A return to College Hill

Albert Ducker ’74 earned a degree in civil engineering from Lafayette.

By Madeline Marriott ’24

Some people have called Albert Ducker ’74 a trailblazer.

“Back in 2024, a bunch of us were talking about how we wanted Black students to have a special presence at our 50-year reunion,” Ducker says. “Someone coined the term and said, ‘You know, we were actually trailblazers in many ways,’ and the term stuck.”

The early 1970s were a time of cultural change across the country. As part of the first coed graduating class and the one with the most Black students to date, Ducker and his classmates took the charge of bringing that change to Lafayette’s campus, pushing for more Black faculty members and a more Afrocentric curriculum.

“It wasn’t until I later reflected on that time that I got an appreciation for what we did,” Ducker says. “The job was not complete, but we got to a certain level of cultural acceptance. We wanted to show people we deserved to be there.”

Fast forward to November 2025: a weekend-long Trailblazers event, bringing together generations of Black students and alumni.

“It was a really powerful event for me,” Ducker says. “I got to do something I’ve never done before, which is interface directly with people who came to the school after us and hear their perspectives. We heard their stories of what it was like on campus in the years after we left—a time when I was working and wasn’t very involved with the school—and connected it to our own experiences.”

Ducker was so moved by the camaraderie of the event that he decided to make his first gift to the College since graduating 50 years ago.

“I had been thinking about it, but at the Trailblazers event I decided: I want to contribute, but I want my funds to go directly to the Portlock Center,” Ducker says. “I felt so strongly about what I was seeing, and I knew we needed to keep this and build on this however we could.”

After growing up in a family of engineers, Ducker made his career as a civil engineer, first working in the Bulk Power Division at Pennsylvania Power and Light (PPL), where he dealt with the structural aspects of high-voltage equipment such as transmission towers.

He then relocated to Maryland, where he spent nearly 20 years at the Bechtel Power Corp. before landing at STV Incorporated, a major architectural engineering firm that had recently established an office in the Washington, D.C. area. There, he worked his way up to become the office structural engineer of record (EOR)—the “pinnacle of his career.”

Ducker, pictured with his wife, Karen, recently reconnected with classmates at a Trailblazers event in fall 2025. “It was a really powerful event for me,” Ducker says. “I got to do something I’ve never done before, which is interface directly with people who came to the school after us and hear their perspectives.”

“Any kind of blueprints or construction drawings you see, there’s a little seal in the corner—that was me,” he explains. “As an engineer of record, you’re the responsible engineer for that design.”

He credits his Lafayette education with teaching him the discipline required to rise through the ranks.

“I remember vividly not just learning the technical side, but particularly how to learn engineering—the approach to retaining all of the information and understanding the world we were entering,” Ducker says. “I knew I wanted to become a project engineer and manager. [At Lafayette,] I received a well-rounded base of knowledge and learned enough about everything to become a manager: mechanical, electrical, everything! It helped me know what questions to ask.”

Ducker’s engineering mindset even shines through with his contribution to the Portlock Center.

“This was my first contribution to the College, but I’m sure it won’t be the last,” he says.