global Brigades. Global Brigades is an international movement of university students who work alongside local communities and technicians to reduce inequalities.

“In our first couple days in Honduras, we met with community members so we could better understand their issues,” recalls van den Heuvel, who was president of the chapter at the time. “Although they did have an existing water system, it was only serving about one third of their community, so we needed to design an expansion to that.”

For a week, van den Heuvel and her team worked with a local engineer to collect necessary data and design a water system that they later passed along to the community. She says the opportunity to apply her engineering skills to a project that could help vastly improve the lives of those community members was the highlight of her academic journey.

“Everyday I was there, I went to bed feeling totally fulfilled. It made all the hard work that I put into my engineering degree and my extracurriculars feel so well worth it,” she adds.

The path ahead

Van den Heuvel says she feels the same way about her work at CBCL and credits her extracurricular activities and a strong community support at Dalhousie Engineering for leading her down the right path.

“My advice to students is that I strongly recommend seeking out opportunities to enrich your educational experience as there is so much to learn outside of the classroom,” van den Heuvel offers. The future awaits as she continues her own journey as a global citizen.

Read more from the spring 2023 issue of the Faculty of Engineering magazine.