In Memoriam: Ingrid Townsend

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A memorial to Ingrid Soudek Townsend

Since its origins in the 1920s, the department now known as Engineering and Society has evolved in name and mission while remaining focused on undergraduate education in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. No one has contributed more to its vital role in SEAS than Ingrid Soudek Townsend (1942-2025). She saved the department from ill-conceived budgetary pressures.  She expanded its mission into nationally ranked research. She taught successive deans of engineering to understand that STS was a unique jewel that distinguished SEAS from every other engineering school in the country. And she brilliantly explained and extolled its vital roles to all who would listen: inside SEAS; across the University; to parents, friends, and funders.

Ingrid joined what was then called the Division of Humanities in 1973, the first woman to serve as full-time faculty in the School of Engineering. She was department chair from 1993 to 2000, retiring in 2008. As chair, Ingrid ensured that all SEAS undergraduates took coursework on engineering ethics. She worked with Professor Catherine Baritaud to cofound the School of Engineering’s LEEP program (Language for Engineering Education Purposes) tailored to students whose first language is not English. The Townsend Prize, awarded twice a year to the best research paper by a first-year undergraduate in SEAS, honors her legacy. 

Throughout her career, Ingrid tirelessly encouraged students of all backgrounds to pursue careers in STEM. For her colleagues in STS, she was unfailingly welcoming and positive. As chair, she excelled at rallying her faculty while sheltering them from occasional administrative kerfuffles. Her management philosophy shone every day: She encouraged success for all, knowing that our collective destiny depended upon the diverse talents of every teacher and researcher.

Born in Berlin during World War Two, Ingrid’s father was drafted into the Wehrmacht and died on the Russian front. When she was thirteen, her mother moved the family to the United States where they made a home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. With part-time jobs, she worked her way through college and graduate school, earning a PhD in Literature from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation is titled “Man and the Machine: A Contrastive Study of Ernst Toller’s Die Maschinenstürmer and Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine.” This expertise on the place of technologies in modern culture would ultimately lead to her teaching career.

The mother of two children, she also enjoyed a rich creative life: an avid writer, woodcarver, sculptor, and seamstress. She is survived by her husband Miles Townsend, long a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in SEAS. In 2008 Ingrid told a Daily Progress reporter, “Because of the war, I’ve always been aware of death, and I’ve always been aware of trying to do something positive in the short time that I’m here.” Ingrid Soudek Townsend not only tried. She triumphed.