Penn State announced Friday that former engineering department head Peggy Johnson has been named dean of Schreyer Honors College, and will officially assume the position in July of 2017.

Johnson, who holds a doctorate degree in civil engineering, joined the Penn State faculty in 1996. Her work focuses mainly on hydraulic engineering, bridge scour, resilient infrastructure, stream restoration, reliability analyses, and river mechanics according to the university website. She is heavily involved in her field, and has accumulated numerous honors over the course of her career —the most recent being the 2016 Hans Albert Einstein Award, presented by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

In 2006 Johnson was appointed department head of Penn State’s Civil and Environmental Engineering program, a position she occupied for 9 years before taking a semester-long sabbatical in 2015. She returned in January 2016 to teach several undergraduate and graduate-level engineering courses while remaining active in the world of engineering research, according to the university website.

Johnson will replace Kathy Bieschke, who served as interim dean of the college for almost ten months after former dean Christian Brady announced his resignation last spring.

Johnson was selected after a nearly year-long search conducted by the administration, and was one of four candidates to be evaluated in part by a question-and-answer style interview that involved current Schreyer students.

More than 1,800 students are currently enrolled in the Schreyer Honors College, which was founded in 1980 and renamed in 1997.