Banks' Unique Heritage Fosters Persistence, Resilience

By Mike Reilly of The Texas A&M University System Division of Marketing and Communications. An excerpt originally appeared in the September-October 2021 Texas Aggie magazine. Read more here.

Dr. Kathy Banks meets with students in the Memorial Student Center on June 1, her first day as president.

M. Katherine Banks grew up in Whitesburg, Kentucky, a small coal mining town where the high school girls in the 1970s were expected to take classes in home economics, not physics.

But Kathy Banks had her own ideas. Even at a young age, she was an independent thinker with a gritty stubborn streak — a persistence and resilience that helped her become one of the nation’s top engineering researchers, educators and leaders.

Her career brought her to Texas A&M University in January 2012 where, as dean of the College of Engineering and vice chancellor for The Texas A&M University System, she has advanced the university’s stature among the nation’s best engineering schools. On June 1, she officially became Texas A&M’s 26th president.

Her determination was nurtured by a unique heritage. She was the oldest of three children to Estill and Peggy Banks. She admired her grandparents, Lucky and Kathryn Banks, for prevailing against tough odds.

In the Cumberland Plateau of eastern Kentucky, “Papaw” had quit school after the second grade to support his family. He sold fruit from the roadside, then sold coal mined by hand. He eventually grew that into a small, successful mining business.

“Mamaw,” with a sixth-grade education, opened a general store where young Kathy worked. At age six, she was stocking shelves. Later she learned to run the register and keep the books, including to forgive occasionally overdue payments on milk and bread for struggling families.

“There’s a sense of community and a generosity there that I’ve carried with me,” Dr. Banks says.

By the way, she excelled in that high school physics class. After high school, Banks moved to Gainesville, Florida, and took college classes while she worked part-time at a drug store. She learned that a love for physics, biology and math could be applied to engineering.

“I like the expression, ‘Invent with intent,’ ” Dr. Banks says. “Scientists investigate because they want to understand fundamental processes. Engineers are problem-solvers. There is an application for the study.”

“For me, the excitement at the end of a research project comes from actually demonstrating the application.”

She earned her bachelor's from the University of Florida, an engineering master’s from the University of North Carolina, and her Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Duke University.

As a Ph. D. student and as a faculty member at Kansas State University, Purdue University and at Texas A&M, Dr. Banks has researched how microorganisms attach to surfaces and how their behavior changes under stress.

Banks works in the microbial processes lab at Kansas State University in 1990.

Her research explored supporting human life on Mars and preventing infection around medical implants, cleaning contaminated soil, preventing corrosion of infrastructure, and ensuring drinking water is safe.

“You can find out all kinds of things about microorganisms, or people for that matter, if you put them under stress conditions,’’ she says. “Stress situations can lead to identifying new ways of solving problems.

“I’ve always been drawn to that transition phase in my research. It’s funny because I certainly do that in life, too.”

Dr. Banks forged her career while also raising six children with her husband, Paul, a soil chemist who joined the Texas A&M faculty in July 2012.

The couple met when both were professors at Kansas State. Dr. Banks was working on a project and needed help looking at soil characteristics.

That work led to a new, low-cost approach for remediating soil contaminated with petroleum products. The approach uses plant roots that enhance cleanup while keeping contaminated sites relatively intact. It has been demonstrated effective at a number of industrial sites.

In 2014, Dr. Banks joined the elite of her profession with election to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). The NAE election cited her work with plants to destroy toxins in soil and groundwater as well as her leadership in engineering education.

By then her initiatives at A&M were attracting national attention. They have entrenched the university among the top-10 public engineering schools.

Dr. Banks hired scores of nationally acclaimed academic faculty and dozens of “professors of practice” directly from the private sector.

She spearheaded the transformation of the RELLIS campus in Bryan into a hub of 21st century innovation in the fields of infrastructure, transportation safety and national security.

She collaborated with the Texas A&M College of Medicine to start EnMed, a one-of-a-kind degree program aimed at spurring next-generation medical technology. Students earn medical degrees and master’s degrees in engineering simultaneously. Each student must invent a new process, device or application to graduate.

She led the Texas A&M University System to win a national competition to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory along with the Battelle Memorial Institute and the University of California System.

She directed the fundraising campaign to build the college’s new home: the Zachry Engineering Education Complex features innovative use of design, technology and art to enrich learning.

Banks was the dean of the College of Engineering for nine years.

She persuaded top A&M System officials to expand undergraduate engineering enrollment. Dr. Banks set a target of 25,000 engineering students at Texas A&M by the year 2025. In 2021, the college’s enrollment is 21,735 and the quality of applicants has improved.

“It’s not about the numbers,” Dr. Banks says. “It’s about the fact that this state needs more engineers. And students from all backgrounds deserve the opportunity to go to a nationally ranked engineering program.

“We are the state’s land grand institution. We are here for all students who want to move ahead, with tremendous grit, with a drive to succeed.”

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