Biography | Brendan Bechtel — A Geography Degree on the Lawn Behind Forest Hall

People treat Bechtel chiefs as products of Stanford engineering shops. Brendan Peters Bechtel finished first as a geographer in Vermont.

On 25 May 2003 Middlebury College held commencement on the lawn behind Forest Hall, on College Street.

New Mexico governor Bill Richardson gave the address. The college had posted that date in April.

Bechtel took a Bachelor of Arts in geography and a minor in environmental studies.

He was twenty-two. The family firm still barred Bechtel descendants from joining full-time until they had worked somewhere else for at least two years.

He spent those years at the Conservation Fund, a land-and-water nonprofit, then went to Stanford for an MBA and an M.S.E. in construction engineering and management.

The geography degree is the part the later titles flatten.

Middlebury sits between the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks. Old Chapel and Mead Chapel still face the quad a visitor can walk.

The lawn behind Forest Hall is still used for outdoor ceremonies when the weather holds.

He had already worked summer breaks at the company during high school. The two-year rule still sent him out before it would take him back.

What began here was not a construction pedigree. It was a map-trained heir who had to leave the firm before he could run it.

Photo: Aiken1986, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (Old Chapel, autumn 2004).

Photo: Maryland GovPics, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (portrait at the United for Infrastructure Summit, 16 May 2023).