Aspect recently welcomed Shelby Cutter to our Seattle office. Here are Five Questions we asked to get to know her better.
1. Where are you from? If you’re not from the Pacific Northwest, what brought you here?
I was born and raised in Bend, Oregon, and have spent most of my life in the Pacific Northwest, other than a short stint in Santa Cruz, California. I’ve lived in Walla Walla and Longmire, but came up to Seattle to get my master’s degree from University of Washington in Geotechnical Engineering.
2. What inspired you to pursue Geotechnical Engineering? What made you curious about it?
I started out getting my bachelor's degree in geology from Whitman College. After that, I was lucky enough to work at Mt. Rainier National Park as a geomorphology intern and completed a risk assessment of the Nisqually River but my work didn’t include any actual mitigation work, nor did I have the background to do any such thing—that left me unsatisfied. After working at a geotechnical engineering firm in the Bay Area, I knew I wanted to pursue a master's degree in geotech. I love identifying possible geological risks but I want to also find ways to fix/mitigate them as well.
3. What do you like best about your area of expertise? What excites you and keeps you motivated?
Geotechnical engineering is always changing. New technologies and techniques are being put into practice all the time, and while it might be hard to keep up with, it keeps things interesting.
4. What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
In the months from December to May, you can find me alpine skiing at Stevens, Crystal, Whistler, Mt. Bachelor, or in the backcountry. Outside of skiing, I also love to powerlift and find new/wild flavors of beer, and I just recently got into downhill mountain biking.
5. Where in the world would you like to travel next?
I would love to visit Norway, specifically the Lyngen Alps and Tromsø. I would go backcountry skiing and to the floating saunas on the water, and I would love to see both the midnight sun in the summer and the Northern Lights/eternal night in the winter.