MTC News: Year Five (2004) Semi-Annual Progress Report

Education

• Enriching Learning Opportunities for Students
• Distance Learning: Transportation 691 Seminar, Spring 2004
• Annual MTC Student Paper Competition and Transportation Scholars Conference
• Annual Transportation Student Scholar of the Year Competition
• MTC Scholar Named Eno Fellow
• International Education Activities at Iowa State and Northern Iowa
• Student Recruitment: Transportation Career Fair For High School Kids

Enriching Learning Opportunities for Students

Developing the human capital needed by transportation organizations located in and around Region 7 remains the major emphasis area for the MTC. As such, MTC continues to stress improving educational opportunities for its students, including work opportunities on research projects, job placement efforts, and travel to national conferences. Over thirty students from several MTC member universities were able to attend the annual meeting of TRB in Washington, D.C. in January 2004. The MTC appears to support one of the largest contingents of students traveling to the TRB annual meeting and students learn a great deal from it.

Plans are already being made to have a number of students from at least three of the MTC member schools (ISU, UM-C, UMSL) and other consortium schools, if possible) attend the TRB Annual Meeting in Washington, DC in January 2005.

Development of entirely new transportation programs continues at the University of Northern Iowa and at Lincoln University. Several Lincoln University students are enrolled in the co-op program that has been developed between that historically Black college (HCB) with the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT). Charles Nemmers at the University of Missouri-Columbia facilitated the development of these programs—a multi-university effort.

Distance Learning: Transportation 691 Seminar, Spring 2004

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. As was the case last year, this course was offered at multiple universities in the MTC’s four-state region through the use of videoconferencing.

This year the seminar was planned and organized by faculty from four of the consortium universities: ISU, UM-C, UM-SL, and UNI. ISU and UM-C, as senior partners in the MTC, arranged for most of the speakers. The seminar sites were connected using H.323 Internet videoconferencing technology, allowing numerous students from various university programs and disciplines to take part at virtually no cost to the consortium. This year’s two focus areas for the seminar are, transportation asset management and advanced technology in transportation.

The following topics were presented this year:

• Underwater bridge inspection*
• Asset management as communications*
• Non-destructive evaluation in condition-assessment for asset management*
• Bridge health monitoring*
• Information technology in the trucking industry*
• Portland cement concrete pavement research
• Global logistics for a major manufacturing company*
• Winter maintenance management information systems*
• The science of asset management*
• Highway corridor management*
• Pavement preservation and asset management*
• How states are implementing GASB 34*
• The Army Corps of Engineers and their transportation activities
• State long-range transportation planning issues
• The financial health of the transportation industry*

* These topics were on asset management or closely related topics.

This year’s speakers were drawn from the following organizations:

• Collins Engineering
• Transportation Policy Institute
• Federal Highway Administration Turner Fairbank Laboratory
• Iowa State University/CTRE
• Yellow Freight
• University of Illinois
• ERES Consultants
• John Deere
• Federal Highway Administration Regional Resource Centers
• PB Consultants
• US Army Corps of Engineers
• Iowa Department of Transportation
• A. G. Edwards, Inc.

An average of 20 to 25 people attended the seminars at the Iowa State University location alone; the attendance at all four sites often exceeds 50. Even though the seminar series is mainly intended to benefit students, professional staff from the Iowa and Missouri DOTs, local Federal Highway Administration offices, university faculty, and even a few private citizens attend it. Every year in the past, the seminar has facilitated the building of at least one new, valuable relationship for the member schools.

Annual MTC Student Paper Competition and Transportation Scholars Conference

The MTC held its annual student paper competition in November 2003. This year’s number of papers submitted was the largest ever in the history of the competition. Papers were received from several institutions in the consortium. Papers were reviewed by the MTC key staff and by several external reviewers. Presentations were made in Ames on November 15.

The cash prize for best paper/presentation this year was awarded to Elizabeth Kash, a Masters degree student from Iowa State University. Her paper explored the mechanisms of corrosion and utilizing reinforced polymers as a chloride barrier. The research was conducted on Iowa DOT structures along Interstate 35 in Central Iowa.

Annual Transportation Student Scholar of the Year Competition

Each year, the MTC selects one outstanding student from its member schools as the MTC Scholar of the Year. This student receives an all expenses paid trip to attend the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. where he/she is recognized along with scholars from other regions by the U.S. Department of Transportation for their outstanding contributions to the field of transportation.

The selection, made on the basis of applications submitted by the educational advisors or researchers at each school and evaluated by MTC key staff, is based on several criteria:

• Scholarship
• Research
• Outside activities related to transportation
• Academic performance

This year’s Scholar of the Year selection was very difficult. Several top-notch nominations were received from consortium schools. This year’s winner was Jamie Luedtke from Iowa State University. Ms. Luedtke (who recently graduated and is now working at Snyder Associates, an engineering and planning consulting firm located in Iowa) was a Masters degree student in Transportation. Her record in education, scholarship, and leadership of student transportation club activities has been outstanding and included a year as President of the award-wining ISU Transportation Student Association. Her thesis research explored the relationship between access management and adjacent commercial land values. Ms. Luedtke was also recently named a Young Member of the Transportation Research Board’s Committee on Access Management.

MTC Scholar Named Eno Fellow

Iowa State University graduate student Hillary Isebrands, P.E. has been selected to participate in the 12th annual Leadership Development Conference held by the Eno Transportation Foundation in Washington, D.C. May 24–28, 2004. She is one of 20 students nationwide who were selected. The goal of the conference is to provide transportation students an intensive view of how transportation policy is developed and implemented on a national basis. Hillary expects the conference to provide her "with an opportunity to examine the prioritization process of assessing our transportation needs." Her thesis research involves the feasibility of employing modern roundabouts on rural highways in the Midwest.

International Education Activities at Iowa State and Northern Iowa

The MTC is playing a role in Iowa State University’s long-running summer in Rome program this year. About 12 students from the Departments of Community and Regional Planning and Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering will be taking a transportation planning course in Italy during June. MTC Director David Plazak will be teaching the course as part of his Community and Regional Planning teaching duties. This is the first city planning course and the first transportation-related course that ISU has ever offered as a part of the Rome program.

The University of Northern Iowa has developed a relationship with Herzen University of St. Petersbug, Russia. This has culminated in the reworking of the transportation geography course originally developed with the help of the UTC grant to include broader public policy considerations. This has allowed for the development of a second course on public policy issues in the United States and Russia that is being videoconferenced between Herzen University and Northern Iowa using the same technology that the MTC uses for its spring transportation seminar.

Student Recruitment: Transportation Career Fair For High School Kids

Kids don't know much about transportation. In fact, maintaining and developing the transportation infrastructure can be an invisible function to young people. Because of this, recruiting young people into professional and technical careers in civil engineering and transportation can be challenging.

The Midwest Transportation Consortium is helping to change that. The MTC sponsored a career fair, “Moving Toward Your Future: Careers in Transportation,” for Iowa high school students February 25, 2004. The Center for Transportation Research and Education and Des Moines Area Community College hosted the fair at Iowa State University; 109 students from 18 different schools attended.

A planning committee of professionals in transportation and education developed a program to appeal to a wide variety of students. As students moved through the day, they learned the basic construction process of planning, design, construction, and maintenance.