Giving Back to the Community as a Member of the KID Board of Directors By Raman Venkata
Washington's Tri-Cities, with Richland in the foreground and Pasco and Kennewick to the upper left and right, respectively.
R
aman Venkata came to the United States in 1968 as a graduate research engineering assistant studying at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Over the next 50 years, he worked for multiple nuclear engineering firms and for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) before retiring and being elected to a spot on the Kennewick Irrigation District (KID) board of directors. In this article, Mr. Venkata tells us about his compelling life story, his professional accomplishments, and his current priorities as a KID director.
30 | IRRIGATION LEADER
PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
In 1966, after finishing my undergraduate studies at the University of Madras, where I graduated in the top 1 percent of my class, I got a graduate research fellowship, an award for bright, promising students from the Commonwealth countries, to study in Canada. I had applied during my second year, and one morning I got a telegram from the Canadian authorities telling, me that I was assigned to McGill University in Montreal. I did 4 months of summer research there. Afterward, I was supposed to go back to India and join a respected engineering construction company, but one of my professors, Ira Beattie, became chairman of the University of New Brunswick and wanted me to pursue graduate studies there. I was given a research fellowship with the Canadian government and did a master’s in civil engineering with a specialty in structural engineering and a minor in solid mechanics, graduating in 1968.
In September of that year, I started a doctoral program at Washington University in St. Louis with an American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) fellowship. I was there for 2 years. I finished all the coursework, but unfortunately lost the support and had to leave the school to look for professional opportunities. I was pretty broke and barely had funds to support myself. I didn’t even have the luxury of hiring a typist to do my résumé, so I wrote everything by hand. I used to walk the 10 miles between the Washington University campus and downtown St. Louis every day to search for a job. Finally, a Hungarian-American gentleman named Rudy Frank Fischl— who had problems with his accent, like I did—offered me a temporary job in his firm as a draftsman. I accepted and worked on reviewing shop drawings for the construction the firm was doing on a bridge. I pointed out a lot of errors in how the bridge was put together, as well as noncompliance with the AISC code. Rudy was so pleased that he promoted me to an engineer position after 1 week and gave me a little raise, from $4.25 to $7 per hour. Later, I found an opening in Philadelphia with Day & Zimmermann Associates (DZA). I applied, Rudy recommended me, and I was hired as a project engineer on the construction of a particular school. Subsequently, I did lot of work on schools and chemical plants. I also steered an $18–20 million project for the American Medical Association. DZA was nice enough to help me out with immigration. I became an immigrant in 1971. I was also
