Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
Winter 2016
Civil Engineering
Department
Contact: (812) 877-8817 tanner2@rose-hulman.edu
Faculty
John Aidoo
Associate Professor
Jeremy Chapman
Assistant Professor
James Hanson
Professor & Roland E.
Hutchins Endowed Chair
Kyle Kershaw
Assistant Professor
Matt Lovell
Assistant Professor
Jim McKinney
Professor Emeritus
Michelle Marincel Payne
Assistant Professor
Jenny Mueller Price
Assistant Professor
Michael Robinson
Associate Professor
Kevin Sutterer
Professor & Department Head
Staff
Keith Royer
Technician
Angela Tanner
Secretary
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Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
Jim McKinney and five RHIT Civil
Engineering students attended the
Annual Meeting and Technical
Conference of the Asphalt
Pavement Association of Indiana.
Seniors Tucker Cox, Seth Dow,
Zach Johnson, Georges Valcour, and Junior Dean Thomas were recognized for their summer experience, academic performance and career aspirations with a financial prize.
Winter 2016
The ASCE chapter continued its long standing, bi-annual service project by building a wheelchair ramp for a
Terre Haute resident in need. The chilly fall weather did not dissuade the enthusiastic student volunteers, that completed the ramp, that will help the homeowner to remain safe and mobile. One of the challenges with the ramp builds in recent years has been having enough tools to keep all of the volunteers engaged and productive. To help address this challenge, Jake Gould (CE ’15), a recent alumnus and long-time ramp build volunteer, has donated a full set of DeWalt power tools to the student ASCE chapter. A big thanks to Jake!
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Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
Winter 2016
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Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
Winter 2016
In early fall of 2012, we applied for a partnership with the community of Gomoa
Gyaman (“go-Moh-ah Jah-mon”), Ghana.
Gomoa Gyaman is a village of approximately
2,500 individuals located about 50 miles from
Accra, the capital of Ghana. The community reached out to Engineers Without Borders -
USA seeking help to improve their current living conditions. We were accepted to begin this program with the community in early spring of 2013.
We traveled on an initial assessment trip to
Gomoa Gyaman from August 16th to August
27th, 2013. During our time in the community, we met with village elders to discuss the needs of the community. We also conducted interviews with several residents to get a better idea of what problems they were facing. We learned the community suffers from a sanitation issue due to a lack of adequate places to go to the bathroom.
The Ghanaian government constructed two latrines (containing six stalls each) for use by a local school house. One of these is filled and unable to be emptied due to its construction and location. The other is
The extra depth has the potential to endanger their water supply as waste infiltrates into the soil. For the poorer areas in the community, they use the woods behind their homes, offering potential for contracting fecal-born diseases.
After two years of overcoming many design and logistic obstacles, we returned to the community in
August of 2015 to begin construction of the first of four ventilated pit latrines. We arrived in the community after 24 hours of travel and were greeted with open arms. Our first day on site consisted of material evaluation, dimensioning of the pit, meeting with community members, and a lively ceremony initiated by the Queen Mother and the Elders. For the ensuing two weeks, we worked cooperatively with local workers to construct the substructure of the latrine. The design plans changed often as we ran into difficulties finding materials similar to those used in the United States.
The community support and effort was essential in completing this first phase of this structure. People of all ages were involved in the process and eager to
Continued on next page reserved strictly for the school and it is illegal for it to be used by anyone other than the students during the school day. The community has constructed public pit latrines, however, these are little more than holes in the ground. When these are filled, they top them off with soil and dig a new latrine next to it; this wastes valuable property in the community. They have also been digging their latrines too deep in an effort to increase the service life of the latrine.
Pictured from left to right: (front) Dr. Gustavo Garcia, Sanders Park,
Andrew Roan, Rachel Broughton (back) Camille Blaisdell, Amanda
Sparks, Jed Holt, and Jordan Kamp.
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Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
Winter 2016
Continued from previous page help. Some days, we worked well past sunset and into the night. A considerable amount was learned both about the materials and construction used locally. In the upcoming months, we will be remodeling the superstructure design based on community input. The final latrine structure will feature twelve gender-divided stalls, 10 of which will be toilets and two of which will be hand washing stations. The roof will be made of aluminum and feature a gutter system to catch and funnel rain into water reservoirs to be used in the hand washing stations. The walls will be made of concrete masonry units and feature windows for increased lighting and ventilation inside of the superstructure.
Ultimately, there will be four latrines constructed in the community. Each is designed to service one quarter of the community, roughly 700 residents, for up to five years before needing to be emptied. A professional waste removal service from a nearby city is able to be contracted to remove the waste as needed.
The team plans to return to Gomoa Gyaman in
February 2016 to complete the rest of the first latrine, educate the community on proper hygienic practices, and to assess other needs of the community.
We have a larger than normal group of seniors this year, so we have eleven different senior design projects under way. The projects are shown below with their clients identified in parentheses.
• 13th Street Corridor, Terre Haute (City of Terre Haute)
• Chicago River/Albany Park Tunnel, Chicago (Friends of the Chicago River)
• Cross Lane Church Expansion, Terre Haute (Cross Lane Church)
• Indiana DNR Campgrounds, Ferdinand (Indiana Department of Natural Resources)
• Gutu Mission Project, Zimbabwe (Hippo Valley Christian Mission)
• Wabash & Erie Canal Interpretive Canal and Trail, Lafayette (Wabash River Enhancement
Corporation)
• Brownfield Site Development, Marshall, Illinois (Francis and Associates)
• Baptist Church Facility, Terre Haute (First Free Will Baptist Church)
• Pennsy Trail, Hancock County, Indiana (Hancock County Highway Department)
• Rosedale Trail, Rosedale, Indiana (Covered Bridge Gateway Trail Association)
• USFS Office Complex, Hoosier National Forest, Bedford (USDA – Bedford)
The teams completed site assessment, field and laboratory data collection, and concept development this fall term. They presented their recommendations at our Board meeting at the end of week 10 of fall term. Based on Board feedback, they revised their recommendations and presented those to their clients during week 1 of winter term. Some of our teams recently identified a difficulty with incorporation GIS data into AutoCAD, and we were very pleased to have members of our Board provide guidance and resources to help the teams overcome that challenge.
The seniors are now very busy working on their sub-discipline design work necessary to provide their clients with the agreed design.
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Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
Winter 2016
This year’s Fall Career Fair took place on September 16th and was attended by over 266 companies.
It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces representing their companies, in the crowd. A big thank you to Dr. McKinney for coaxing our alumni to pose for pictures.
Josh Leffert (‘14) & Ricky TJ Chin (‘14) & Kevin Hanson (‘06)
Chris Capshaw (‘95) Cole Perry (‘10) Drew Twarek (‘05) Martin Brenny (’05)
Jason Cooper (‘09) Paul Creasey (‘08) Kate Dangel (‘14 & M ‘15) Nick Murphy (‘10)
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Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
Winter 2016
The department moved the winter meeting of the Board of Advisors to week 10 of fall quarter this year. The move was to arrange earlier mentoring of the senior design projects by Board members and reduce conflicts with holiday events and winter weather. We believe the change was highly beneficial to the seniors, and it was a wonderful experience to take a board picture outdoors this year, in some really nice fall weather. Each year, we invite not only the 12 Board of Advisors members to our fall meeting, but also other area engineers who can come and help mentor projects.
These other engineers become one year members of our Board of Associates. Most of the attendees are pictured below. This year’s attendees were Pat Martin, John Cross, Gene LeBoeuf, Chuck Ennis,
Mickey Hines, Jon Stolz, Cash Canfield, Andy Thiesz, Charity Dudley, Troy Swan, Eric Haenlein, Pat
Goodwin, Jake Wagle, and Dave Myers.
In addition to mentoring senior projects and senior discussions about their career after graduation, they also worked on board business. The department is currently crafting a white paper titled
“Hopes and Dreams 2025” as a follow up to a paper about our 2015 hopes and dreams written in
2005. The Board provided discussion and input on aspects of what will be in that white paper. We also spent considerable time discussing the environmental/water resources program. In particular we discussed curriculum, and ways to encourage students to follow a career path in this subdiscipline. Some of the insights from that discussion are already on the way to implementation, and we look forward to sharing more about that in the next year. Finally, we welcomed two new board members while thanking several who are now moving into emeritus status. Greg Henneke stepped over to emeritus membership after serving the Board of Advisors for 11 years. Pat Goodwin also transitioned to emeritus membership after 13 years of service to the board. We will greatly miss having Greg and Pat as a part of the group, but are happy that they’ll still be there in the emeritus role. Thanks, Pat and Greg, for all of your help. Our two new board members are Ken Koziol and
Kevin Hanson. Ken is a
1992 graduate of the department, and Kevin is a
2006 alumnus. Ken is currently the Director of
Development with The
Garrett Companies in the
Indianapolis area and
Kevin is a Project Manager with Baker Concrete in Ft.
Lauderdale, Florida.
Thanks to Ken and Kevin for joining the team.
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Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
Winter 2016
ASCE had a very busy fall quarter. From field trips and professional development to volunteer service, many students have enriched their Rose-Hulman learning experience by actively participating in the Cecil T.
Lobo student chapter. The fall quarter kicked off prior to the early Fall Career Fair with a presentation by
President Anne Pierce on interview professionalism and strategy. New freshmen were also welcomed into the chapter with an early meet and greet and civil engineering inspired cake (Figure 1).
In addition to the monthly meeting on interview prep,
Figure 1: A tasty welcome for freshmen civils. numerous professionals also spoke to the chapter on their fields of civil engineering. This included a meeting with Sue Bock from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) on erosion and sediment control on construction sites. On the nonregulatory side of construction, Rick Dechamps, the
V.P. of Engineering at Nicholson Construction, presented on how his firm fixed a 65-foot-long fracture in Wanapum Dam in Washington State. To round off the construction experience, Derek
Figure 2: Rose-Hulman ASCE visiting Thieneman's construction site.
Davidson and Lewis Starr with Thieneman Construction (a local engineering firm) gave a presentation to the chapter on a new Actiflo system for combined sewer overflows before it enters the Wabash River. Immediately following the presentation, a group of students got to visit the site of the construction, which happened to be a brownfield site mentioned in a Codes and Regulations presentation (Figure 2). Inviting professionals to speak was not the only involvement ASCE had with professional members of the community. Through the fall and into the winter, ASCE is hosting a HEC-RAS workshop for those interested in improving their water modeling capabilities.
For volunteer service, ASCE performed a wheel chair ramp build on 4 th
street this fall. Additionally, a group of students participated in the planting of 111 trees at the new Vigo County
School Corporation Aquatic Park (Figure 3). Their knack for dirt went a long way as they finished early and helped other teams plant their remaining trees.
Figure 3: ASCE students in their natural
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Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
Winter 2016
Jim McKinney
HMA QA/QC Program Director
This year marked the 30 th
and final year of the Rose-Hulman Civil Engineering/Asphalt Pavement
Association of Indiana (APAI)/Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) Hot Mix Asphalt
Quality Assurance/Quality Control (HMA QA/QC) Certification Program for hot mix asphalt construction in the State of Indiana. All HMA contractors performing paving operations on state and federal highways in Indiana must have technical personnel certified through the RHIT-INDOT
HMA QA/QC Certification Program. Twenty-nine HMA contractors, aggregate producers, material testing laboratory personnel, and consultants took part in the Certification Program this past month. This consisted of a week-long, laboratory session which was held here in Civil Engineering.
Since its inception in 1985/1986, a total of 2,330 people have enrolled in the HMA QA/QC
Program.
The program came about through the diligent efforts of the former INDOT Chief Engineer- Donald
W. Lucas (CE, ‘59). The HMA QA/QC Program has also allowed us to develop long term relationships with INDOT, APAI, and various hot mix asphalt contractors. This has resulted in a number of students receiving summer internships with government and industry, as well as permanent employment opportunities for graduates.
Additionally, APAI has annually sponsored scholarships for two or three of our students. Since
1998, 51 (fifty one) students have received financial assistance, including this year’s recipients:
Seniors Tucker Cox, Seth Dow, Zach Johnson Georges Valcour, and Junior, Dean Thomas.
THANKS TO OUR DONORS
Each year, the department receives donations sent to the institute that are designated specifically for our use in Civil
Engineering. These donations are deeply appreciated and essential to our programming. They enable us to host our freshman trip to a major city, take our students in classes on field trips away from campus, purchase essential supplies for our labs and field work, and assist our faculty and staff with expenses associated with continuous learning and preparation and sharing of content that makes our students’ learning better for you. Your gifts to our department are an investment in the future graduates who will be your colleagues. Thank you so much for your generosity! —Kevin
April 20
May 18
May 28
- Spring Career Fair
- Order of Engineer Ceremony
- Commencement
KEEP IN TOUCH
We are always interested in how our alumni are doing. Keep in touch by e-mailing us at tanner2@rose-hulman.edu.
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Civil Engineering Echoes
Department Newsle er
This fall has been really great for the Department of Civil Engineering. Our graduates are seeing early job offers this year and job placements for the seniors are coming quicker than they have in years. This is exciting for the students. We moved our winter Board of Advisors meeting to
November and that meeting also went especially well. Our senior project teams met with the Board and presented their work, which was followed by high-quality mentoring. We think our three-year transition to a new format for senior design is now complete, and we are all pleased with the outcome. Surveying has been moved to the fall term so that we can begin organizing a year-long freshman project experience, and Jeremy Chapman reports both the weather and the brand new freshmen were very cooperative with the new position of surveying in our curriculum. We are also pleased to report that we are now offering a course-based Master of Environmental Engineering, along with our course-based Master of Civil Engineering, which has a structural emphasis. Our
Homecoming open house went very well this year. The attendance was great, and Angela Tanner and Keith Royer made sure the lab setting and food were first class.
Throughout this fall, our biggest blessing has been the great visits we have had with alumni, not only during Homecoming and our Board meeting, but also in your visits as guest speakers, interviewing our students, and even while attending graduate courses on campus. In addition, some of the faculty got a chance to see and visit with our alumni at various locations off campus.
It’s always great to see and catch up with our friends. Thanks to all of you for seeking us out. Not only do we just get to hear how you are doing, but we also get a chance to hear your perspective on how things are going in industry and in your own work. Please keep in touch. We love hearing from you.
Thank you, Dr. McKinney
Professor Emeritus Dr. Jim McKinney finished the 30 th
Hot Mix
Asphalt QA/QC program in early December. Next year, this program will no longer be offered here in the department. Over these 30 years, Jim’s strong leadership of this program has not only provided a crucial service for the state of Indiana, but also brought the department the latest technology and equipment for our labs, fostered support for scholarships for students, and provided opportunities for numerous improvements around the department, including lab equipment and supplies, office supplies, and computers for faculty and staff. This 30 years of programming has been a great blessing to the department. Thanks so much, Jim, for this wonderful service to Indiana and to our students!
Winter 2016
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