ARMY

Ressler promoted, plans retirement

Col. Stephen J. Ressler was promoted to brigadier general during a ceremony May 17.

Ressler will retire after eight more months of service and move to the Bethlehem area.

Ressler graduated from Northampton Area High School in 1975 and went on to graduate fourth in his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1979. He received the Rodney H. Smith Memorial Award for achieving the highest standing in civil engineering.

During his first tour of duty, he served as platoon leader, company executive officer and battalion renaissance officer assigned to the 27th Engineer Battalion at Fort Bragg. As executive officer, he planned and coordinated his company's deployment to Somalia during Operation Bright Star in 1982 and supervised numerous construction projects for the Somali government. He also qualified as a master parachutist and pathfinder during this assignment.

In 1983, he attended the Engineer Officer Advanced Course and was assigned to the 12th Engineer Battalion, 8th Infancy Division in Germany.

Ressler earned both a Master of Science and Doctoral degrees from Lehigh University in 1989 and 1991 respectively and went on to become an instructor for the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at West Point.

In 1993, he received the Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement from the Phi Kappa Phi honor society. He also won two best paper awards from the American Society for Engineering Education and earned his professional engineering license.

In 1994, he was assigned as deputy commander of the New York District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where he oversaw all major construction at 22 military installations in the eastern U.S.

The following year, he was selected as an academy professor and returned to West Point to become director of the civil engineering design group. Two years later, he became head of the department, where he oversaw the establishment of the Center for Innovation and Engineering and the Center for STEM Education.

Ressler collaborated with his brother, Eugene K. Ressler, head of computer science and electrical department at West Point, to create the West Point Bridge Design Contest. Since 2001, this contest has introduced engineering to more than 50,000 middle and high school students.

In 2007, Ressler was deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan. With Dr. Chris Conley, he designed a 16-course civil engineering curriculum used to hire and train Afghan civil engineers.

Ressler and his wife, Claire, have a daughter, Anne, who is majoring in engineering sciences at Dartmouth College.

Ressler is the son of Eugene and Dorothy Ressler of Lehigh Township.