I should have expected it, as I grew up in Eldora, a rural Iowa farming community. Still, I was disappointed gazing out an Iowa State dorm window and seeing nothing but cornfields, from street to distant horizon.

Faz, an upper-level leader with a nationally respected structural engineering firm, had dozens of major projects to his credit and a doctorate in structural engineering (in the A/E consulting industry, Ph.D.’s are few and far between).