Bloustein School Ph.D. candidate Ellen Oettinger White is the recipient of the WTS Greater New York Helene M. Overly/Leonard Braun Graduate Scholarship. Established in 1981 by WTS International to encourage women to pursue career paths in transportation, the scholarship is awarded to women pursuing graduate studies in transportation or a related field.
As the recipient of the Greater New York area scholarship, Ellen’s application has advanced to the WTS International pool for consideration in the Helene M. Overly Memorial Graduate Scholarship competition.
At the Bloustein School, Ellen she studies vegetation management practices within state highway agencies and other topics at the intersection of ecology and transportation.
Also a Coastal Climate Risk and Resiliency Fellow at Rutgers and recently selected as the Caroline Thorn Kissel Summer Environmental Studies Scholarship from The Garden Club of America, Ellen worked as a transportation planner for Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates and as an urban designer for Arterial Street Design Studio, partnering with planners, engineers, public agencies, elected officials, and community members to create better transit systems and more pedestrian-friendly, sustainable streets. With over 10 years of professional experience, her work has ranged from analyzing human-services transportation funding to conducting bus rider surveys to drawing curb ramps in CAD. She holds master’s degrees in urban planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and in landscape architecture from Rutgers. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Landscape and Environmental Design Committee.