December 2007
Volume 32, Number 12

In his valedictory address, delivered on November 2 during the annual conference’s plenary session, W.F. Marcuson III, Ph.D., p.e., Hon.m.ASCE, observed that “ASCE is a tremendously influential organization, and serving as its president has been a gratifying and humbling experience.” The outgoing president reflected on his experiences during the past year and discussed the future of the engineering profession as well as the catastrophic events that have punctuated the nation’s infrastructure crisis.

With regard to the future, Marcuson said, “As I have neared the end of my term in office, I have reflected on what future awaits these promising young people. They enter the profession at a time when it faces a challenging, if not uncertain, future.” Nevertheless, he was confident that the market for civil engineers would continue to grow as the nation’s infrastructure is renewed and expanded. Indeed, maintenance alone will require $1.6 trillion. “Add that to the growing global design and construction market, and civil engineers should prosper for decades,” he said.

Notwithstanding this optimistic outlook on the market for engineering services, Marcuson voiced concern about the nation’s failing infrastructure, particularly the three tragic failures that have occurred in the past two years: the levee breaches in New Orleans, the collapse of a ceiling in one of the tunnels built as part of Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, and the failure of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis. “Collectively these tragic incidents threaten to undermine the public’s trust in civil engineers and perhaps even our standing as a profession,” he said.

Marcuson noted that the failures had complex causes. Nevertheless, he said, “the warnings and concerns expressed by civil engineers were insufficient to prevent these tragic events. If we are to earn the public’s trust, civil engineers are going to have to pay attention to detail, focus on public safety and welfare, and take ownership of the public’s infrastructure and environment.” To accomplish this, he asserted, civil engineers will have to possess the knowledge and expertise necessary to guide public policy. “Are we willing to assume the personal and professional risk needed to exert our professional judgment?” he asked.

According to Marcuson, professions have the following characteristics: they possess a specialized body of knowledge; they are self-regulating through training and evaluation; they are expected to use their independent judgment and professional ethics; and they provide a service, he said, “in accordance with established protocols for licensing, ethics, standards of service, and training or certification.” Marcuson is firmly of the belief that ASCE has ensured its position as a society of professionals. “We have done more to move engineering further into the professional arena than any other engineering society and perhaps more than all of the other societies put together.”

Using Policy 465 (“Academic Prerequisites for Licensure and Professional Practice”) and the future outlined in the report The Vision for Civil Engineering in 2025 (available at http://content.asce.org/vision2025/index.html) as examples, Marcuson said that he saw ASCE as a leader when it comes to raising educational requirements and properly preparing students for careers in a rapidly changing world. Acknowledging that it has taken approximately 10 years for the Society to reach a consensus on Policy 465, he noted that “ASCE is an organization that runs on consensus, [which] almost by definition is not quick or innovative. Nevertheless, ASCE is leaning forward in the foxhole, especially in relation to our fellow engineering societies.”

Marcuson recounted how, in order to gain an insight into the future of the profession, a conference was organized in 2006 (Summit on the Future of Civil Engineering) by David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE. It was attended by approximately 60 civil engineering experts and leaders. The report cited above emerged from that conference, and it states that civil engineers are “entrusted by society to create a sustainable world and enhance the global quality of life.” It goes on to define engineers as “planners, designers, constructors, and operators of society’s economic and social engine, the built environment; stewards of the natural environment and its resources; innovators and integrators of ideas and technology across the public, private, and academic sectors; managers of risk and uncertainty caused by natural events, accidents, and other threats; and leaders in discussions and decisions shaping public environmental and infrastructure policy.” Marcuson asked, “Wouldn’t these words motivate you to want to be a part of the civil engineering profession of the future?”

Marcuson asserted his belief that civil engineering students are enthusiastic about “entering the practice of civil engineering at the professional level.” He also related that through ASCE’s leadership, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying changed its model law to reflect the principles enumerated in Policy 465. The law now states that, as of January 1, 2015, anyone wishing to take the Principles and Practice of Engineering Exam will have to have a bachelor’s degree in engineering and 30 additional credits from upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses and four years of experience. Alternatively, the candidate may possess a master’s degree in engineering and have three years of experience.

Marcuson also briefly discussed ethics and exhorted engineers to maintain their integrity. “Our profession must be founded on integrity and ethics. I have a simple definition of integrity. It is doing what you say you will do,” he said. He also differentiated between an ethical and a legal perspective: “When you are thinking ethics, you think, ‘what is the right thing to do?’ When you are thinking legal, you think, ‘will I get caught?’”
In conclusion, Marcuson reaffirmed his pride in ASCE’s efforts and in the risks it has taken. “When we die the one thing we’ll all regret is the risk we did not take,” he said. He also paid tribute to his successor: “I am pleased to pass the torch to David Mongan. I know him to be a leader of integrity. He is perhaps the most prepared engineer I know to assume the office of president in recent years, having served in almost every chair within ASCE.”

—Brett Hansen

Board to Consider Bylaw Changes The Board of Direction will be meeting in Reston, Virginia, May 1–2. Among the items to be considered are amendments to the Society’s bylaws. Pursuant to subsection 11.1.2 of the Society’s constitution, members must be notified at least 60 days in advance of board action on amendments. The board will be revising the bylaws to change the designation “honorary member” to “distinguished member” and to add the grade of president emeritus. In the elections this year the membership voted in favor of these revisions. The proposed bylaw changes will codify the action taken by the membership. The full text of the proposed amendment may be found at www.asce.org/inside/bylaws. For more information, e-mail board@asce.org or call ASCE customer service at (800) 548-2723 or (703) 295-6300.

On November 3, at the business meeting held during the annual conference, Patrick J. Natale, P.E., F.ASCE, ASCE’s executive director, reported on the state of the Society. His review began with a series of television and radio news highlights featuring interviews with ASCE members and staff and references to ASCE’s infrastructure assessment, or “report card.” Then, in addition to highlighting ASCE’s initiatives and achievements, Natale discussed how ASCE and its members have received significant media exposure and public recognition for the insight they have offered in the wake of recent breakdowns in the nation’s infrastructure.

The media clips featured ASCE members and senior staff being interviewed on such major news programs as Good Morning America and in broadcasts aired by ABC News, CBS News, CNN, PBS, and National Public Radio (NPR). Many of the interviews occurred shortly after the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis and the steam pipe explosion in New York City, both of which raised questions about the nation’s infrastructure. David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE, the Society’s new president, said during an interview on npr’s Diane Rehm Show, “Our nation’s infrastructure impacts virtually every aspect of modern life, from transportation to homeland security to pollution control in drinking water. There are a number of reasons for the quality of the nation’s infrastructure. Probably the single most comprehensive reason is simply the age of our infrastructure.” Casey Dinges, Aff.M.ASCE, the Society’s managing director of external affairs, said during The McLaughlin Group—a half-hour TV news program—“We have been calling attention to the nation’s infrastructure crisis for the past nine years. We gave roads a D. We gave bridges a C. . . . [and] none of the 15 categories . . . had a higher grade than a C+.” To fund the repair and maintenance of the infrastructure, “it is going to be a question of catching up, and the longer we wait, the bigger price tag it will be,” said Andrew Coates, P.E., M.ASCE, a principal of Hardesty & Hanover, of New York City, in an interview with cnn.

After the clips had been shown, Natale said, “We have had more visibility, more credibility, and more influence than ever. From this position of strength, ASCE has newly defined our strategic objectives, focusing . . . our resources on the most important issues facing us, our profession, and our country.” In January the Board of Direction refined its infrastructure strategy—an important component of its strategic plan—so as to not only define funding requirements and outline approaches for effectively maintaining the nation’s infrastructure but also communicate these approaches to policy makers and the public. To accomplish this, ASCE’s infrastructure strategy involves drawing on a broad range of expertise and addressing structural, nonstructural, policy, financing, consumer behavior, security, and cost/benefit issues, among others. The board reaffirmed its goal for the Society to remain a leader and a trusted adviser with respect to infrastructure.

“Years of deferred infrastructure investments and maintenance and [the] failure of public officials to act on infrastructure needs place the public at risk and hinder our country’s economic growth and competitiveness. We continue to spread the word on infrastructure and the crisis we are dealing with, and it is a true crisis,” Natale said. He explained that ASCE has redoubled its lobbying efforts and has seen moderate success in view of the Senate’s vote in August in favor of the National Infrastructure Improvement Act, which would establish a commission on infrastructure. Natale called for a grassroots effort to help the bill pass the House as well. “We must contact our congressional leaders and have them act,” he said. (Members of ASCE provided key congressional testimony after the Minneapolis bridge collapse. [See “Herrmann, Womack Present ASCE’s Views on Bridge Infrastructure to Congress,” ASCE News, October 2007.])

Natale also stressed the need for engineers to represent ASCE, and he emphasized ASCE’s new public relations training for its members. “How many more of our members can we get out to talk to the media and carry our message? We need to be influencing the outcome and not just watching,” he said.

Other achievements and initiatives mentioned by Natale included ASCE’s successful efforts to educate young students through such programs as the PBS series Design Squad and a new outreach program in connection with the PBS series Curious George. He also discussed the future of the profession as envisioned at a conference organized by ASCE in 2006 and embodied in the report The Vision for Civil Engineering in 2025 (available at http://content.asce.org/vision2025/index.html). Another aspect of that future, Natale explained, has to do with the body of knowledge that a person aspiring to practice civil engineering at the professional level will have to possess. These requirements are now contained in a new edition of the report Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge for the 21st Century: Preparing the Civil Engineer for the Future (available at http://www.asce.org/professional/educ/). “We wanted to choose what the future of the civil engineer was versus letting others decide it for us,” he said.

Natale also mentioned ASCE’s new partnership with Engineers Without Boarders–USA (see page 9) and the establishment of other partnerships. He credited ASCE’s excellent financial year to its continuing education program, growing membership base, and successful publications program and announced that the board has decided to renovate asce’s Web site to improve the way it delivers its message to members worldwide.

In conclusion, Natale said, “We have the capabilities. We have the leadership. We have the goals to meet today’s needs for the engineer. We have a great organization and it is made great because of our membership, our leadership, and the staff that make it all happen.”

- Brett Hansen

Engineers from across the country assembled on November 1 to participate in a workshop sponsored by ASCE’s Committee on Critical Infrastructure that was held in conjunction with the annual conference. Entitled “Prepare, Mitigate, Respond, and Recover: Engineers’ Involvement with Local Disasters,” the workshop focused on engineers’ responses to past disasters and underscored the importance of proper preparation and of drawing on the lessons learned from such disasters as those caused by the hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Ivan and by the terrorist attack on the Pentagon.
Using the examples of the Pentagon attack and the levee breaches during Katrina, Paul F. Mlakar, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, a senior scientist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineer Research and Development Center, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the leader of the team that produced The Pentagon Building Performance Report, published by ASCE in January 2003, demonstrated how engineers must design structures in a way that anticipates possible failure. The Pentagon was built of concrete in 1941 and includes a robust floor framing system and columns reinforced with spiraling steel. These structural elements made it possible for the loads to be redistributed once the airplane’s impact destroyed or damaged the columns on the first floor, thus enabling building occupants to evacuate the upper floors before the collapse, according to Mlakar. “All in all, it could have been a lot worse than it was,” he said. In contrast, there were four cases in which the levees surrounding New Orleans were breached before their design capacity was exceeded, he said. “We design against failure. We also need to design for failure,” Mlakar said.

Tim Haag, the director of utility services and planning for the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority (ECUA), in Pensacola, Florida, together with Andy Moore, P.E., a project manager for CH2M HILL’s Water Business Group, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, used the lessons learned from the Ivan restoration program in Pensacola, Florida, to illustrate the benefits of predisaster planning and mitigation measures. In preparing for the onslaught of Ivan, the ECUA developed a plan that outlined five operating conditions corresponding to different phases of the storm. Haag explained that before the hurricane came through, his employees knew what they were supposed to be doing and where they were supposed to go immediately after the storm. “Assigning the employees tasks immediately following a storm [was] the first step in recovery,” Haag said. In the wake of Ivan, the ECUA’s insurance firm recommended that a third-party consultant be engaged to help document the costs of recovery. “Having a consultant come in and provide assistance in pulling that stuff together is a major godsend to your staff. They can focus on getting your utility system back in operation,” Haag explained. He counseled the workshop participants to consider mutual aid agreements and predisaster contracts, which, he stressed, save time, clarify responsibilities and expectations, and facilitate the reimbursement process.
Along the area’s barrier islands, the storm surge covered such critical water utility elements as meters and fire hydrants with several feet of sediment, but the ECUA had previously mapped these elements using the Global Positioning System and so was able to locate them. On the mainland, the ECUA’s preparation enabled it to restore electricity to disabled facilities within a week, and ECUA crews repaired more than 1,300 water line breaks within nine days. They also repaired 700 sewer line breaks in the first week after the storm.

Moore discussed the benefits of planning for cost recovery: “Disasters are going to occur, and depending on your role, whether you are the owner or the consultant, you or your clients are going to sustain losses. Chances are that you or your client are going to rebuild. The question is, where is the money going to come from?” To expedite cost recovery, Moore suggested that engineers initiate a program that includes developing an inventory of assets, determining sources of reimbursement, and training those involved. He also said that engineers should organize a project team and pair individuals with utilities and clients, prepare a schedule that effectively coordinates activities, and develop a method for managing data and logistics. After the event has occurred, administrators should form strike teams comprising engineers, construction managers, and architects to assess the damage, document the basis for estimates, and ensure that the asset inventory matches the insurance policy’s classifications, Moore explained.

Another aspect of disaster preparedness discussed during the workshop was homeland security. According to a document prepared by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “DHS recognizes that its core mission to secure America can be accomplished only in partnership with the businesses that own these assets and with the state governments and local communities within which these assets are located.” To facilitate this process, protective security advisers (PSAs) have been hired by the DHS to advise local jurisdictions on how to classify and protect their most important assets, according to the document. O.T. “Ollie” Gagnon, a PSA for the DHS’s central Florida district, discussed his work and described the resources that he can provide. He explained that the PSAs work with public and private entities to define security vulnerabilities in their infrastructure and to compile and verify information for the DHS. They also act as liaisons to federal officials to ensure that vital infrastructure is protected and, if necessary, restored in the event of a catastrophe.

Returning to the effects of Katrina, Deborah Keller, P.E., M.ASCE, the director of port development for the Port of New Orleans, described the challenges that were faced at the port during and after the hurricane and the lessons she learned from the experience. Her first task was to reopen navigation along the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal. (Nine bridges along the canal sustained damage from debris or were otherwise incapacitated.) The first 30 days after the hurricane were spent locating all of the port’s employees; acquiring permits so that employees could enter the secured areas of the city; procuring food, shelter, salaries, and medical services for the employees; acquiring diesel fuel for generators; resolving cellular communication problems; and issuing press releases so that the world would know the port was continuing to operate.

Even though all of these issues were resolved by a dedicated management team, Keller explained that the port did not have a recovery plan in place. “The Port of New Orleans was excellent at preparing for storms. We did mock hurricane drills every year and we had a very nice plan and we had meetings, and I don’t think that anyone could have done hurricane preparation better than [we did]. However, there was never the time, never the interest, [and] never the commitment of the money or the resources to prepare for recovery,” she said. She emphasized that preparation for a worst-case scenario must include the formulation of a long-term recovery plan.

Another important lesson, according to Keller, was that “the first responders save lives and secure the situation . . . but in my opinion, the long-term recovery really should be in the hands of the civil engineers because that is what we do.” Long-term tasks here include coordinating executive staff, requesting assistance from various levels of government, engaging engineering consultants and contractors to carry out preliminary damage assessments of the port facilities, coordinating emergency repairs to bridges, and managing the competing demands of rail and water transport.

Raja Kadiyala, the chief technology officer for CH2M HILL’s Management and Information Solutions Group, discussed the importance of integrating collaboration and communication technologies when preparing for, responding to, and recovering from a disaster. During the recovery efforts after Katrina and Rita, Kadiyala provided technical support to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and to various state agencies. He described several new technologies that were used to determine the best locations for FEMA trailers. “We ended up giving [the site inspectors] a simple [personal digital assistant] out there in the field, a data collection unit that can synchronize information through a cell phone,” he said. To meet the rapidly changing technical needs that arose during the recovery process, Kadiyala and his team designed the system to automatically update the personal digital assistants, even if the devices were in the field.

Kadiyala realized the engineers attending the workshop were not information technology (IT) people and would not be implementing these types of collaborative systems. Nevertheless, he wanted to describe the technologies so that the audience would know they existed and could then ask their own IT people about them. Other technologies that Kadiyala discussed included the use of Google Earth to create “mashups”—Web applications that combine content from more than one source into a single interface—and the use of high-definition television signals or WiFi to create accurate positioning systems.

Eva Lerner-Lam, M.ASCE, the president of Palisades Consulting Group, Inc., of Tenafly, New Jersey, and Beijing, concluded the workshop by briefly discussing how China was addressing its disaster management needs. She said that the country’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, which has primary responsibility for responses to natural and man-made disasters, is now creating a commercial and industrial base for emergency assistance services and products. Its primary initiatives include helicopter evacuation services, coal mine safety and rescue operations, freight logistics management, emergency management training, and the development of a nationwide 911 system. The commercial and industrial response efforts of the ministry will be the province of the China Emergency Assistance Investment Co., Ltd., which is owned by the ministry.

On October 31, in one of several activities in Orlando, Florida, preceding ASCE’s annual conference, ASCE and Engineers Without Borders–USA (EWB-USA) formalized an affiliation agreement that establishes a partnership between the two organizations. The partnership will enable ASCE and EWB-USA to better realize their goals of educating students, drawing on the expertise and humanitarianism of engineering professionals, and providing an engineering framework for sustainable development in poorer countries through training and the implementation of technology.

“EWB-USA’s very existence makes it clear that engineers are committed to using their knowledge and experience to help solve the biggest problems facing our world today,” noted Cathy Leslie, P.E., M.ASCE, the executive director of EWB-USA and the civil engineering manager for the Longmont, Colorado, office of the engineering consulting firm Tetra Tech RMC, in a press release. “Formalizing our relationship with ASCE provides us tremendous support and exposure while serving as a model for partnerships with other professional organizations.” Leslie and Patrick J. Natale, P.E., F.ASCE, the Society’s executive director, signed the agreement at the conclusion of a meeting of ASCE’s Board of Direction.

Even though ASCE has been a sponsor of EWB-USA in the past, the new partnership will include $500,000 worth of financial support from ASCE as well as additional ASCE representation on EWB-USA’s governing board, which provides strategic direction, oversees the work of the executive director, and assists with fund-raising. The two representatives that ASCE will have on that board will be nominated by David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE, the Society’s new president. These appointees will be announced before EWB-USA’s next board meeting, which is to be held in March 2008.

EWB-USA’s mission, as defined on its Web site, is “to partner with developing communities to improve their quality of life through the implementation of environmentally sustainable, equitable, and economical engineering projects. In the process of working to advance developing communities, EWB-USA promotes the development of globally aware and internationally responsible engineers, students, and professionals.” Mongan said in a press release that EWB-USA’s goals coincide with ASCE’s goal of making civil engineers and engineering students more aware of the social, economic, environmental, and cultural ramifications of engineering. “Both ASCE and EWB-USA support the common goals of making the world a better place and improving the engineering profession. It is a natural fit for our two organizations to work together to further each other’s vision and activities to enhance the welfare of humanity,” said Mongan.

According to the agreement, ASCE is to provide services to EWB-USA as charitable contributions, to encourage its members to become involved in EWB-USA endeavors, to ensure that its members and groups are aware of EWB-USA’s activities, to name a person who will facilitate communication between the two organizations, to ensure that those who volunteer their services also adhere to EWB-USA’s procedures, to provide collaborative tools, and to record the results of projects for future use. For its part, EWB-USA agrees to provide connections to countries or communities with particular project needs, to invite participation in existing and pending projects, to ensure that participants are made aware of its process for managing and completing projects, to name a person who will facilitate communication between the two organizations, to link individuals and groups from ASCE to existing EWB-USA chapters and projects, and to include ASCE members and groups in its project teams.

The partnership also provides significant benefits to ASCE members, including discounts on EWB-USA membership. The discount on professional membership, which includes a chapter affiliation, will range from $40 to $100. For what is called sustaining membership, the discount will be $35.

EWB-USA was founded five years ago by Bernard Amadei, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, who was awarded the Hoover Medal at the business meeting held in conjunction with the annual conference (see page 9). Several years ago, when serving on ASCE’s International Activities Committee, Amadei brought EWB-USA’s mission to the Society’s attention. In 2001 Lawrence H. Roth, P.E., G.E., F.ASCE, the Society’s deputy executive director, was invited by Amadei to become involved in the organization. Roth eventually joined the governing board, and ASCE formed a task committee to investigate ways in which the two groups could work together. The committee was headed by Randall Stanton Over, P.E., F.ASCE, an engineer with the Ohio Department of Transportation and a former director and vice president of ASCE, and D. Michael Mucha, P.E., M.ASCE, the director of public works for the City of Olympia, Washington. “I would describe our relationship as a true partnership but not a partnership in the legal sense. As organizations, we have committed to work together for the betterment and health of both organizations . . . and we want other organizations to join us,” Roth stated in an e-mail.

Mongan sees EWB-USA as providing ASCE with an opportunity to accomplish several of the goals that he hopes to achieve during his term as the Society’s president. These include promoting diversity, improving outreach activities that will involve students at all precollege grade levels, and encouraging globalization. Therefore he formally proposed the partnership as part of his presidential agenda.

- Brett Hansen

On November 1, as part of the annual conference’s CEO Forum, six members of ASCE discussed what recent infrastructure tragedies have taught civil engineers about ethics, professionalism, leadership, and public safety. In contrast to earlier practice, this year’s ceo Forum was divided into two segments. The first saw presentations by three panelists: David E. Daniel, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, the president of the University of Texas at Dallas and the chair of ASCE’s Hurricane Katrina External Review Panel (ERP); George W. Black, Jr., P.E., M.ASCE, a senior civil engineer and national resource specialist for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB); and Gerald E. Galloway, Jr., Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, Hon.M.ASCE, a professor of engineering at the University of Maryland. In the second segment, which involved the audience, those three were joined by Benedict R. Schwegler, Jr., Ph.D., M.ASCE, a vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development, Inc., of Glendale, California, and the firm’s chief scientist; Jane Chmielenski, the president and chief operating officer of DMJM Harris, of New York City; and ASCE’s new president, David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE, who is the president of Whitney, Bailey, Cox & Magnani, LLC, headquartered in Baltimore. The six panelists answered questions from the audience on topics that included engineering ethics, education, sustainable development, and regaining the public’s trust in the wake of recent infrastructure catastrophes.

Daniel discussed the findings of the ERP and stated his own opinions concerning the causes of the failure of the New Orleans levee system. “No amount of good engineering is going to compensate for a fundamentally flawed management structure,” he said. He also enumerated several lessons that the engineering community can learn from the Katrina tragedy. He contended that the levees should have been treated as critical life support structures and that “we can imagine many other structures that are in fact critical to human life and safety.” He also maintained that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should have accounted for—or been permitted by Congress to account for—overtopping. Moreover, the gradual sinking of New Orleans should have been allowed for in the design of the levees. Daniel also suggested that an independent peer review would have benefited the levee system, as, indeed, it would benefit any vital structure project. He recommended that a broad systems approach that addresses other issues “in a smart and integrated way” be followed and that “risk-based methodologies should be a key component for these types of structures.”

Black presented the NTSB’s findings regarding the tragic ceiling collapse that occurred in one of the tunnels built as part of Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, or “Big Dig.” He began his presentation by commending ASCE for being “one of the most responsive organizations to [the NTSB’s] recommendations” and then summarized the investigation. He said that the collapse, which killed one person, occurred because adhesive anchor bolts had been installed with the wrong epoxy. The anchors experienced creep, and several failed, causing the ceiling to collapse. (See “Investigators Fault Epoxy ‘Creep’ in Big Dig Collapse,” Civil Engineering, September 2007, pages 18–21.) The investigation concluded that there was an “insufficient understanding among the designers and builders of the nature of the adhesive anchoring system, a lack of standards for testing these anchoring systems, and inadequate regulatory requirements for tunnel inspections,” he said.

“We in this room are the custodians of the built environment,” declared Galloway at the beginning of his presentation. “I would like to talk about the role of education in preparing the civil engineering professional of tomorrow,” he said. Galloway briefly discussed ASCE’s vision for civil engineering in 2025 as well as its body of knowledge, which describes “the knowledge, skills, and attitudes . . . necessary to enter into the practice of civil engineering at the professional level,” he said. The body of knowledge cannot be imparted in four years of higher education, especially when the number of university credit hours needed to earn a bachelor’s degree has steadily declined, he asserted. Nevertheless, young engineers must acquire the body of knowledge by both formal and informal educational means so that they will have the right tools to meet the future’s complex professional challenges. Galloway also emphasized professional development throughout one’s engineering career. He said that ASCE is providing opportunities to highlight professional development though specialty certifications. “We want [you] to have education from the day you leave high school to the day you die because you are always a civil engineer,” he said.

At the conclusion of his presentation, Galloway addressed himself to senior engineers. He said that the job of every senior engineer is to mentor young engineers as they gain their experience before obtaining licensure. “But it doesn’t stop there,” he said. “We’ve got to work together to advance the way our youngsters grow up, gain their experience, and operate. We nurture them by the way we act.”

In response to a question from the audience in the forum’s second segment about how engineers could make their knowledge known to the media, public officials, owners, and the public, Mongan said, “I think engineers have an ethical responsibility to speak out.” He said that engineers must ask themselves if an ethical issue affects public safety and suggested that they seek counsel from trusted peers when needed. If an ethical issue arises in an office environment, the employee must bring the issue to the attention of his or her employer. “As a last resort,” he asserted, “you may have to go to the public media to raise the issue if it is that critical.”

In response to a question about the marketplace, Chmielenski said that she saw a shortage of civil engineers in the United States. She said that the profession is not necessarily having difficulty recruiting prospective engineers. The problem, she maintained, is retaining them. Mongan also responded here, emphasizing that although enrollments and the number of engineering graduates are increasing, the demand for engineers is not being satisfied.

One audience member asked the panel how an engineer could foster a corporate culture of ethics and safety within his or her organization. Mongan replied by saying that a leader must lead by example. Schwegler agreed, adding, “I would say that, hands down, the number one factor is leading by example. If the top executive does not uphold those standards, you have absolutely no chance of getting it to the rest of the organization.”

In response to a question regarding the inclusion of the term “sustainable development” in canon 1 of ASCE’s Code of Ethics, Mongan said that through their designs and materials, civil engineers have many opportunities to “create more sustainable solutions.” Daniel asserted that sustainable development with respect to the levees around New Orleans would include a provision that the levees be periodically raised to compensate for the gradual sinking of New Orleans as well as the gradual increase in the severity of such events as hurricanes. “To me a design that is not respectful of sustainability is a design that completely ignores the inevitability of needing to raise the levees.”

Black, in response to a question about how engineers could regain public trust, said, “It is a very difficult thing to gain the trust of local government officials,” because four-year terms in office are not sufficient for engineers to establish solid reputations with politicians. Daniel cited the reputation of the Corps and stressed how much he admired that body for what it did in response to the investigation. “They opened their books to us. They opened everything to us knowing that we would say what we thought. I thought that was an act of courage on their part,” he said. Using the Corps as an example, he said that engineers should not deny that they have made mistakes in the past. Instead, they should focus on the future with an attitude of collaboration.

The forum was moderated by Henry J. Hatch, P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, a retired army general and a former chief of engineers of the Corps of Engineers.

- Brett Hansen

Be an Advocate for Important Public Policy Measures

A top priority for ASCE is safeguarding the health and safety of the public by supporting public policies that will strengthen and renew our failing infrastructure. If we are to fulfill that mission, we must take part in the legislative process through a variety of forums. We ASCE members can make ourselves visible at all levels, from the town hall meetings of New England to the halls of the U.S. Congress. Our Society provides many opportunities for all members to engage in the public policy debate.

Our government affairs activities figure prominently in ASCE’s strategic initiative on infrastructure. Our message is clear: After years of deferred infrastructure investment and maintenance and the profession’s limited effectiveness in making the case for infrastructure to public officials, public safety has been placed at risk and our nation’s economic growth and competitiveness have been hindered. In adopting this strategic initiative ASCE’s Board of Direction has defined a number of short- and long-term outcomes. These include communicating more effectively with policy makers and the public; making the health, safety, and welfare of the public salient priorities; and defining funding requirements and strategies sufficient to keep infrastructure systems safe and properly maintained.

The collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge this past summer in Minneapolis and other recent natural and man-made disasters have given infrastructure issues a much higher profile. Tragically, it takes a disaster to focus public and political attention on the condition of our nation’s infrastructure. ASCE’s 2005 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure has loomed large in the public discussions and media coverage in the aftermath of the bridge disaster.

After the catastrophe, ASCE reintroduced its infrastructure action plan (formally entitled Raising the Grades: Small Steps for Big Improvements in America’s Failing Infrastructure) to the 110th Congress. (See “Members Deliver Action Plan to 110th Congress, ASCE News, April 2007.) The four-week campaign to “raise the grades” focused on a different area each week and included grassroots and media components. Each Monday in September, members of Congress received background material from ASCE on a particular aspect of the nation’s infrastructure, including bridges, roads, drinking water, wastewater, and dams. They also received e-mails from participants in ASCE’s Key Contact Program asking them to support items included in the action plan. To amplify our message on Capitol Hill, ASCE ran radio and print ads in the Washington, D.C., area emphasizing the need to address the infrastructure crisis.

ASCE and our key contacts have been instrumental in developing and advancing a number of federal legislative initiatives, including the National Infrastructure Improvement Act, the Water Resources Development Act, the Dam Rehabilitation and Repair Act, and the National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program. On most of these efforts ASCE works in coalitions with other professional and trade organizations, among them the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the Associated General Contractors of America, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Our government affairs effort is based in our Washington office, which is located on Constitution Avenue directly across the street from the U.S. Capitol, but the Society’s success in this arena depends on assistance from our sections and branches. These local bodies can help to focus the attention of politicians and the public on infrastructure needs. In a number of states, among them New Jersey, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Delaware, our sections and branches have issued their own infrastructure “report cards.” ASCE has a state legislative tracking process that singles out legislative initiatives that have a bearing on infrastructure or our profession. In presentations at section and branch meetings, ASCE staff members outline ways of developing effective relationships with legislators and playing an active role in the formulation of public policy.

In an effort to better focus and better deploy our government relations resources, the Board of Direction, at its recent meeting in Orlando, Florida, approved a list of national and state priorities assembled by key contacts and our Committee on Government Affairs. The six priorities for the second session of the 110th Congress, which begins in January, will be clean water, drinking water, and wastewater; math and science education; natural hazards mitigation and infrastructure security; qualifications-based selection for engineering services; “smart” growth and sustainable development; and transportation infrastructure. The Committee on Government Affairs also set new priorities for state government relations. These include infrastructure issues; licensing; math and science education at all precollege grade levels; the way in which professional services are to be procured; smart growth; and transportation infrastructure.

ASCE needs the help of every member of the Society if we are to accomplish our priorities and improve the condition and resilience of our infrastructure. One of the most important ways you can take part in public policy is by becoming a key contact. Visit www.asce.org/keycontacts to sign up online. As a key contact, you will be informed when particular steps are needed to support civil engineering issues at the federal or state level. You will also receive weekly updates on both national and state issues. From www.asce.org/advocacy.html you can send a message to your federal and state elected officials with just six mouse clicks and encourage them to support infrastructure issues. You can also view the latest information on public policy topics to stay current on the issues.

For those interested in a hands-on experience, ASCE hosts the Leadership Training in Government Relations Program every spring in Washington, D.C. This intensive two-day program provides participants with an inside look at the political process beginning with briefings on the civil engineering issues being considered by Congress. Participants then head to Capitol Hill to discuss the issues with their representatives and senators. Visit our Web site, www.asce.org, and click on “Government Relations” for details on how to participate in the 2008 program, which will be held March 5–6.

ASCE also offers public relations training for civil engineers. Our workshops teach civil engineers how to incorporate public relations into both their ASCE and their professional activities. During this highly interactive one-day workshop, ASCE’s communications department shares techniques for more effective communication, including media relations and outreach, through presentations and hands-on public relations activities. Use is also made of the reference guide PR Toolkit. To learn more about the workshops, visit www.asce.org and click on “Inside ASCE” and then on “Sections/Branches.”

As civil engineers in our states and local communities, we must all speak out, write letters to the editor, and visit our elected officials to encourage them to adequately address infrastructure needs at the state and local levels. We must also make our voice heard on issues that have a bearing on the health, safety, and welfare of the public. We can do this in our everyday lives by being part of community associations, our PTAs, and our local scout groups. Our personal commitment to improving our communities will serve to buttress our efforts to improve our infrastructure as well. ASCE is here to help us all take an active role in public policy at every level.

—David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE

Written codes of ethics, both as models for professional conduct and as measuring tools for regulatory compliance, have become such a central part of civil engineering practice that it may be difficult to imagine a time when the civil engineering community considered such codes to be unnecessary, if not an outright affront to professional practitioners. Yet this was the belief held by many civil engineers in the late 19th century, and this view was reflected in ASCE’s policies on professional ethics for the first half century of its existence.

While the concept of professional ethics may be traced back as far as ancient Greece, it was not until the 1800s that professional associations began codifying ethical standards. In 1803, after a dispute in Britain between physicians and administrators that crippled a Manchester hospital swamped with typhoid patients, the physician Thomas Percival proposed the first written code of medical ethics. Several professional associations in the United States soon followed with written codes of their own. In 1847 the American Medical Association adopted a code of conduct for its members based on Percival’s code, and in 1887 the Alabama State Bar Association became the first association of lawyers to draft a code of professional ethics.

Meanwhile the civil engineering profession also was weighing the establishment of written ethical standards. The first formal proposal of an ethics policy was brought before ASCE’s Board of Direction in 1877 by the Society’s secretary, Gabriel Leverich. Written as a board resolution, this policy read as follows:

Whereas: A Civil Engineer, in the practice of his profession, is sometimes restrained or overruled by his employers, in matters involving serious risk to property and life which he only, as the engineer, should determine; whence he must either discharge his duties in a manner contrary to his best judgment or resign his position;
Resolved: That in the opinion . . . of the American Society of Civil Engineers . . . it is unprofessional for a civil engineer to continue the discharge of his duties when so restrained or overruled.

But this simple resolution met with resistance from other members of the board. It was the prevailing view among the Society’s leadership at the time that professional conduct was a matter of personal honor. Because it believed that no respectable civil engineer would ever allow business or personal considerations to override his concern for the public welfare, the board saw this resolution as at best unneeded and at worst an affront to the professional integrity of the members. The ethics resolution was rejected, and the board instead adopted a resolution stating that it was “inexpedient for this Society to instruct its members as to their duties in private professional
matters.”

In the 30 years that followed that resolution, the idea of a professional code for civil engineers was raised only sporadically in journal articles and membership meetings. But in 1913, reflecting the growing view that an ethics code for civil engineers was not only desirable but also necessary if the profession was to maintain its status in relation to such other professions as medicine and law, the board appointed a committee to reconsider the establishment of ethical standards and to prepare a code for review.

That committee’s recommendations were approved by the board in June 1914, and in September of that year the membership approved the first edition of ASCE’s Code of Ethics, which read as follows:

It shall be considered unprofessional and inconsistent with honorable and dignified bearing for any member of the American Society of Civil Engineers:
1.   To act for his clients in professional matters otherwise than as a faithful agent or trustee, or to accept any remuneration other than his stated charges for services rendered his clients.
2.   To attempt to injure falsely or maliciously, directly or indirectly, the professional reputation, prospects, or business, of another Engineer.
3.   To attempt to supplant another Engineer after definite steps have been taken toward his employment.
4.   To compete with another Engineer for employment on the basis of professional charges, by reducing his usual charges and in this manner attempting to underbid after being informed of the charges named by another.
5.   To review the work of another Engineer for the same client, except with the knowledge or consent of such Engineer, or unless the connection of such Engineer with the work has been terminated.
6.   To advertise in self-laudatory language, or in any other manner derogatory to the dignity of the Profession.

Although the 1914 code was an important step for ASCE in communicating the importance of high ethical standards, it is interesting to note that the first code continued to embody the view that a civil engineer’s obligation to safeguard the welfare of the public was best left to personal honor rather than to regulation. The canons of that first code deal only with an engineer’s interactions with other engineers and with clients and make no mention of an engineer’s duty to the public. It would not be until 1976 that the board adopted an express statement of the engineer’s fundamental ethical duty to “hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.”

It is also interesting to note that, of the original six canons, only the first two remain in a substantially similar form in ASCE’s current code. Canons 3 and 4 of the original code were removed in the 1970s to comply with a U.S. Department of Justice decree stating that codes of ethics that prohibited price competition were in violation of federal antitrust law. (See this column in the February and March 2007 issues for additional information.) Similarly, canon 6 was removed in the 1990s after the federal government advised that broad restrictions on advertising served to limit price competition and therefore also were an unlawful restraint of trade. Canon 5 was dropped from the code in a 1980 revision.

Members who have an ethics question or would like to file a complaint with the Committee on Professional Conduct may call ASCE’s hotline at (703) 295-6061 or (800) 548-ASCE (2723), extension 6061. The attorneys staffing this line can provide advice on how to handle an ethics issue or file a complaint. Please note that individual facts and circumstances vary from case to case and that the general summary information contained in these case studies is not to be construed as a precedent binding upon the Society.

November 1–3, Orlando, Florida  Conference Highlights

Fellows Elected

The following members were elected fellows of the Society in recent months. ASCE fellows are legally registered professional engineers or land surveyors who have made significant technical or professional contributions and have demonstrated notable achievement in responsible charge of engineering activity for at least 10 years following election to the ASCE grade of member. Fellows occupy the Society’s second-highest membership grade, exceeded only by distinguished members.

Steven Cramer, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is the associate dean of academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where except for a sabbatical year spent as a visiting scientist at Weyerhaeuser he has taught since 1984. A licensed professional engineer in Wisconsin, Cramer received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and graduate degrees from Colorado State University. He has been the recipient of numerous awards for teaching excellence and has mentored dozens of research students in the area of wood structural design. His own research has focused on the structural use of lumber, particularly such prefabricated wood components as trusses, and on in-service condition and fire. Cramer has directed research that has involved graduate students and has twice been recognized with the Forest Products Society’s Markwardt Wood Engineering Award. His research on structural load sharing and truss manufacturing quality has been codified in design specifications for wood trusses with metal plate connections. Cramer has also authored three patents relating to predictions of warp in lumber through his work with Weyerhaeuser. For the past decade he has been the faculty adviser for the ASCE student chapter at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and has advised the team that represents the school in the national steel bridge competition organized by ASCE and the American Institute of Steel Construction. He has also coached the team that has won five championships in the ASCE National Concrete Canoe Competition. Cramer has been active in developing ASCE 16 (Standard for Load and Resistance Factor Design [LRFD] for Engineered Wood Construction), has served on the Structural Engineering Institute’s Design of Engineered Wood Construction Standards Committee and Wood Education Committee, and has been an editor of ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering.

Michael F. Houlihan, P.E., DEE, F.ASCE, is a principal engineer with Geosyntec Consultants and is the firm’s geoenvironmental engineering practice leader. He has more than 20 years of experience in geotechnical engineering, solid waste facility permitting and design, construction engineering, and forensic analysis. Houlihan established Geosyntec’s office in the Washington, D.C., area in 1991 and is now its manager, overseeing a staff of more than 40. He has taken a leadership role in the evaluation and application of innovative waste management technologies, including project work and committee work related to landfill bioreactor and alternative cover technologies, waste containment system research and design, and the long-term management and reuse of landfills. His committee assignments on bioreactors and alternative landfill covers have included work with the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council, an ASCE committee concerned with municipal solid waste, and a bioreactor consortium within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. His recent focus has been on the redevelopment of landfill sites and on determining the long-term needs of sites that have been used as landfills. This latter included a five-year program of collaboration with regulators, planners, developers, and industry representatives to devise an analytical approach for assessing the long-term needs of municipal waste landfills, work that was published in 2006 by the Environmental Research and Education Foundation. His other technical publications have included seminal contributions on the interaction between soils and geosynthetics, contributions to engineering practice manuals and textbooks, and research related to bioreactor landfills. Certified as an environmental engineer by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers, he is involved with ASCE local geotechnical chapters and also serves as a reviewer for ASCE journals. Within his community he coaches youth baseball and softball teams and lectures at local schools. He has also served as a panelist at regional and national sustainability forums.

Charng Hsein Juang, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is a professor in the civil engineering department at Clemson University. Licensed as a professional engineer in South Carolina, he holds a doctorate in civil engineering from Purdue University. Juang is known internationally for his innovations and contributions concerning the application of reliability methods, fuzzy and neural methods, and probabilistic methods in the field of geotechnical engineering. His work on liquefaction, brace excavation, slope stability, and soil and rock properties is widely cited, and he has been an invited speaker at various international institutions and geotechnical conferences. Juang has served on technical committees within ASCE’s Geo-Institute and is a member of the editorial board of the Society’s Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. He has more than 100 refereed papers to his credit and has taught and mentored hundreds of students during his 25 years of teaching. He has also mentored students and younger faculty members through collaboration in research, particularly in the areas of geomechanics and earthquake engineering, that has been funded by such agencies as the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Geological Survey. He personally developed many of the courses he has taught, and his accomplishments as a teacher have been recognized with a number of awards. In 2001 Juang received the T.K. Hsieh Award from the United Kingdom’s Institution of Civil Engineers for a paper he wrote on reliability design.

Shu-Guang Li, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan State University. Li holds a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his teaching and research specializations in the field of hydrology and water resources include integrating scientific hydrology, applied mathematics, computational innovations, new data sources, and information technologies to advance the ability of the hydrological community to model complex groundwater systems. His research has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the past 10 years. Li has been the principal investigator or one of the principal investigators on 23 research grants totaling nearly $5 million, including 6 NSF grants totaling $2 million. His extensive research has led to the development of a system called Interactive Ground Water (IGW), a combined research and education software environment for unified deterministic and stochastic groundwater modeling. IGW makes full use of current computer processing power and for the first time makes possible groundwater modeling, visualization, analysis, and presentation. Li has established a state-of-the-art laboratory at Michigan State for simultaneous computing and multiscale modeling. He and his research team have also created a high-resolution visualization library for stochastic subsurface hydrology. This digital library uses a systematic collection of interactive visualizations to illustrate difficult groundwater concepts, processes, theories, solution techniques, and applications. Li is the author or coauthor of 61 technical publications and has made 108 technical presentations. He is an associate editor of ASCE’s Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, the National Ground Water Association’s Journal of Ground Water, and the journal Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment.

Thomas J. McGean, P.E., F.ASCE, is a systems engineer in private practice with more than 30 years of experience in planning and implementing innovative transit systems. A founding partner of Lea + Elliott, he served as executive vice president of N.D. Lea & Associates and as director of technology for Parsons Transportation Group and received three patents for inventions while working as a researcher at Bell Telephone Laboratories. McGean served as the principal investigator for a National Research Council (NRC) project that developed a consensus process for rail transit standards in the United States. He has overseen the efforts of 19 working groups and more than 300 professionals developing and publishing these standards, and in recognition of his expertise he was appointed to a standards committee set up by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. McGean has also served on an ASCE committee concerned with lifeline standards and is a former trustee of the Transit Standards Consortium. He serves as chair of the Transportation and Development Institute’s Automated People Movers Standards Committee, which has developed the first internationally recognized consensus standards in this area. He also serves on an NRC panel to institute a consensus standard process for the bus industry and a panel to develop structural requirements and crashworthiness requirements for light-rail vehicles. McGean has taught graduate transportation courses at George Washington University and Howard University and is the author of the graduate text Urban Transportation Technology. A licensed professional engineer in Florida and Virginia, he holds a master’s degree from the California Institute of Technology.
 
Mahmood H. Nachabe, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is an associate professor at the University of South Florida and the coordinator of the civil and environmental engineering department’s graduate program. A licensed professional engineer in Colorado and Florida, he holds graduate degrees in civil engineering from Auburn University and Colorado State University. Before joining the University of South Florida he was a hydrologic engineer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. Nachabe specializes in hydrologic sciences and engineering, in particular soil hydrology, groundwater recharge, and evapotranspiration. He has been a guest lecturer at the Asian Institute of Technology, in Krung Thep (Bangkok), Thailand, and at the University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. He has more than 50 refereed papers and presentations to his credit, and his research has received more than $1 million in support from federal, state, and local agencies. The recipient of a faculty fellowship from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a Fulbright fellowship, and several teaching awards, he was honored with the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award by the University of South Florida for his contributions in reorganizing the undergraduate curriculum in water resources and environmental engineering. Nachabe is also an adviser to the ASCE student chapter at the University of South Florida and has received two awards for his guidance. A contributing author to ASCE journals as well as a reviewer, he serves on the Environmental and Water Resources Institute’s Wetland Hydrology Committee and Gross Solids Committee. Nachabe organized a new track on research frontiers in environmental and water resources engineering and science for the 2007 World Environmental and Water Resources Congress, and it was so successful that it will be included in the 2008 congress as well. In 2006 he served on a committee that convened an international forum in the United Arab Emirates that explored ways of integrating community service into teaching and research.

Chandra S. Pathak, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, F.ASCE, is a senior engineer for the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) and an adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University. He is a licensed professional engineer in Florida and Maryland and holds graduate degrees from the Asian Institute of Technology, in Krung Thep (Bangkok), Thailand, and Oklahoma State University. Pathak has 28 years of experience in water resources and environmental engineering, work that has encompassed surface water and groundwater hydrology and hydraulics; storm-water management; wetlands; water quality; geographic information systems; and hydrology, hydraulic, and water quality computer models. Pathak spearheaded the development of the SFWMD’s ArcHydro-compatible NEXRAD (a network of 158 high-resolution Doppler radars operated by the National Weather Service) rainfall data acquisition system and database, which support the modeling, reporting, and operation functions of the district’s flood control and water supply system. He has also led state-of-the-art optimization work for rain gauge, water level, and flow monitoring networks and has contributed to efforts to optimize the water quality monitoring network by using advanced geospatial statistics to find opportunities for reducing rain gauge density and concurrently improving the reliability of the rain gauge data used in radar rainfall data adjustments. Pathak recently served as the primary technical expert for a large-scale project to develop synthetic radar rainfall data equivalent to the rainfall duration data used in conjunction with hydrologic and hydraulic models for facility design and analysis. A diplomate of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers, Pathak was appointed an associate editor of ASCE’s Journal of Hydrologic Engineering in 2006 and has several technical papers to his credit. He is also active within the Environmental and Water Resources Institute, serving as a member of the Wetland Hydrology Committee and as track chair for NEXRAD applications and data analysis for both the 2007 and the 2008 World Environmental and Water Resources Congress. Moreover, he is the general conference chair for a congress scheduled for 2010 that will offer an international perspective on the current and future state of water resource systems.

Arvind B. Shah, F.ASCE, received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in India from Gujarat University and a master’s degree, also in civil engineering, from the University of Michigan. He is the chairman and managing director of Stresscrete India Limited, a design/build company in India specializing in construction with precast, prestressed concrete. In his 45-year career he has designed and realized a number of important structures, including bridges, overpasses, jetties, and residential, commercial, and industrial buildings using precast, prestressed concrete. In many cases the structures were firsts for India. Shah’s career began with the South Dakota Department of Transportation, where he designed a number of roller-compacted concrete and steel highway bridges. Upon returning to India, he worked as a project engineer constructing public housing using precast, prestressed concrete before starting his own design/build firm. Shah has delivered lectures at a variety of technical symposia and has a number of technical papers to his credit. He has also served on a number of technical committees in India, one dealing with small-span precast-concrete bridges and another with the design and construction of precast, pretensioned bridge girders. Before returning to India, Shah was made an honorary citizen of South Dakota. A life member of ASCE and a member of the Structural Engineering Institute, Shah was a charter member and treasurer of an ASCE international group set up in Mumbai (now part of the India Section).

John A. Zoeller, P.E., L.S., F.ASCE, is the president and chief executive officer of the Zoeller Company, a family-owned business in Louisville, Kentucky. He has been with the company since 1984, and before that he served as a staff engineer and then as a senior civil engineer with the Louisville/Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Louisville and is a licensed professional engineer and a licensed surveyor in Kentucky. In his current position he implemented a training program for engineers that has resulted in seminars and publications. He also organized the Zoeller Engineered Products Division, which in 2006 had sales of more than $10 million. After he was appointed president and chief executive officer in 2003, company sales rose from $114 million to $141 million. The Zoeller Company has more than 540 employees in Kentucky, Indiana, and Taiwan. Zoeller has been instrumental in developing several company products. One of them received a patent, and others have garnered awards from the State of Kentucky and the National Society of Professional Engineers. Zoeller has been a member of ASCE for 27 years and is active in Society endeavors on the local level. He has also been the recipient of numerous awards from the Kentucky Society of Professional Engineers. In addition to coaching soccer for 12 years, he has served on the city council of Kingsley, Kentucky.

Fellow applications may be obtained from ASCE’s world headquarters, in Reston, Virginia, by calling (800) 548-2723, extension 6289. From outside the country, the number is (703) 295-6289. The e-mail address is fellows@asce.org. The application may be found on the Web at www.asce.org/pdf/fellowmemapp.pdf. Completed applications may be submitted online at www.asce.org/membership/fellowgrade.cfm (click on “Online ASCE Fellow Application”). Questions concerning fellow guidelines (including guideline waiver inquiries) or the application process may be directed to Erin Santiago, the applications coordinator, at (703) 295-6289 or esantiago@asce.org. Completed applications are reviewed monthly by the Membership Application Review Committee.

The Society’s honors program has as its basic objective the advancement of the engineering profession by noting exceptionally meritorious achievement. ASCE is proud to recognize the recipients of its 2007 honors and awards.

---

Arid Lands Hydraulic Engineering Award
David C. Goodrich, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, receives the Arid Lands Hydraulic Engineering Award for research work that has consistently been of high quality and has helped to shed light on the processes governing precipitation runoff in the arid and semiarid regions of the United States. The Arid Lands Hydraulic Engineering Award is conferred in recognition of original contributions in hydraulics, hydrology, climatology, planning, irrigation, drainage, hydroelectric power development, or navigation that have special relevance to arid or semiarid climates. It also recognizes contributions in the elucidation and development of new technology applicable to river basins. Goodrich has been a leader in research work exploring the hydrologic processes at work in the arid lands of the southwestern United States, and he has been instrumental in interagency efforts to coordinate research and disseminate findings for the benefit of the research community as well as the general public. He has also been an outstanding instructor and mentor of young researchers at the University of Arizona and in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. Goodrich was a key contributor to the 2000 Federal Interagency Hydrologic Modeling Conference, and he represented the Agricultural Research Service at the 2002 and 2006 conferences. 

---

ASCE Presidents’ Award
David E. Daniel, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, is honored with the ASCE Presidents’ Award in recognition of his inspired leadership of the committee set up to investigate the New Orleans levee failures during Hurricane Katrina. Conferred on an ASCE member in commemoration of our nation’s first president, who was a civil engineer and a land surveyor, the ASCE Presidents’ Award recognizes distinguished service rendered to the country. Daniel’s work as chairman of ASCE’s External Review Panel is seen as exemplifying the Society’s goal of advancing and championing the welfare of society. Daniel is the president of the University of Texas at Dallas.

---

ASCE President’s Medal
Robert S. O’Neil, P.E., F.ASCE, is honored with the ASCE President’s Medal for his effective leadership and wise counsel as chairman of the independent panel of experts convened by ASCE at the request of the Commonwealth of Virginia to evaluate a tunnel route for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s passenger rail line (Metrorail) beneath the heavily developed area in northern Virginia known as Tysons Corner. The route through that area is part of the planned extension of Metrorail to Washington Dulles International Airport. The medal recognizes the accomplishments of eminent engineers and their contributions to the profession, the Society, or the public. When Virginia’s secretary of transportation, Pierce R. Homer, asked ASCE to form an independent panel to evaluate the tunnel route, the Society turned to O’Neil to assemble the body and serve as its chair. The panel’s report, which was completed in 60 days and was very well received, reflected extraordinary effort and sound leadership. Its completion demanded not only technical expertise but also an assessment of costs and a knowledge of industry practices. The panel’s work made it possible for ASCE to make its voice heard in realizing an infrastructure project of cardinal importance to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

---

ASCE State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering Award
Satinder K. Brar, Ph.D., S.M.ASCE, Mausam Verma, Ph.D., S.M.ASCE, Rao Y. Surampalli, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE, F.ASCE, Kshipra Misra, Ph.D., Rajeshwar D. Tyagi, Ph.D., M.ASCE, Nathalie Meunier, Ph.D., and Jean-Francois Blais, Ph.D., M.ASCE, are accorded the ASCE State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering Award for their paper “Bioremediation of Hazardous Wastes—A Review,” which appeared in the April 2006 issue of ASCE’s Practice Periodical of Hazardous, Toxic, and Radioactive Waste Management. The State-of-the-Art of Civil Engineering Award is presented to the person, persons, or committee whose written work best summarizes the current level of knowledge in a particular area. The paper honored this year was chosen in part because of the breadth and thoroughness of the survey it presented. The discussion included descriptions of each approach’s advantages and drawbacks.

---

Harland Bartholomew Award
Kara M. Kockelman, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, is this year’s winner of the Harland Bartholomew Award for her numerous planning contributions, including her novel credit-based congestion pricing theory, which has the potential to revolutionize roadway operations by eliminating recurring traffic congestion and allocating scarce roadway space in an equitable fashion. The Bartholomew award is conferred on a Society member who is deemed to have enhanced the role of the civil engineer in urban planning and development. Kockelman’s proposal is simple: congestion-based toll revenues can be used both to modulate peak travel demand and to provide all drivers with a minimum level of toll-free, congestion-free travel. This work is of interest to many researchers and practitioners worldwide, and she and her students have presented and published this work on a widespread basis. They have explored this policy from a variety of perspectives, conducting statewide and local surveys to assess the views of policy makers, experts, key stakeholders, and members of the public. They have also estimated implementation costs, calibrated behavioral models of travel demand, and investigated property valuation in parts of Texas that include the Austin area and the region encompassing Dallas and Fort Worth. Their techniques estimate the benefits and costs of such policies for potential travelers around the region and make explicit the spatial and demographic distinctions that exist. Kockelman’s credit-based congestion pricing research is the latest in a career that has been characterized by important contributions to public policy and planning. By bringing her credit-based congestion pricing theory to bear on important traffic and land use issues, she has significantly enhanced the role of the civil engineer in urban planning and development.

---

Stephen D. Bechtel Pipeline Engineering Award
Howard O. Wilson, P.E., M.ASCE, has been named the winner of the Stephen D. Bechtel Pipeline Engineering Award for his 35 years of dedication and commitment to the pipeline industry as a teacher, mentor, project manager, and supervisor and for the knowledge and technical expertise he has demonstrated in the design and construction of large-diameter pipeline transmission and distribution systems. The Bechtel pipeline award recognizes an ASCE member who through research, planning, design, or construction has advanced the art, science, or technology of pipeline engineering. Wilson is CH2M HILL’s most experienced conveyance technologist, having managed or participated in dozens of major potable water, wastewater, and irrigation pipeline projects. With regard to quality control, he is responsible for all of the firm’s large-diameter pressure pipeline designs. Wilson has extensive experience with pipeline design and construction in urban settings, where such factors as utility conflicts, traffic control, and multiagency coordination loom large. Working with agricultural water users, he has completed pipeline and canal rehabilitation projects for a number of irrigation districts. In his long career, Wilson has demonstrated expertise in a wide variety of areas, including gravity and pressure water systems, hydraulic and surge evaluations, right-of-way concerns, operation and maintenance issues, corrosion control, constructability challenges, environmental restrictions, regulatory agency requirements, and field surveys.

---

Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Energy Award
John E. Edinger,  Ph.D., M.ASCE, is honored with the Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Energy Award in recognition of career contributions to the energy industry, contributions that have come in academia, engineering practice, and professional service. In particular, Edinger has been responsible for important advances in elucidating water body dynamics. The Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Energy Award recognizes contributions to the energy field by an ASCE member through research, planning, design, or construction. Edinger’s research into limnology and the thermal aspects of water body dynamics as a practitioner is widely respected. He was the primary developer of ce-qual-w2, a three-dimensional hydrodynamic water quality model used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and of a version of that model used on personal computers. Edinger served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board and on a board convened to advise the Great Lakes Commission.

---

Maurice A. Biot Medal
James R. Rice, Ph.D., M.ASCE, has been named the recipient of the Maurice A. Biot Medal for his fundamental contributions to the mechanics of poroelasticity and his work on the inelastic behavior of fluid-saturated porous materials and on the response of materials containing voids. The Biot medal is awarded to an individual on the basis of research work elucidating the mechanics of porous materials. Rice is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Engineering Sciences and Geophysics at Harvard University, where his earthquake studies focus on the mechanics and physics of fault zone processes, including the nucleation of seismic ruptures; dynamic rupture propagation; and relations between stressing, seismicity, and deformation in or near continental and subduction fault systems. In his studies of hydrologic processes he addresses poroelastic effects and other pore-fluid interactions in the deformation and failure of earth materials.
Rice has paid special attention to applications in seismology and environmental geomechanics.

---

CAN-AM Civil Engineering Amity Award
Guy Dore, Ph.D., M.ASCE, receives the can-am Civil Engineering Amity Award for his research into the performance of pavements and geosynthetics in permafrost and other regions of North America, his many publications on the subject, and a career of teaching and involvement in U.S.—Canadian studies of pavement performance. This award is bestowed on a member of ASCE or the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering either for a particular act that has furthered understanding and goodwill between the two countries or for a career of exemplary professional activity that has contributed to international amity. In addition to his primary engineering efforts in Montreal, Ontario, and Quebec, Dore has been a visiting researcher in Washington, D.C., in the National Research Council’s Strategic Highways Research Program (shrp), and he also did sabbatical work at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Because of these efforts, he has brought a Canadian viewpoint to highway pavement research studies in the United States. He also served on an shrp advisory committee and participated in a parallel shrp endeavor in Canada (“c-shrp”). Dore has more than 120 publications to his credit as a primary author or coauthor, and he has been a professor at the Université Laval since 1997. Before that he held various positions as a pavement design engineer and pavement research engineer. He has been active in the affairs of the U.S. Transportation Research Board, serving on its Frost Action Committee, and has been instrumental in organizing several Canadian and international conferences dealing with engineering challenges in cold regions.

---

Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award
David J. White, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, is accorded the Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award for his achievements in the area of dynamic soil behavior characterization and testing using innovative soil system evaluation strategies. The advances he has made derive in part from real-time compaction analysis and related field applications. The Casagrande award is presented in recognition of outstanding accomplishments as evidenced by written work in the field of geotechnical engineering. The award was established to provide professional development opportunities to young practitioners, researchers, and teachers in the field of geotechnical engineering. An assistant professor of geotechnical engineering at Iowa State University, White is widely known for his contributions to the dynamic aspects of soil behavior and testing. His achievements thus far have been reflected in $3.6 million in research funding and 12 refereed journal publications.

---

Jack E. Cermak Medal
Peter A. Irwin, Ph.D., P.Eng., F.ASCE, is honored with the Jack E. Cermak Medal for the leadership he has shown in the wind engineering profession and for establishing a major private-sector wind engineering consultancy. His projects have encompassed thousands of structures, including buildings that are the world’s tallest and bridges whose spans are the world’s longest. Established by the Engineering Mechanics Division and the Structural Engineering Institute, the medal commemorates Cermak’s achievements and is bestowed in recognition of outstanding theoretical or practical advances in wind engineering. Irwin is considered by many to be the leading wind engineer in the world, and he has provided wind engineering testing and consultation on many high-profile projects. He invented the Irwin Sensor, a device that efficiently measures pedestrian-level wind. He has brought his vast knowledge and experience to bear on a number of record-setting projects, among them the Petronas Twin Towers, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; the skyscraper Taipei 101, in Taiwan; and the tower Burj Dubai, which will be more than 700 m tall and is currently under construction in Dubayy (Dubai). He has also been involved in a number of bridge projects on which wind has been a prime consideration, for example, the Cooper River Bridge, in South Carolina; the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge, in Washington State; the Owensboro Bridge, which crosses the Ohio River at Owensboro, Kentucky; and the Second Severn Crossing, in the United Kingdom. His expert advice has allowed those in charge of these projects to move forward with confidence. In addition to his services as a wind tunnel consultant, Irwin is very active in code development in wind engineering. He serves on the ASCE 7 Subcommittee on Wind Loads, and his contributions figure prominently in chapter 6 of ASCE standard 7 (Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures).

---

Ven Te Chow Award
Leo R. Beard, P.E., D.WRE, Hon.M.ASCE, has been named the recipient of the Ven Te Chow Award in recognition of his contributions in flood hydrograph computation, system techniques for reservoir regulation, statistical methods for streamflow frequency analysis, and computer-based methods for hydrologic computations. Established in 1995, the Ven Te Chow Award recognizes individuals who in their careers in hydrologic engineering have made significant contributions through research, education, or practice. Early in his career Beard became involved in flood control projects in the Los Angeles and Sacramento areas, and he was instrumental in devising reservoir operating rules that could be implemented by practicing engineers. The performance of the reservoirs in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins was tested during the 1955 floods in California. He also advocated the use of computer programs for hydrologic operations, and he is credited with the development of such models as hec-1 and hec-3. His book Statistical Methods in Hydrology has seen widespread use by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Beard later joined the University of Texas at Austin as a professor, and as director of the university’s Center for Research in Water Resources he turned his attention to hydrostatics, synthetic data generation, the reliability of stochastic methods, and the downstream effects of structures built to retard floodwater. He has also served on the editorial boards of various journals and has played a pivotal role in surface water hydrology.

---

Civil Engineering History And Heritage Award
Michael M. Chrimes is this year’s recipient of the Civil Engineering History and Heritage Award for his work in raising awareness in the engineering profession and in society at large of civil engineering history and heritage. His contributions have come through his personal scholarship and research, as well as through his stewardship of the collections in the library of the United Kingdom’s Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). The history and heritage award is presented to those who through writing, research, or other efforts have helped to elucidate the role that civil engineering has played in history. The ICE’s head librarian, Chrimes has worked to raise public awareness of civil engineering’s contributions to the well-being of society through his own scholarship as well as through his tireless support of other researchers. He has more than 30 publications to his credit, including journal papers, books, and conference proceedings. Of particular note is his work as an editor of the Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers, the first volume of which appeared in 2002 and the second in 2007. These volumes are of unprecedented scope and reflect significant new research on the lives and works of Britain’s civil engineers. Chrimes’s bibliographical publications are invaluable resources for other researchers.

---

Civil Government Award
Jimmie R. Yee, P.E., F.ASCE, is honored with the Civil Government Award in recognition of his dedication as an elected public servant since 1992. He has honored the civil engineering profession with his exemplary leadership and distinguished service both to the City of Sacramento, California, and to the County of Sacramento. The Civil Government Award recognizes those members of the engineering profession who have rendered meritorious service in elective or appointive positions in government. Yee began his political career in 1992, when he was elected to the Sacramento City Council. Subsequently he was appointed mayor and elected to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors. One example of his leadership in office was the development of a water expansion plan that doubled the potable water supply for the city, an accomplishment that received state and national recognition. Yee also served on the City of Sacramento’s Civil Service Board before being elected to office. He is a licensed civil and structural engineer in California, and his professional engineering accomplishments include serving on the California Board of Registration for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, representing the State of California as a member of the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, and owning his own structural and consulting engineering firm. Yee has been the recipient of six engineering awards from state and national engineering organizations. He has also helped to raise funds for various organizations and causes. He organized a bone marrow drive in 1989 and the following year helped to raise funds for flood victims in China. In 2000 he raised $4.5 million in an endeavor by the Sacramento Asian Sports Foundation to build a community and recreational facility.

---

Collingwood Prize
M. Luis Piek, P.E., M.ASCE, is honored with the Collingwood Prize for his paper “Lake Hodges to Olivenhain Pipeline—Tunnel, Shaft and Site Development.” The Collingwood Prize, reserved for authors 35 years of age or younger, is bestowed in recognition of papers describing engineering projects with which the authors were directly connected or recounting investigations in which the authors took an active part and that contain a clear exposition of the results. Piek’s coauthors were Jarrett Carlson, Gregory Fehr, and Jon Y. Kaneshiro, and the paper outlined many cutting-edge processes. In an effort to expedite project completion, the pipeline was advertised as design/build, a first for the San Diego County Water Authority. Given that the pressures exceeded 450 psi (3,103 kPa), the inherent strength of the rock was utilized through load sharing to reduce the wall thickness of the steel liner, thereby balancing considerations of economy and strength. With stringent requirements for steel strength and toughness, A841 steel as defined by ASTM International was seen as an ideal material, its first application in the United States. Piek works for Parsons in San Diego. 

---

Construction Management Award
James T. Ruddell, P.E., M.ASCE, is honored with the Construction Management Award for the leadership and innovative management he demonstrated in the construction of the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which carries Interstate 495 (the Capital Beltway) over the Potomac River just south of Washington, D.C., and in an extension to the Prince William Parkway, in Prince William County, Virginia. The award also recognizes his many contributions to the nation’s infrastructure. The Construction Management Award is presented to a member of the Society who has made a signal contribution in applying the theoretical aspects of engineering economics, statistics, probability theory, operations research, or related mathematical disciplines to problems relating to construction management, estimating, cost accounting, planning, scheduling, or financing. The replacement of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge cost $2.43 billion and took 11 years, and the Prince William Parkway extension was a $32-million undertaking. On both projects Ruddell displayed intense dedication to quality and safety, along with an exemplary command of engineering principles and construction techniques. As a result of his dedication and inspiring leadership, both of these highly complex projects were completed ahead of schedule and under budget.

---

J. James R. Croes Medal
Robert G. Driver, Ph.D., P.Eng., M.ASCE, Hassan H. Abbas, Ph.D., M.ASCE, and Richard Sause, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, win this year’s J. James R. Croes Medal for their paper “Shear Behavior of Corrugated Web Bridge Girders,” which appeared in the February 2006 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering. The J. James R. Croes Medal is presented to the author or authors of the paper judged next in order of merit to the paper recognized with the Norman Medal. The paper by Driver, Abbas, and Sause is recognized for a systematic data analysis revealing that previously proposed equations based on plate buckling theories can overestimate the shear strength of corrugated webs by a considerable margin. Since web imperfections caused by the fabrication process, as well as by residual stresses and material nonlinearities, are expected to be present in varying degrees, a lower bound equation is proposed for design that accounts for both local and global buckling of the web in the elastic and inelastic domains.

---

Charles Martin Duke Lifeline Earthquake Engineering Award
James E. Beavers, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is honored with the Charles Martin Duke Lifeline Earthquake Engineering Award for his contributions to the seismic design and blast loading of nuclear and other critical facilities, his development of procedures for mitigating hazards and estimating losses, and his leadership in seismic safety initiatives and policy development for lifelines. The Duke award is conferred on an individual in recognition of contributions that have helped to advance the field of lifeline earthquake engineering. Throughout his career, whether in government service, the private sector, or academia, Beavers has consistently worked to advance the theoretical and practical boundaries of earthquake engineering, and he has paid particular attention to mitigation measures and the performance of lifeline systems in the face of natural and man-made disasters. He has also been extremely effective in “marketing” the results of lifeline earthquake engineering technologies to the practicing communities and in promoting important concepts and strategies to lay audiences. Beavers’s contributions will be preserved in the large number of publications he has authored or coauthored and in the testimony he has provided on numerous occasions to Congress on issues related to earthquake threats and strategies for minimizing their effects. 

---

Hans Albert Einstein Award
J. Dungan Smith, Ph.D., M.ASCE, has been named the recipient of the Hans Albert Einstein Award in recognition of his rigorous application of the principles of fluid mechanics to sediment transport problems on the continental shelf as well as in the nearshore zone and in estuaries and rivers. The Einstein award is given to a member who has made a significant contribution to the engineering profession in the area of erosion control, sedimentation, or waterway development through teaching, research, planning, design, or management. Smith has made an indelible mark on the field of sediment transport through his teaching and research. He is unparalleled as an educator in that he has a remarkably clear and deep understanding of fluid and sediment dynamics and is able to convey this knowledge to students. He has a passion for understanding the fundamental processes governing fluid and sediment dynamics in the environment, and the numerous researchers he has helped to train have been partly responsible for the remarkable growth in quantitative research in this field. Smith has made fundamental and lasting contributions to sediment transport in fluvial and marine environments. Indeed, his continental margin sediment transport studies took on added stature when he and his students discovered that coupled flows of waves and currents induce bottom shear stresses that greatly exceed those induced by either waves or currents separately.

---

Excellence in Journalism Award
Larry Van Dyne has been named the recipient of the Excellence in Journalism Award for his article “Water, Water . . . ,” which appeared in the March 2007 issue of the magazine Washingtonian. In examining the history of the public water supply system in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, Van Dyne recounted the contributions made by civil engineers in developing water systems and in purifying and delivering water. The journalism award is given annually to one or more reporters whose news coverage enhances public understanding of civil engineering. A senior writer for the Washingtonian, Van Dyne previously worked for the Boston Globe and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Tom Avril, a staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, receives honorable mention for his article “Water to Tame Wind atop New Skyscraper: Giant Bathtub in the Sky,” which appeared in his paper on April 15 of this year. Avril described a 300,000 gal (1.135 million L), two-chamber water tank that was being installed at the top of Philadelphia’s Comcast Center to limit swaying.

---

Simon W. Freese Environmental Engineering Award and Lecture
John T. Novak, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, has been named the recipient of the Simon W. Freese Environmental Engineering Award and Lecture in recognition of his work in elucidating sludge dewatering processes and improving biosolids management practices at wastewater treatment facilities. The winner of this award is invited by ASCE’s executive director to deliver the Simon W. Freese Environmental Engineering Lecture at an appropriate meeting of the Society. Novak has been conducting research in the area of sludge management for 35 years. His work has been reflected in a number of publications, and four papers of his dealing with sludge management have been recognized with international awards. Novak has advised more than 150 graduate students at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where he taught and conducted research for 12 years, and at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, his home for more than 25 years. His research has provided insights into the most appropriate methods for characterizing sludges and has helped to determine the effect of activated sludge process variables on dewatering. It has also helped to determine the role of shear in dewatering and has outlined ways of reducing odors from anaerobically digested biosolids. Moreover, his work has led to the development of new methods for characterizing odors from sludges and gauging the performance of centrifuges. 

---

Edmund Friedman Professional Recognition Award
Reed M. Brockman, P.E., M.ASCE, is accorded the Edmund Friedman Professional Recognition Award for his outstanding contributions to educational outreach and engineering activities. His passion for the civil engineering profession and his commitment to mentoring have not only invigorated the profession but also have gone far in changing the way in which civil engineers are perceived. The Edmund Friedman Professional Recognition Award is presented to a member of the
Society (other than a distinguished member) who is judged to have contributed substantially to the status of the engineering profession by establishing a reputation for pro-fessional service. A senior structural engineer and inspection specialist with dmjm Harris in Boston, Brockman is the chair of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section’s outreach committee and vice-chair of its infrastructure group. He also serves as secretary and outreach coordinator of the Engineers Week committee for New England. Brockman has taken on a large number of outreach projects as part of an effort to combat technological illiteracy and declining enrollments in U.S. engineering programs. He often collaborates with such groups as Boston’s Museum of Science and the pbs station wgbh. He and fellow members of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section have participated in symposia to acquaint school counselors with the opportunities that engineering offers and have organized training sessions for engineers to help them make more effective presentations at schools. They have also led contests in which students design model bridges and have lent their services to the West Point Bridge Design Contest and the Future City Competition. In addition to regularly visiting schools to speak to classes, Brockman serves as a mentor in after-school activities and participates in career fairs. With more than 18 years of bridge inspection experience, Brockman is dedicated to maintaining public safety by ensuring that bridges are properly inspected. He has no hesitation in putting his own life in peril by climbing a bridge or crawling through a tight space to gain access to a particular bridge member. His inspections have always been of the highest quality and have been exemplary for their thoroughness.

---

Edmund Friedman Young Engineer Award for Professional Achievement
Christoph M. Goss, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, Jonathan D. McHugh, P.E., M.ASCE, Christopher J. Menna, P.E., M.ASCE, and Kathereen M. Shinkai, P.E., M.ASCE, share the Edmund Friedman Young Engineer Award for Professional Achievement in recognition of their service both to the profession and to the public. The Friedman award is bestowed on members of ASCE below the age of 36 who are judged to have attained significant professional achievements by virtue of their technical competence, unquestioned integrity, and service to the public.

Goss holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a doctorate in mining and earth systems engineering, both obtained from the Colorado School of Mines. As a project engineer for Deere & Ault Consultants, Inc., he has been involved in the construction of several dams, reservoirs, transmission pipelines, and tunnels. Goss has a number of publications to his credit, and his work has appeared in such journals as Tunnels & Tunnelling International and Géotechnique. Since 2001 he has been working in the Denver area with the group Rebuilding Together, and he has made his presence felt through both rebuilding work and fund-raising. During the past seven years he has served ASCE and its Colorado Section in a number of capacities, including a term as section president in 2005–06. In 2000 he helped to found the section’s younger member group. He also served on the steering committee for a geotechnical seminar in Denver in 2004, and that same year he helped organize a council for sections and branches that the Geo-Institute convened in Zone III.

McHugh graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and is currently pursuing a master’s in business administration at the University of Pittsburgh. A structural project engineer at Gannett Fleming, Inc., he is involved in implementing standard 9001 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). He also worked on the design of the Bridge to Tomorrow, in West Newton, Pennsylvania, and on the construction of the Mon/Fayette Expressway in Pittsburgh. Within ASCE’s Pittsburgh Section he developed a Web site for the Younger Member Forum (YMF), organized a résumé exchange service within the YMF for local university students, and participated in outreach activities at local universities. McHugh is currently a section director as well as a corresponding member of the Northeast Regional Younger Member Council for Region 2. When president of the YMF he encouraged interaction with students at local universities through special sessions on career development and on opportunities within the civil engineering profession. The Pittsburgh Section named him young engineer of the year in 2006.

Menna holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Temple University and a master’s degree in civil engineering from Villanova University. He has been with the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Streets for nine years and is currently a senior project engineer in the department’s bridge section. Within ASCE’s Philadelphia Section Menna has chaired committees dealing with history and heritage and with government relations. He has also served as section president, and he was a member of the ASCE committee that helped establish Region 2. Outside ASCE he has served as a mentor and judge in the Future City Competition and as an adviser at Temple University. He also serves as a volunteer for the Boy Scouts of America, Habitat for Humanity, Christmas in April, the Friends of Wissahickon, the Knights of Columbus, and the Sons of Italy. His accolades include the 2001 Zone I ASCE Citizen Award, the 2003 Delaware Valley Young Engineer of the Year Award, and the 2004 Zone I Young Government Civil Engineer Award.

Shinkai holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering with a specialization in structural engineering from the University of California at Irvine. She works in the Orange County, California, office of Carter & Burgess, Inc., as the civil engineering group manager for land development. Even though her professional career has been brief, she has become a recognized leader within the ranks of ASCE in Orange County. She is currently serving as secretary of the Los Angeles Section’s Orange County Branch and is a former president of the branch’s ymf. She has also helped the branch with Web site design, and in 2005 she served on committees for the Pacific Southwest Regional Conference and ASCE’s annual conference. Last year she participated in an event organized by the Orange County Branch to celebrate engineering’s history and heritage, and at Christmas she lent her services to programs to benefit the needy. Earlier this year she participated in a workshop held in Seattle for section and branch leaders. Her day-to-day involvement with the ymf in the years since she left university has contributed to the success of the group. Her accolades include the Orange County Branch’s Young Engineer of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Section’s Practitioner Advisor of the Year Award and Younger Civil Engineer Award.

---

Samuel Arnold Greeley Award
Keith C.K. Lai, M.ASCE, Irene M.C. Lo, Ph.D., M.ASCE, Vibeke L. Birkelund, Aff.M.ASCE, and Peter Kjeldsen, Aff.M.ASCE, are honored with the Samuel Arnold Greeley Award for their paper “Field Monitoring of a Permeable Reactive Barrier for Removal of Chlorinated Organics,” which appeared in the February 2006 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Environmental Engineering. The Greeley award was established to recognize outstanding original papers on the design, construction, operation, or financing of water supply, pollution control, storm drainage, or refuse disposal projects. The paper selected this year is seen as making both theoretical and practical contributions to efforts to apply zero-valent iron to treat groundwater contaminated by chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons.

---

Shortridge Hardesty Award
Russell Q. Bridge, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is honored with the Shortridge Hardesty Award in recognition of his international leadership in structural stability research for more than 30 years. His groundbreaking work on steel and composite compression and flexural members, as well as on steel frame stability, has been reflected in a number of design codes. The Hardesty award is conferred on a member of the Society who has made significant contributions in applying the results of fundamental research to the solution of practical engineering problems in the field of structural stability. Bridge has been a key participant in standards development work in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In particular, he provided important input to the stability studies that were conducted by the Structural Stability Research Council for specifications promulgated by the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1994, 1999, and 2005. Bridge has received numerous awards for scholarly publications and research contributions that have been reflected in standards adopted in Australia and New Zealand. His research and development work has focused on the strength and stability of steel and composite members and frames, the buckling of thin-walled members, the bracing of columns, and the influence of imperfections on structural behavior. His work has also dealt with the reliability basis of design and with advanced methods of analysis and design. He has more than 230 papers on structural engineering to his credit, and his studies have consistently sought to provide practical solutions to problems encountered by designers and others working in engineering and construction.

---

Rudolph Hering Medal
Jun Wang, P.E., M.ASCE, Joel G. Burken, Ph.D., M.ASCE, Xiaoqi Zhang, A.M.ASCE, and Rao Y. Surampalli, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE, F.ASCE, have been named the recipients of the Rudolph Hering Medal for their paper “Engineered Struvite Precipitation: Impacts of Component-Ion Molar Ratios and pH,” which appeared in the October 2005 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Environmental Engineering. Instituted in 1924 in honor of a former vice president of the Society, the Rudolph Hering Medal recognizes excellence in papers dealing with waterworks, sewerage works, drainage, or refuse collection and disposal, as well as with other branches of environmental engineering. The paper selected this year sheds important light on the factors affecting the removal and recovery of phosphorus in systems for treating animal waste. Struvite precipitation holds promise as a method for removing phosphorus from wastewater from animal feeding operations, and the authors have elucidated the effect of pH, component-ion molar ratios, and interfering ions on this precipitation.

---

Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Prize
Francesco G. Carollo, Ph.D., Vito Ferro, Ph.D., and Donatella Termini, Ph.D., win this year’s Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Prize for their paper “Flow Resistance Law in Channels with Flexible Submerged Vegetation,” which appeared in the July 2005 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Hydraulic Engineering. The Hilgard prize is presented to the author or authors of a paper that is judged to be of superior merit in dealing with a problem of flowing water, either in theory or in practice. The paper selected this year describes the results of an experimental study of flow resistance in vegetated channels, a topic relevant to the hydraulic and ecological engineering of natural channels. 

---

Julian Hinds Award
Wayne C. Huber, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, is accorded the Julian Hinds Award in recognition of his contributions to hydrology, urban water resources engineering, and water quality management. The Hinds award recognizes the author or authors of a paper judged to embody the most meritorious contribution to the field of water resources development. The winner may also be chosen on the basis of notable performance, long years of distinguished service, or particular actions that have served to advance engineering as it relates to the planning, development, and management of water resources. Huber’s career spans 37 years, and he has made signal contributions as a developer and promoter of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Storm Water Management Model, which serves as the international standard for urban water management engineering. Huber is a professor of water resources engineering at Oregon State University. 

---

Wesley W. Horner Award
Youssef Filali-Meknassi, Ph.D., Muriel Auriol, S.M.ASCE, Rajeshwar D. Tyagi, Ph.D., M.ASCE, Yves Comeau, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, and Rao Surampalli, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE, F.ASCE, receive the Wesley W. Horner Award for their paper “Phosphorus Co-precipitation in the Biological Treatment of Slaughterhouse Wastewater in a Sequencing Batch Reactor,” which appeared in the July 2005 issue of ASCE’s Practice Periodical of Hazardous, Toxic, and Radioactive Waste Management. The Horner award recognizes excellence in papers published by the Society dealing with hydrology, urban drainage, or sewerage. The work singled out this year provides theoretical and practical insights into the use of ferric chloride for enhancing biological phosphorus removal in treating wastewater from animal processing.

---

Ernest E. Howard Award
Dan M. Frangopol, Sc.D., P.E., F.ASCE, receives the Ernest E. Howard Award for his signal contributions to the advancement of structural engineering, particularly in risk assessment and maintenance planning for deteriorating civil infrastructure, and for his work in bringing research results into design practice. The Howard award is conferred on a member of the Society who has made a significant contribution to the advancement of structural engineering through research, planning, design, or construction. Frangopol developed a comprehensive approach to obtaining optimal solutions based on the expected minimum life-cycle costs of deteriorating bridges under various maintenance scenarios. The probabilistic inputs here relate to loading, strength, deterioration, inspection, maintenance, and cost. His theory constitutes the foundation of bridge management systems and will surely guide efforts in the future in many countries to devise management strategies for deteriorating bridges. Frangopol’s influence on the life-cycle maintenance and management of structures worldwide has been profound. His recent work has shed further light on the reliability of long-span structures, and the method he developed to assess the safety of long-span steel bridges is now well established. Frangopol was the first to quantify the overall safety of long-span bridges by proposing a system reliability approach implemented as part of a probabilistic finite-element analysis.

---

Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize
Feniosky Pena-Mora, Sc.D., P.E., M.ASCE, Sherif El-Tawil, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, Kenichi Soga, Ph.D., M.ASCE, Burcu H. Akinci, Ph.D., M.ASCE, and Reginald DesRoches, Ph.D., M.ASCE, each receive the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize. These prizes are awarded to members of the Society for notable achievements in research related to civil engineering, with preference given to younger members.

Pena-Mora is honored for contributions to engineering practice and research in construction management. His work, which incorporates state-of-the-art quantitative models and information technology, has helped to improve collaboration, resolve conflicts, and manage change in large-scale construction projects involving geographically distributed architecture, engineering, and construction teams. His research has focused on elements that sometimes impede collaboration in global architecture, engineering, and construction projects, and his work on collaboration led to the development of what is called the interaction space theory. This theory holds that communication technology, physical space, and organizational patterns in a global team come together to form an interaction space. Pena-Mora’s work has helped to elucidate the roles that technology and organizational factors play in project success.

El-Tawil is recognized for the development and application of novel numerical simulation models for analyzing and designing steel structures and hybrid steel and concrete structures. The work that he has done in this area is regarded as seminal, and the modeling techniques that he has developed span several length scales, are firmly rooted in fundamental structural mechanics, and have great practical and theoretical significance.

Soga is honored for pioneering research on the fundamental behavior of soils that has elucidated soil-structure interactions and brought advances in site remediation and in situ monitoring. Soga’s research has focused on several important areas of geotechnical and environmental engineering, including the mechanics of soil at the particulate level and the importance of scale in understanding certain aspects of soil behavior. His work has also dealt with time effects, contaminant transport, in situ soil testing, compaction grouting, tunneling, applications of the geotechnical centrifuge, and numerical modeling of systems with complex boundary conditions.

Akinci is recognized for important contributions in construction engineering and management. She has pioneered the integration of design information and information collected from construction sites with the aid of sensors to improve construction management. Her research has focused on the development and use of computational technologies for capturing, representing, and analyzing information about construction projects so as to increase quality, reduce costs, and shorten schedules. In a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation, she has been studying the use of laser scanners and embedded sensors to collect and analyze data in a way that will make it possible to detect construction defects at a much earlier stage.

DesRoches is honored for contributions to the seismic design and retrofitting of bridges, particularly in the central and southeastern United States. His research has gone far in making bridges more resilient, and he has disseminated his work through, among other means, journal publications and conference presentations. His findings have been incorporated into various bridge design codes and standards, including manuals published by the Federal Highway Administration. 

---

Hydraulic Structures Medal
Willi H. Hager, Ph.D., F.ASCE, is honored with the Hydraulic Structures Medal in recognition of his varied and profound contributions to the science, engineering, and history of open-channel flows and hydraulic structures. The Hydraulic Structures Medal is awarded to individuals for contributions that have helped to advance the art or science of hydraulic engineering as applied to hydraulic structures. For more than 25 years, Hager has investigated a wide variety of hydraulic structures, from the “simple” free overfall flow to the complex aerated flow in ski jump energy dissipaters, and he has a significant number of publications to his credit. In addition to studies dealing with fundamental aspects of open-channel flow, he has made numerous original contributions in the area of hydraulic structures, including a detailed analysis of the flow over a side weir, characterization of hydraulic jumps in different types of basins or channels, measurements in aerated spillway flows, and studies of local scour at bridge piers and abutments. Some of these results are already being incorporated into textbooks on open-channel flow and hydraulic structures. Moreover, Hager has authored or coauthored several monographs that by summarizing what is currently known about the hydraulics of dams, spillways, energy dissipaters, and sewer hydraulics have become standard reference works. Moreover, his works have frequently included discussions of hydraulic structures of note that have provided a welcome historical perspective.

---

International Coastal Engineering Award
Edward B. Thornton, Ph.D., M.ASCE, is this year’s winner of the International Coastal Engineering Award in recognition of his pioneering and fundamental contributions to nearshore hydrodynamics and sediment transport and his leadership in the field. The International Coastal Engineering Award is bestowed upon an individual deemed to have made significant contributions to coastal engineering through design work, teaching, professional leadership, research, or planning. Thornton has been a leader in conducting field studies of nearshore processes. He has studied breaking waves in the surf zone, longshore currents, rip currents, and sediment transport using various types of field equipment and sleds that are towed through the surf zones. He has helped organize and carry out major field studies in the United States and has also participated in field studies abroad. The tools Thornton has developed have been used by the research community and the U.S. Navy to predict nearshore conditions, and his mentoring of students and postdoctoral researchers has provided a steady stream of experts to the coastal engineering and coastal sciences community. His guidance and leadership in the field of coastal engineering extend over 40 years.

---

James Laurie Prize
Imad L. Al-Qadi, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is honored with the James Laurie Prize for his outstanding research accomplishments in transportation engineering, his dedication to educating aspiring transportation engineers, and his exemplary leadership in the profession. The Laurie prize is conferred on a member of the Society who as a result of written work or particular actions has helped to advance transportation engineering. The advances can be in research, planning, design, or construction. Al-Qadi has been instrumental in promoting transportation and pavement engineering through ASCE’s Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI) and in other institutions. As chair of the T&DI’s Highway Pavement Committee, he worked with five other committees from four different ASCE institutes to organize an extremely successful conference last year on airfield and highway pavement. His leadership manifests itself in the many technical committees and international conferences he supports, and his research has led to advances in ground-penetrating radar, pavement interlayer systems, pavement instrumentation, and the analysis and design of pavement materials. Al-Qadi joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004 after spending 14 years at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. While at Virginia Tech he established a pavement education and research program that gained renown even outside the country. Since joining the faculty at the University of Illinois he has established the Illinois Center for Transportation, and through his influence the school’s Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory has placed greater emphasis on pavement engineering. Overall he has advanced the field of transportation engineering through teaching, research innovations, and scholarly collaborations.

---

T.Y. Lin Award
Siddhwartha Mandal, A.M.ASCE, and Amir Fam, P.E., M.ASCE, have been named the recipients of the 2007 T.Y. Lin Award for their paper “Modeling of Prestressed Concrete-Filled Circular Composite Tubes Subjected to Bending and Axial Loads,” which appeared in the March 2006 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering. The award signalizes outstanding publications dealing with prestressed concrete, preference being given to younger authors. In singling out this paper, the selection committee cited its presentation of a nonlinear model for predicting the relationships between load and deflection and between axial load and moment in circular composite tubes filled with pretensioned concrete. The paper breaks new ground, and its findings are presented in such a way that designers can readily apply them. Moreover, the numerical model is clear, and the paper is well written, striking an appropriate balance between the analytical and the experimental.

---

Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students
Rachel N. Howser, S.M.ASCE, is this year’s winner of the Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students for her paper “Eminent Domain and the Engineer’s Ethical Responsibility.” The Mead prize in the student category is awarded to the author of what is judged to be the best paper on professional ethics submitted in the Society’s essay contest. The particular ethical question treated each year is set by the Committee on Student Activities. Howser submitted the essay as a senior at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and during the past summer she worked on a research project involving earthquake-resistant concrete at the University of Houston. Her paper was selected for its insightful and thought-provoking approach to the assigned topic.

---

Daniel W. Mead Prize For Younger Members
T. Kate Thivierge, P.E., M.ASCE, takes the Daniel W. Mead Prize for Younger Members for her paper “Should Engineers Advocate for Public Entities to Use Eminent Domain Power for Economic Development?” The Mead prize in the younger member category is awarded to the author of what is judged to be the best paper on professional ethics submitted in the Society’s essay contest. The particular ethical aspect treated each year is set by the Committee on Younger Members. Thivierge is an engineer with Metcalf & Eddy in New England.

Clay A. Forister, P.E., M.ASCE, a project manager with the transportation group at lja Engineering and Surveying, Inc., of Houston, was awarded a certificate of commendation for his entry.

---

Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award
Deepa S. Liyanapathirana, M.ASCE, and Harry G. Poulos, Ph.D., Sc.D., F.ASCE, are honored with the Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award for their paper “Pseudostatic Approach for Seismic Analysis of Piles in Liquefying Soil,” which appeared in the December 2005 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. The Middlebrooks award is conferred on the author or authors of a paper published by the Society judged worthy of special commendation for the contribution it makes to geotechnical engineering. Papers by young engineers are given preference. In the paper selected this year, the authors present a simple approach in which a single pile is considered, including the contribution of the superstructure to the pile and the interaction between the pile and the soil. The method comprises two main steps. First, a nonlinear free-field site response analysis is performed to obtain the maximum ground displacements along the pile and the degraded soil modulus over the depth of the soil deposit. Next, a static load analysis is carried out for the pile, which is subjected to the maximum free-field ground displacements. The static loading at the pile head is based on the maximum ground surface acceleration. Despite its relative simplicity, the method is shown to yield good estimates of pile bending moment, shear force, and displacement.

---

John G. Moffatt–Frank E. Nichol Harbor And Coastal Engineering Award
Robert M. Engler, Ph.D., M.ASCE, has been named the recipient of the John G. Moffatt–Frank E. Nichol Harbor and Coastal Engineering Award in recognition of leadership, creativity, and expertise that for more than 30 years have benefited the nation’s maritime gateways. The Moffatt–Nichol award is bestowed upon a member of ASCE who has made a significant contribution to harbor and coastal engineering through written work or particular deeds. It serves to call attention to ideas and concepts that hold promise for improving the engineering and construction techniques that can be brought to bear on harbor and coastal projects. Engler’s contributions to the engineering, scientific, and environmental community have been reflected in the way in which our country’s waterways are constructed and maintained. He has also made his presence felt in public policy, and the criteria he developed for dredging and disposal activities have been adopted by a number of countries. The maritime industry would have indeed been severely hampered without the skill, knowledge, and perseverance he has evinced in efforts to provide sufficient water depths at ports and in adjacent waterways while satisfying environmental requirements enacted by Congress and the states.

---

Moisseiff Award
Maura Lecce, Ph.D., and Kim J.R. Rasmussen, Ph.D., M.ASCE, receive the Moisseiff Award for their papers “Distortional Buckling of Cold-Formed Stainless Steel Sections: Experimental Investigation” and “Distortional Buckling of Cold-Formed Stainless Steel Sections: Finite-Element Modeling and Design,” which appeared in the April 2006 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering. The Moisseiff Award is given to the author or authors of an important paper published by the Society dealing with the broad field of structural design, including applied mechanics, or with the theoretical analysis or improvement of such engineering structures as bridges and frames. Lecce and Rasmussen have carried out extensive research on the highly complex subject of distortional buckling. In the companion papers honored with this year’s award, they present results in the form of design recommendations that can readily be adopted as design specifications. The first paper presents comprehensive procedures to determine stainless steel mechanical properties and their influence on the distortional buckling mode of cold-formed sections. Experimental data required to calibrate finite-element models and assess current design guidelines for distortional buckling of stainless steel compression members are provided. In the second paper, extensive finite-element analyses of the problem are carried out, and the results demonstrate that the material anisotropy can be ignored. Evaluations of current design specifications are presented, revealing that some of them are unconservative in certain cases. Direct strength design guidelines for the distortional buckling mode are presented for austenitic and ferritic stainless steels.

---

Nathan M. Newmark Medal
Sami F. Masri, Ph.D, M.ASCE, is honored with the Nathan M. Newmark Medal in recognition of his leadership and vision in the field encompassing structural control and the monitoring of structural health and his contributions in developing and validating this emerging field. The Newmark medal is bestowed upon a member of the Society who through contributions to structural mechanics in the form of papers or other written works has substantially strengthened the scientific basis of structural engineering. For several decades Masri has made a significant mark on the profession of civil engineering as an educator and researcher and as a visionary who has been responsible for a wide range of technological innovations. In work that began with his pioneering contributions to structural control more than three decades ago and continues today in research and in finding practical applications, Masri has demonstrated a perseverance and a commitment that have gone far in establishing structural control and the monitoring of structural health as exciting new frontiers in civil engineering. He has also made a number of important technical contributions to the fields of earthquake engineering and structural dynamics. In particular, his application of the Karhunen-Loeve decomposition in 1982 anticipated the computational revolution that has taken place since then in that it provided optimal representations for information used in earthquake engineering. Moreover, work that he began in the 1980s on developing nonparametric models for representing arbitrary dynamic systems is now being applied in the context of data-driven computational models, where robust predictive models based on instantaneous data acquisition and processing are providing a bridge between data and predictions. 

---

Alfred Noble Prize
Cynthia L. Dinwiddie, Ph.D., is honored with the Alfred Noble Prize for her paper “The Small-Drillhole Minipermeameter Probe for In Situ Permeability Measurement,” which appeared in the December 2005 issue of SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering, published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers. The Noble prize recognizes a paper of outstanding merit written by a person below the age of 35 who is a member of ASCE, the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or the Western Society of Engineers. Dinwiddie works in San Antonio at the Southwest Research Institute’s Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses.

---

Norman Medal
Ning Lu, Ph.D., M.ASCE, and William J. Likos, Ph.D., M.ASCE, have been named the recipients of the Norman Medal for their paper “Suction Stress Characteristic Curve for Unsaturated Soil,” which appeared in the February 2006 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. The Norman Medal is bestowed upon the author or authors of a paper that is judged worthy of special commendation for its merit as a contribution to engineering science. The paper honored this year is recognized for its conceptualization of a theoretically sound and practically useful definition of effective stress for unsaturated soil, a conceptualization that may help to solve strength and deformation problems in geotechnical engineering practice. The experimental evidence shows that both Mohr-Coulomb failure and critical state failure can be well represented by the suction stress characteristic curve. The concept provides a potentially simple and practical way to describe the state of stress in unsaturated soil.

---

John I. Parcel–Leif J. Sverdrup Civil Engineering Management Award
Darryl W. Davis, P.E., D.WRE, M.ASCE, receives the John I. Parcel–Leif J. Sverdrup Civil Engineering Management Award in recognition of his leadership abilities, managerial prowess, and technical achievements in hydrologic and water resources planning. The Parcel-Sverdrup award is conferred on a member of ASCE who has made a significant contribution to the field of civil engineering management through written work or outstanding performance. Davis’s contributions to dam and levee safety, flood risk management, and civil works policy have had far-reaching effects in the field of water resources engineering. He is the director of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Hydrologic Engineering Center, in Davis, California.

---

Ralph B. Peck Award
Jean-Louis Briaud, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is honored with the Ralph B. Peck Award for his pioneering work on soil erosion and bridge scour and his numerous contributions to the field of geotechnical engineering. The Peck award is presented for outstanding contributions to the geotechnical engineering profession through the publication of case histories or of recommended practices or design methodologies based on case histories. Briaud developed a method for predicting bridge scour depth that was used in designing the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, which crosses the Potomac River just south of Washington, D.C. The most important feature of his methodology is that it addresses the rate of scour, a quantity not included in the past. Including the rate enables the engineer to take into account the erosion resistance of such materials as fine-grained soils, whereas prior techniques assumed that all soils were coarse grained. Briaud’s methodology has been incorporated into a Federal Highway Administration hydraulic engineering circular that is now used nationally to calculate bridge scour depth.

---

Peurifoy Construction Research Award
James E. Diekmann, Ph.D., M.ASCE, has been named the recipient of the Peurifoy Construction Research Award for his contributions in advancing the construction industry’s acceptance of alternative dispute resolution techniques and for the new approaches to risk-based decision making he has developed. The Peurifoy award is conferred on an individual who has helped in a significant way to advance construction engineering through research or the development of technologies, principles, or practices. Diekmann’s contributions to the field of project risk include expanding the understanding of how contractors perceive project risk; developing systematic approaches for decision making that incorporate risk; and elaborating risk-based decision models. His many publications have concerned themselves with approaches to construction management decision making and risk analysis, and a number of these works have found reflection in industry practice. His work in risk analysis for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been incorporated into the Corps’s suite of estimating products. Under his guidance, the Corps developed a cost risk module for its Tri-Service Automated Cost Engineering System (TRACES), and the U.S. Department of Energy has applied his analytical findings to the management program it uses in estimating risk in large hazardous waste remediation projects. Furthermore, Diekmann’s work in dispute research for the Construction Industry Institute has been incorporated into software that is used by the industry to predict and avoid costly construction disputes.

---

Harold R. Peyton Award for Cold Regions Engineering
Richard L. Berg, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, has been named the recipient of the Harold R. Peyton Award for Cold Regions Engineering in recognition of his long and productive career of research into soil frost heaving and thaw weakening prediction methodology and into the performance of pavements and geosynthetics in seasonal and permafrost regions in North America. The Peyton award is presented to a member of the Society who has made outstanding contributions to this field in the form of published work. Berg began his cold regions career at the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) and worked there until 1996. In 1973 he obtained a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Alaska. In the years since he left the CRREL he has continued to consult on cold regions problems as president and chief executive officer of Frost Associates. During his career he has focused on the area of frozen ground interactions, including work on pavement design and performance, subsurface insulation, frost heave prediction and control, and permafrost and seasonal load restrictions for highways and airfields. Berg has more than 100 papers, reports, and technical notes to his credit, and he has developed and taught several courses on pavement design and frost heave prediction. He has also lent his time and expertise to a number of national committees related to his subject areas. 

---

Professional Practice Ethics And Leadership Award
Carl A. Strock, P.E., M.ASCE, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and a former commander and chief of engineers of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is the first recipient ever of the Professional Practice Ethics and Leadership Award in recognition of the service he rendered to the nation in investigating the causes of the hurricane protection system failures during Hurricane Katrina. His efforts throughout demonstrated selfless leadership and adherence to the highest ethical principles. This new award is to be conferred upon a licensed professional engineer whose leadership is based on a firm commitment to ethical principles. It will be bestowed to recognize a particular act or to honor a person’s career. As head of the Corps, Strock’s self-imposed mission was to uncover the causes of failure in New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana. His insistence upon making even embarrassing results public will help ensure the future safety of New Orleans and other areas where Americans rely on such infrastructure to safeguard their health, safety, and welfare. Without regard to the damage his quest might inflict on his own career, Strock demanded a thorough study of relevant developments, including a candid assessment of the Corps’s performance before, during, and after Katrina. All Americans ultimately will benefit from his courage and persistence.

---

Raymond C. Reese Research Prize
Tomonori Nagayama, Masato Abe, Ph.D., Yozo Fujino, Ph.D., M.ASCE, and Kenji Ikeda receive the Raymond C. Reese Research Prize for their paper “Structural Identification of a Nonproportionally Damped System and Its Application to a Full-Scale Suspension Bridge,” which appeared in the October 2005 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Structural Engineering. The Reese prize is awarded to the author or authors of a paper that describes a notable achievement in research related to structural engineering. The paper singled out this year applies a new structural identification method to ambient vibration data taken from a full-scale suspension bridge. The method comprises two steps: determining vibration modes and carrying out an inverse analysis of structural properties from those modes. The authors demonstrate that the method can precisely determine the characteristics not only of the lower modes but also of the higher modes and can effectively detect changes in structural properties. The paper has set a new direction and defined a new specialty area within bridge aerodynamics.

---

Rickey Medal
David J. Youlen, P.E., M.ASCE, is honored with the 2007 Rickey Medal for his work in the area of renewable energy sources, his years of dedication to the efficient and environmentally responsible operation of 730 MW of hydroelectric capacity, and his contributions to various industry forums. The Rickey Medal is conferred to honor achievements in any branch of hydroelectric engineering. It may be bestowed to recognize particular achievements in the field or to signalize outstanding published work. Youlen has held several important positions during his career, including that of vice president of New York operations at Brookfield Power, where he was responsible for the efficient operation of a combined cycle cogeneration plant and 74 hydroelectric facilities in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. 

---

Roebling Award
J. Patrick Powers, P.E., F.ASCE, is honored with the Roebling Award in recognition of the many contributions and achievements that have graced a career of more than 50 years. Established in memory of three outstanding constructors—John A. Roebling, Washington Roebling, and Emily Roebling—the Roebling Award recognizes and honors an individual who has helped in a significant way to advance the field of construction engineering. Powers held the position of chief engineer at Moretrench American Corporation and was a consultant with Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers. He has specialized in groundwater engineering, and the projects he has contributed to have involved dams, locks, bridges, mines, and industrial plants. He has also served as a specialist in the arbitration of groundwater disputes. Generations of civil engineers have benefited from his book Construction Dewatering.

---

Hunter Rouse Hydraulic Engineering Lecture
Hung Tao Shen, Ph.D., M.ASCE, has been chosen to deliver the Hunter Rouse Hydraulic Engineering Lecture in recognition of his widely acknowledged expertise in river ice hydraulics. The winner of this honor is invited by ASCE’s executive director to deliver the Hunter Rouse Hydraulic Engineering Lecture at an appropriate meeting of the Society. Shen is renowned for his work in developing numerical models for simulating ice formation, transport, and jamming in rivers. His research expertise is in hydraulic engineering in cold regions, particularly river ice hydraulics, and he is recognized around the world as an expert in the numerical simulation of river ice processes. The analytical framework for studying river ice processes he introduced has become widely accepted, and he developed the transport capacity theory for frazil ice jams, as well as the theory for dynamic ice transport and ice jams. Shen has also made important contributions regarding rheological formulations for river and sea ice dynamics. Over the years, he and his students have developed comprehensive computer models that are now widely used, a good example being the numerical code RICE. The models have been applied to rivers in a number of countries. By and large the models, particularly RICE, have set the standard for the numerical simulation of ice transport and jamming processes in rivers.

---

Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize
Amr A. Kandil, Ph.D., M.ASCE, and Khaled El-Rayes, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, receive the Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize for their paper “Parallel Genetic Algorithms for Optimizing Resource Utilization in Large-Scale Construction Projects,” which appeared in the May 2006 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. The Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize recognizes papers that describe in detail completed works of construction or make valuable contributions to construction management or construction engineering. The authors of the paper singled out this year developed an innovative and practical multiobjective optimization model that can solve resource utilization problems in large-scale highway construction projects. The model provides new and unique capabilities that can aid construction engineers in optimizing the planning of highway construction projects that are being carried out in accordance with new, performance-based contracting methods, for example, warranty and multiparameter contracts. The challenges presented by these new contracting methods require construction engineers to formulate resource utilization plans that minimize project costs and duration while maximizing quality. The authors developed scalable, parallel computing frameworks that make it possible to optimize large-scale highway construction projects. Their findings demonstrate that parallel computing frameworks can be used to optimize resource utilization on large-scale construction projects that previously, owing to the extensive computational requirements, did not lend themselves to resource optimization. The results also prove that the parallel computing frameworks require a limited number of parallel processors and accordingly can be practically implemented in construction engineering and management offices. The research work presented in the paper was supported by a 2003 award from the National Science Foundation, and the results were highlighted by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in 2005.

---

Robert H. Scanlan Medal
Masaru Matsumoto, D.Eng., A.M.ASCE, is honored with the Robert H. Scanlan Medal for his fundamental contributions to bluff body aerodynamics and his work on the aeroelasticity of long-span bridges. The Robert H. Scanlan Medal is awarded to an individual in recognition of distinguished achievement in engineering mechanics through contributions to both theory and practice. The areas of achievement recognized are generally structural mechanics, wind engineering, and aerodynamics. Matsumoto teaches in the civil and earth resources engineering department at Kyoto University, in Japan.

---

J.C. Stevens Award
Carlos V. Alonso, Ph.D., M.ASCE, is accorded the J.C. Stevens Award for his discussion of “Hydrodynamic Loading on River Bridges,” by Stefano Malavasi and Alberto Guadagnini. The paper was published in the November 2003 issue of ASCE’s Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, and the discussion appeared in the July 2005 issue. The J.C. Stevens Award is conferred on the author or authors of what is judged to be the best discussion on hydraulics, including fluid mechanics and hydrology, published by the Society in a journal overseen by the Environmental and Water Resources Institute. The discussion by Alonso enhanced the value of the original paper by outlining an interesting analytical approach that provides additional insight into the interaction between the obstacle (the bridge) and the free surface.

---

Karl Terzaghi Award
Chandrakant S. Desai, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is honored with the Karl Terzaghi Award in recognition of his sustained and seminal contributions in geotechnical engineering and geomechanics, work that has led to theoretical, laboratory, and practical solutions to problems on the basis of advanced and realistic constitutive and computer models. The Karl Terzaghi Award is conferred on an author whose work is seen as elucidating aspects of soil mechanics, subsurface and earthwork engineering, and subsurface and earthwork construction. Desai has been the author or coauthor of approximately 300 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings, approximately 20 textbooks and edited volumes, and approximately 20 book chapters. A professor in the civil engineering and engineering mechanics department at the University of Arizona, Desai is the editor in chief of ASCE’s International Journal of Geomechanics.

---

Karl Terzaghi Lecture
George G. Goble, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, has been chosen to deliver the Karl Terzaghi Lecture in recognition of his contributions to the design and construction of deep foundations as well as to engineering education. He will be invited by ASCE’s executive director to deliver the lecture at an appropriate meeting of the Society. In addition to his work on the pile driving analyzer, Goble has contributed to advances in wave equation analysis, integrity testing, and load and resistance factor design (LRFD). He is the principal of George G. Goble Consulting Engineer, llc, of Boulder, Colorado, and an adjunct professor at Utah State University. 

---

Royce J. Tipton Award
Wynn R. Walker, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, F.ASCE, is honored with the Royce J. Tipton Award for theoretical and practical contributions that have led to advances in surface irrigation hydraulic modeling, salinity control, sprinkle and drip irrigation, irrigation hydrology, canal hydraulics and control, and irrigation water allocation and planning. His work has also made it easier to estimate the field properties needed for irrigation modeling and management. The Royce J. Tipton Award recognizes contributions to the advancement of irrigation and drainage engineering made through teaching, research, planning, design, construction, or management. Walker’s expertise is recognized nationally and internationally, and he has worked on projects for the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the U.N. Development Programme. His major contributions include the surface irrigation model SIRMOD; the textbook Surface Irrigation Theory and Practice, which he wrote with Gaylord V. Skogerboe; and an FAO paper (number 45) on irrigation and drainage. 

---

Francis C. Turner Award
Alain L. Kornhauser, Ph.D., M.ASCE, has been named the recipient of the Francis C. Turner Award in recognition of the imaginative and creative approaches he has taken in addressing transportation problems. The Turner award is conferred on individuals to acknowledge theoretical or practical contributions in transportation engineering. Kornhauser has been a leader and an innovator in developing state-of-the-art software for simulating and portraying minimum cost routings through transportation networks. The software has been widely used in the trucking and railroad industries in the United States and Europe to overcome transportation problems and reduce shipping costs. Kornhauser also developed a business enterprise that produced one of the first commercially viable onboard navigation systems capable of drawing on geographic information system (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies. In addition to his work in transportation software, he has been an innovator in developing automatically operated transportation systems, and his early work on personal rapid transit (PRT) systems demonstrated the potential applications of this innovative form of urban transport. Even more significant has been his recent work in developing autonomous guidance for automobiles. He led a team of Princeton undergraduates in building an autonomously guided vehicle that successfully made its way over a 140 mi (225 km) course in rough terrain in 2005. His research and business contributions have been as broad as they have been creative, and his work has improved the efficiency of mass transit systems, railroads, and highways.

---

Theodore von Karman Medal
Chiang C. Mei, Ph.D., M.ASCE, is honored with the Theodore von Karman Medal for his fundamental contributions in fluid mechanics, wave theory, non-Newtonian flows, and the behavior of ocean waves. The von Karman medal is presented to an individual to signalize distinguished achievements in engineering mechanics that are applicable to any branch of civil engineering. Mei is the Ford Professor of Engineering in the civil and environmental engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

---

George Winter Award
Keith D. Hjelmstad, Ph.D., M.ASCE, is honored with the George Winter Award for his accomplishments in structural engineering research, his dedication to the education of future structural engineers, and the contributions he has made to the cultural life of his community by serving as concertmaster in the Parkland Community Orchestra. The Winter award recognizes the achievements of an active structural engineering researcher, educator, or practitioner whose work embodies the humanistic approach of the award’s eponym. Hjelmstad’s research focuses primarily on the analytical and computational aspects of structural engineering, and he has a large number of publications to his credit. His most recent professional contributions have been in connection with an American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) task committee concerned with loads, analyses, and systems. He was a coauthor of a significant revision of one of the chapters, along with the commentary for that chapter, in AISC’s Specification for Structural Steel Buildings (2005). Hjelmstad is the associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. He continues to maintain an active research and teaching program in structural engineering, and in the past two years he designed and implemented a highly successful program for recruiting and retaining minority students. An accomplished violinist, he has been a member of the Parkland Community Orchestra for 20 years, serving as concertmaster for 15 of them. The Parkland Community Orchestra is affiliated with Parkland College, in Champaign, Illinois. It has four formal concerts during the year and also performs at other venues, including nursing homes.

---

William H. Wisely American Civil Engineer Award
Thomas A. Lenox, Ph.D., M.ASCE, is this year’s recipient of the William H. Wisely American Civil Engineer Award in recognition of his strong leadership in efforts to improve education and professionalism in civil engineering and to help ASCE function more effectively as an organization. The Wisely award recognizes individuals or groups of individuals who are members of ASCE and who have made a sustained effort to promote an appreciation of the history, tradition, developments, and technical and professional activities of the Society. Lenox’s wise counsel and keen insights have helped ASCE assume a more prominent role in the engineering profession. Since joining the Society in 1998, he has initiated and nurtured several new educational and professional practice initiatives. A notable example is the Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ExCEEd) program, a nationally recognized initiative that helps faculty members become better teachers and role models for the civil engineering profession. Lenox continues to be very active in associations that foster educational and professional excellence and has written numerous papers, made presentations, and run workshops dedicated to engineering educational reform. For the past seven years, he has been instrumental in efforts to “raise the bar” for entry into civil engineering at the professional level. He is passionate about his work to help prepare tomorrow’s civil engineers for their future.

---

Younger Member Group Award
The Younger Member Forum of the Orange County Branch wins the Younger Member Group Award for Large Groups. The awards for large and small groups recognize groups whose efforts are seen as markedly advancing the goals of their sections. The Younger Member Forum (ymf) was selected for the award in recognition of professional, technical, social, outreach, and community service activities that have added to the stature, effectiveness, and vitality of the Los Angeles Section’s Orange County Branch. The ymf’s outreach program is directed at students from elementary school through college and also seeks to broaden diversity among students opting for careers in engineering. Other activities undertaken by the ymf have been directed toward community well-being. The forum also boasts a number of technical works by its members in ASCE publications.
 
The Younger Member Forum of the Hawaii Section is this year’s winner of the Younger Member Group Award for Small Groups. The Hawaii ymf provides an example of what can be accomplished by a group of committed individuals. In addition to outreach endeavors with students at all grade levels, the ymf works with the Special Olympics and the Muscular Dystrophy Association and also lends a hand in supporting local math and science competitions. The forum’s members, like those of the Orange County ymf, have a number of technical articles in ASCE publications to their credit.

The Younger Member Forum of the Seattle Section and the Younger Member Forum of the West Virginia Section received letters of commendation.

---

Robert Ridgway Student Chapter Award
The United States Military Academy wins the Robert Ridgway Student Chapter Award for its outstanding performance during the year as manifested by the efforts of its members and the diligence and professionalism of its officers and faculty advisers. The Ridgway award is conferred on only one student chapter. In addition to its wide-ranging program of service activities, the chapter at West Point, New York, offers cadets many opportunities for personal and professional growth. Indeed, 94 percent of the junior and senior civil engineering majors at West Point belong to the chapter, and nearly all chapter members are also ASCE student members. Moreover, the chapter was well represented at various ASCE events during the year, including the annual conference, the workshop for student chapter leaders, the regional student conference, and the essay contest for the Daniel W. Mead Prize for Students.

Peter J. Bosscher, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, died on November 18 at the age of 53. He entered Calvin College in 1971 and received a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Michigan in 1981. Bosscher taught civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, specializing in geotechnical engineering and civil engineering materials. In 2002 he founded a chapter of Engineers Without Borders–USA at the university and was involved in projects worldwide. He is survived by his wife, Marcia, and four children.

John Tyler Butler, M.ASCE, died on November 11 at the age of 77. He received a degree in civil engineering from Purdue University and until 1960 was a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force and the Minnesota Air National Guard. He worked at the United States Steel Corporation’s Oliver Iron Mining Company and later at the Polaris Wilbert Vault Company, in Duluth, Minnesota. Butler was a member of many volunteer organizations. He also served as the director of Western National Bank for three decades. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and by 4 children and 11 grandchildren.

Josiah “Joe” Colcord, P.E., M.ASCE, died on October 21 at the age of 85. He received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Maine and a master’s degree, also in civil engineering, from the University of Minnesota. He became a professor of civil engineering at the University of Washington in 1949. After he retired he taught the course The Heritage of Civil Engineering gratis. An active member of ASCE, he was instrumental in proposing local and national sites for inclusion in the Society’s Historic Civil Engineering Landmark Program. Colcord was honored with ASCE’s Civil Engineering History and Heritage Award in 1998.

Dick Granger, P.E., M.ASCE, died on November 10 at the age of 89. He received a degree from Texas A&M University and then joined the U.S. Army during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel in 1967. Granger worked for Gifford Hill American, Inc., for 25 years, retiring in 1987. At age 50 he became an avid runner, completing more than 46 marathons. He is survived by two children and three grandchildren.

Herbert Saffir, P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, died on November 21 at the age of 90. Saffir is perhaps best known for his development of a hurricane categorization system based on destructive power. His scale was expanded by Robert H. Simpson, a former director of the National Hurricane Center, and is now known as the Saffir-Simpson scale. Saffir was born in New York in 1917 and obtained a degree in civil engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1940. After serving in World War II, he moved to southern Florida and became a county engineer. There he became an expert on the structural effects of hurricanes and helped write building codes for the state. He began working on his hurricane intensity scale in 1969 as part of a project for the United Nations.

• The Nominating Committee of the Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI) is soliciting expressions of interest from T&DI members in good standing to fill four-year terms on the Board of Governors that would begin on October 1, 2008. To be considered by the committee, a potential nominee must be a member in good standing of ASCE and the T&DI at the time of nomination. Student members of ASCE and the T&DI are not eligible for consideration. Anyone interested should send a résumé that includes his or her activities within the T&DI and ASCE, along with a signed statement indicating a willingness to stand for election if nominated and to serve if elected and a biographical statement of no more than 150 words, to the following address: Director, T&DI, ASCE Headquarters, 1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Reston, VA 20191. This information must be received by the T&DI staff no later than 5 PM (eastern time) on Monday, February 4, 2008. For more information about the responsibilities and time commitments that a member of the Board of Governors must accept, contact the T&DI’s director, Jonathan C. Esslinger, P.E., F.ASCE, at (703) 295-6420 or jesslinger@asce.org.
• IEEE-USA, a group that seeks to advance the careers and public policy interests of U.S. members of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), is launching an online video competition for undergraduate engineering students. With the theme “How Engineers Make a World of Difference,” the competition will award seven scholarship prizes totaling $10,000 to the students deemed to have created the most effective 90-second video clips aimed at an audience of students aged 11 to 13. The clips should portray engineers’ contributions to the quality of life and help debunk engineering stereotypes. In addition to the prizes, the winning entries will be shown during Engineers Week 2008 and will be available for viewing on IEEE.tv (www.ieee.org/web/membership/IEEEtv/about.html) and at Spectrum Online (www.spectrum.ieee.org/). The competition is open to all U.S. undergraduate engineering students. Entries may be submitted by individuals or by teams, but in the latter case at least one team member must also be an IEEE student member. More than one video entry is allowed. Entries are to be submitted through YouTube by midnight (eastern time) on Friday, January 18, 2008. The competition will be judged by two engineering graduate students and Nate Ball, the engineer host for the PBS series Design Squad. For additional information on the competition and on uploading your entry on YouTube, visit http://www.ieeeusa.org/communications/video_competition/.
  

International Conference on Storm-Water and Urban Water Systems Modeling
February 21–22, 2008, Toronto

Sponsors: ASCE’s Urban Water Resources Research Council, the American Water Resources Association, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, the Ontario Ministry of Energy, the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering, and Conservation Ontario.

Paper Topics: Abstracts for papers are solicited on the use of state-of-the-art computer models for resolving pollution problems and for water supply and distribution. The topics also include urban drainage system design and analysis; surface water quality modeling; storm-water and pollution management modeling; modeling effects on aquatic ecosystems and habitats; best management practices with regard to wetlands; ecological restoration; field data monitoring and emerging instrumentation; geographic information systems; decision analysis systems; facilities management systems; and policy legislation, permitting, and enforcement.

Deadline: Abstracts are to be submitted by January 25, 2008.

Contact: Visit www.computationalhydraulics.com or contact Bill James by e-mail at info@computationalhydraulics.com, by telephone at (519) 767-0197, or by fax at (519) 489-0695.

---

Ohio River Valley Soils Seminar XXXIX: Urban Construction
October 17, 2008, Cincinnati

Sponsors: ASCE’s Cincinnati Section.

Paper Topics: Papers may deal with geotechnical design, instrumentation, investigation, construction, and case histories. Attention will also be given to roadways, buildings, waterfront development, tunnels, sustainable construction, and predicted versus actual performance. Papers should highlight innovative techniques for solving geotechnical problems under the limitations imposed by an urban environment. The goal of the seminar is to provide geotechnical engineers, geologists, contractors, material suppliers, and other geotechnical practitioners with an opportunity to share unique experiences and state-of-the-art practices.

Deadline: Abstracts of no more than one page are to be submitted by May 2, 2008, to Ron Lech, P.E., H.C. Nutting Company, 611 Lunken Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45226; telephone (513) 321-5816, extension 423; fax (513) 321-4540; e-mail rlech@hcnutting.com.

Contact: Ron Lech, P.E., H.C. Nutting Company, 611 Lunken Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45226; telephone (513) 321-5816, extension 423; fax (513) 321-4540; e-mail rlech@hcnutting.com.

---

Special Issue (October 2008), Leadership and Management In Engineering: “Engineers, Infrastructure, and Politics”

Paper Topics: This special issue will focus on the evolution and state of infrastructure policy and decision making with its associated achievements, shortcomings, and future prospects for collaborative leadership. The topics will include the following: theories and practice of public integration and communication; different policy areas that support or impede effective public decision making; the project selection decision process, including dialogue with the public; case studies of engineers participating in the political process; the experiences of engineers who have been staff members of legislative committees; conceptualizing past, present, and future integration dynamics; economic and career risks for public- and private-sector employees; virtual public forums; the clarity of public accountability regarding the operation, maintenance, and replacement of infrastructure; blog-based dialogues; and the economics of technology-facilitated communities. asce welcomes joint or separate submissions from such fields as anthropology, architecture, communications, computer science, economics, engineering, geography, information studies, information systems, management science, political science, psychology, sociology, and telecommunications.

Deadline: April 30, 2008, for papers, which are to be e-mailed to the guest editor, W.M. Hayden, Jr., Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, at wmhayden@buffalo.edu.

ASCE CONFERENCES
For further information on these conferences, unless noted otherwise, contact asce Conferences Department, 1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Reston, VA 20191-4400; telephone (800) 548-2723 or, from outside the United States, (703) 295-6300; fax (703) 295-6144; e-mail conf@asce.org; Web site www.asce.org/conferences. Dates are subject to change.

Institution of Structural Engineers Centenary Conference, January 24–26, 2008, Hong Kong
www.asce.org/files/pdf/2ndannouncement.pdf

2008 Annual Meeting, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (“Hurricane Katrina: Lessons for Earthquake Risk Reduction”), February 6–9, 2008, New Orleans
http://www.eeri.org/news/meetings/08AM/

International Conference on Storm-Water and Urban Water Systems Modeling, February 21–22, 2008, Toronto
www.computationalhydraulics.com

Earth and Space Conference 2008: 11th International Conference on Engineering, Science, Construction, and Operations in Challenging Environments, March 3–5, 2008, Long Beach, California
http://content.asce.org/conferences/earth2008/welcome.html

GeoCongress 2008, March 9–12, 2008, New Orleans
http://content.asce.org/conferences/geocongress2008/

---

ASCE CONTINUING EDUCATION
Develop your technical and management skills and earn pdhs/ceus through asce’s program of continuing education. Courses are offered in more than 40 cities across the country. asce also offers live Web seminars, on-demand online courses, and courses on dvd and cd. Customized on-site training also can be arranged. To register or to obtain additional information, contact asce’s continuing education department by telephone at (800) 548-2723, by fax at (703) 295-6144, or by e-mail at seminars@asce.org. The Web site is www.asce.org/conted/.

Construction
Design/Build Contracting
January 24–25, 2008, Reno, Nevada

Geotechnical
Design of Waste Containment Liner and Final Closure Systems
January 10–11, 2008, Orlando, Florida

Soil Constitutive Modeling for Engineers: Fundamentals, Evaluation, and Calibration
January 17–18, 2008, Las Vegas

Planning, Construction, and Risk Management in Tunneling
January 23–25, 2008, Scottsdale, Arizona

Hydraulics and Water Resources
Treatment Plant Hydraulics for Civil Engineers
January 3–4, 2008, Las Vegas

Pumping Systems Design for Civil Engineers
January 7–9, 2008, Las Vegas

HEC-RAS Computer Workshop
January 9–11, 2008, Houston

Pipe Selection for Municipal Facilities
January 10–11, 2008, San Diego

Dam Safety and Rehabilitation
January 17–18, 2008, Scottsdale, Arizona

HEC-HMS Computer Workshop
January 17–18, 2008, Orlando, Florida

HEC-RAS Computer Workshop for Unsteady Flow Applications
January 23–25, 2008, Phoenix

Stream Bank Stabilization for Restoration and Flood Control
January 30–February 1, 2008, Nashville, Tennessee

Management
Techniques for the Modern Engineering Manager
January 17–18, 2008, Orlando, Florida

Leadership and Development for the Engineer (Newly Updated!)
January 24–25, 2008, Portland, Oregon

Unlocking the Potential of People—An Interactive Seminar for Engineers and Principals
January 24–25, 2008, Las Vegas

How to Successfully Use Value Engineering on Capital Projects (New!)
January 31–February 1, 2008, Atlanta

Structural
Design and Renovation of Wood Structures
January 10–11, 2008, Miami

Design for Cold-Formed Steel Structures
January 10–11, 2008, Boston

Seismic Design of Liquid Storage Tanks
January 11, 2008, Atlanta

Designing Aluminum Structures
January 17–18, 2008, Palm Beach, Florida

Designing High-Performance Concrete Structures
January 24–25, 2008, Seattle

Earthquake-Induced Ground Motions
January 24–25, 2008, San Francisco

Seismic Design and Performance of Building Structures
January 24–25, 2008, New Orleans

Seismic Design of Highway Bridges
January 24–25, 2008, Denver

Structural Condition Assessment of Existing Structures
January 24–25, 2008, Houston

Structural Design of Residential Buildings Using the 2006 International Residential Code
January 24–25, 2008, San Antonio

Wind and Seismic Retrofit of Buildings (New!)
January 24–25, 2008, Scottsdale, Arizona

Structural Design of Buildings and Industrial Facilities for Blast Loads and Accidental Chemical Explosions
January 30–February 1, 2008, Tampa, Florida

---

ASCE CONTINUING EDUCATION WEBINARS

Environmental
Odor Management at Solid Waste Facilities (New!)
January 24, 2008, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Management
Monitoring Project Budgets and Schedules: Earned-Value Method
January 9, 2008, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Marketing 101: Sleazy Activity or Mutually Beneficial Process?
January 15, 2008, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Writing: Producing Action-Oriented Documents, Part I
January 16, 2008, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Writing: Producing Action-Oriented Documents, Part II
January 23, 2008, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Negotiating Better Engineering and Architectural Contracts
January 25, 2008, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

Quality Management in the Design Organization (New!)
January 29, 2008, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Effective Presentation Skills for Engineers: When You Talk, Is Anyone Listening? (New!)
January 30, 2008, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Structural
Design of Steel Lintels in Masonry Walls
January 8, 2008, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

Foundations for Metal Building Systems
January 22, 2008, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

Design of Moment-Resisting Foundations for Pre-engineered Buildings
January 31, 2008, noon–1 pm (eastern time)

Transportation
The Modern Roundabout as a Traffic Signal Alternative, Part I (Now 90 Minutes!) January 3, 2008, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

The Modern Roundabout as a Traffic Signal Alternative, Part II (Now 90 Minutes!)
January 10, 2008, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)

Signalized Intersection Safety
January 17, 2008, noon–1:30 pm (eastern time)