MTC News: 2000

Distance Education: Transportation 691 Seminar

Iowa State University has offered a Spring Seminar in Transportation (Transportation 691) for a number of years. The course, a 15 lecture series presented by outside speakers, is designed to bring together transportation students from a variety of disciplines and to introduce them to a variety of topics that they might not cover in other coursework. In the past, this course has been broadcast to other locations in Iowa. However, for the first time, this year Iowa State University, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and the University of Northern Iowa all cooperatively offered it. Videoconferencing technology was used to link the three sites; several times, students from the University of Missouri-Kansas City also participated. Expanding the number of participating universities greatly increased the breadth of subjects covered and also the types of people who presented.

The topics presented this year included Transportation Asset Management (4 lectures), Intelligent Transportation Systems (3 lectures), Transportation Futures (3 lectures), the Politics of Transportation (2 lectures), Context-Sensitive Highway Design, Air Freight, and River Transportation. Speakers came from a variety of organizations in the public and private sectors. Organizations that supplied presenters included:

• The University of Minnesota
• Northwestern University
• The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City
• The North American Superhighway Coalition
• The Federal Highway Administration
• The Transportation Research Board
• BRW Inc. (Minneapolis and Phoenix offices)
• CH2M-Hill Inc.
• The Army Corps of Engineers
• Black and Veatch Inc.
• The Des Moines International Airport
• United Parcel Service
• The Iowa DOT
• The Missouri DOT

Several of the presenting organizations (in particular BRW, CH2M-Hill, and United Parcel Service) have begun developing closer relationships with Iowa State University as a result of their experience. This should prove beneficial to current and future students.

Twenty-seven students at the three universities were officially enrolled in the course. In addition, the seminars were regularly attended by other students (seminar attendance is a requirement of the ISU scholar contract), ISU and UMC faculty and staff, by FHWA staff, by metropolitan planning organization staff members from Des Moines and Waterloo in Iowa, and by staff from the Iowa and Missouri DOTs. In future years, we will be working to extend the seminar to the other MTC partner schools. A new videoconferencing classroom at CTRE/Iowa State University has just become operational and will be used in future distance education and outreach activities.

Contact: David Plazak, Iowa State University
Phone: 515-294-8103, email: dplazak@iastate.edu