January 2008
Volume 33, Number 1

ASCE has named the five individuals who will be honored for lifetime achievement as part of this year’s Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) awards program. ASCE established the OPAL awards in 1999 to celebrate the achievements and recognize the contributions of civil engineers worldwide. Candidates may be nominated by any ASCE member but need not be members of ASCE. The recipients were selected by the Society Awards Committee, which is composed of five past presidents of ASCE. The 2008 OPAL lifetime achievement honorees are Clyde N. Baker, Jr., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, for design; John M. Dionisio, P.E., M.ASCE, for management; Gerald E. Galloway, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, Hon.M.ASCE, for government; William H. Luyties III, P.E., M.ASCE, for construction; and Ernest T. Smerdon, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, for education.

Clyde N. Baker, Jr., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, is being honored for lifetime achievement in design. He is a senior principal engineer and senior vice president of STS Consultants, Ltd., a 550-person consulting engineering firm headquartered in Vernon Hills, Illinois. Baker has worked for the firm for more than 50 years, and during that time he has served as the geotechnical engineer on a significant number of Chicago’s high-rise buildings. He has also served as a geotechnical engineer or consultant on 7 of the 16 tallest buildings in the world, including Chicago’s Sears, Hancock, and Amoco towers; the Petronas Towers, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Taipei 101, in T’aipei (Taipei), Taiwan. Baker has developed an international reputation in the design and construction of deep foundations and has been a leader in using in situ testing techniques correlated with past building performance to develop more efficient foundation designs. Baker received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has earned numerous awards, and is the author of the Drilled Shaft Inspector’s Manual.

John M. Dionisio, P.E., M.ASCE, is the lifetime achievement honoree for management. He is the chief executive officer and president of the board of directors of AECOM Technology Corporation, a global conglomerate with more than 32,000 employees and annual revenue of more than $4.2 billion. Dionisio has been involved in planning, designing, and constructing notable civil engineering projects in New York City, Southern California, and the Dominican Republic. He was named engineer of the year by the Society’s Metropolitan Section and has been a leading advocate for building public and political support for increased investment in public transportation through a program of the American Public Transportation Association called Transportation Partnership for Tomorrow. Dionisio received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the City College of New York and a master’s degree, also in civil engineering, from the Polytechnic Institute of New York (now Polytechnic University).

Gerald E. Galloway, Ph.D., P.E., D.WRE, Hon.M.ASCE, this year’s lifetime achievement honoree for government, is the Glenn L. Martin Institute Professor of Engineering at the University of Maryland and an affiliate professor in the School of Public Policy there. He is also a visiting scholar at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Institute for Water Resources and a senior consultant to the Michael Baker Corporation for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood map modernization program. Galloway graduated from the U.S. Military Academy with a bachelor of science and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. During a 38-year career in the military he served in various command and staff assignments worldwide, including commanding the Corps district headquartered in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He has also been a professor of geography and computer science, and he was the founding head of the geography and environmental engineering department at the U.S. Military Academy. In 1990 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and appointed the ninth dean of the academy’s academic board. Galloway retired from active duty in 1995. He has also served as a consultant to the Executive Office of the President of the United States and has lent his time and expertise to various organizations concerned with water resources.

William H. Luyties III, P.E., M.ASCE, is being honored for lifetime achievement in construction. The vice president of major projects for Luminant Construction, headquartered in Dallas, he has managed myriad offshore projects, including several of the deepest offshore platforms in the world. His most recent project was the Lunskoye offshore platform, a $1-billion undertaking in Russia that forms part of the $10-billion Sakhalin Phase 2 energy project. He was also the project manager for the Na Kika system, a $1.5-billion offshore endeavor that was carried out in water 6,350 ft (1,935 m) deep in the Gulf of Mexico. The project was unusual in that it was the first deepwater development that was not supported by a large oil and gas field. Rather, it tied together six medium-sized, independent oil and gas fields. Luyties obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1975 and a master’s degree in 1976, both in civil engineering and both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was an employee of the Shell Oil Company, headquartered in the Netherlands, for 30 years and is registered as a professional engineer in Texas and California.

Ernest T. Smerdon, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, is being honored for lifetime achievement in education. He is dean emeritus at the University of Arizona, where he was vice provost and dean of the College of Engineering for 10 years. He held the Janet S. Cockrell Centennial Chair in the civil engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin and the Bess Harris Jones Centennial Professorship in Natural Resource Policy Studies at the university’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Smerdon was also the vice-chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Texas. He has served as the president of the American Society for Engineering Education and worked closely with that group in developing its seminal report Engineering Education for a Changing World. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1986 and has served on numerous academy committees. Smerdon has received a plethora of honors and awards, has written widely on engineering education, and has spoken on the subject in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Turkey, Russia, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Norway, Trinidad, Switzerland, South Africa, and Portugal.

As part of The Infrastructure Security Partnership’s breakfast speaker series, Stephen E. Flynn, the Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, in New York City, and the author of The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (New York City: Random House, 2007), spoke on December 13 in Washington, D.C., at the Army and Navy Club. Flynn proposed a strategy for confronting terrorism and rebuilding and maintaining the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. After describing lessons that, as he sees it, should have been learned from the September 2001 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, he explained why it is in the nation’s best interests economically and from the standpoint of homeland security to repair our infrastructure.

“I think that my job today is to frame this issue in a way that we can get this message out to a much broader audience,” Flynn said. He stated that as he surveyed the remnants of the Minneapolis bridge that until last August carried Interstate 35W over the Mississippi, he was reminded of the World Trade Center site shortly after its towers collapsed. The fact that the bridge collapse occurred in relatively mild weather and was not the result of a terrorist onslaught seemed to him more sobering than if the failure had come from a planned attack, he said.

Flynn recognizes that rebuilding and maintaining the nation’s infrastructure are not at present primary concerns of the country’s leaders because such issues have been superseded by those of national security and the war on terrorism. Nevertheless, he believes that if terrorism were treated as a hazard rather than an amorphous threat, society would be better prepared to “take the blows when they happen and ideally deter them.”

To build his case for developing national resilience, Flynn listed three lessons that were or should have been learned from the September 2001 attacks. The first, which he said the country “overlearned,” is that “there are bad people out there who want to kill us here.” He believes that the country has dealt with this threat by adhering to the approach that has been developed over the past century: taking the offensive and attacking on foreign soil. “We framed it in such a way that fit very nicely with our national security apparatus,” he said. Nevertheless, the result was that the country did not have the means to address the threat as a domestic issue, according to Flynn.

The second lesson, which Flynn believes the American people “partially learned,” is that the future battleground will be the “economic civil space.” He argued that assets that are listed in this category have not been appropriately safeguarded. Resources, he asserted, are allocated in ways that may be injudicious: the United States spent more on conventional military capability in 2004 than the rest of the world combined, and the U.S. Navy is bigger than the next 17 largest navies in the world combined. Therefore, he said, the adversaries of the United States, rather than confronting our armed forces directly, will resort to other tactics. “The way in which [our adversaries] can most challenge U.S. power is in our economic civil space because that is where we are the most exposed and that is where you get the most disruption,” he said. By way of example, Flynn stated that the Port of San Diego receives more funding for its security than the rest of the West Coast combined because of the presence of a naval base there. In contrast, the Port of Long Beach, also in California, handles 43 percent of all of the containers and 50 percent of the energy that enter the country west of the Rockies. He recounted how, during a speech at a command post in Colorado Springs, Colorado, he had declared, “Think of what you are doing, ladies and gentlemen. By hardening the military assets, you are making our civil assets more attractive targets.” By recognizing that the battleground will be the economic civil space, he contends, likely targets would be singled out for proper protection and resources would be allocated more appropriately.

The third lesson, which Flynn described as being “sadly unlearned,” is that “the only way to safeguard this [economic civil] space is to maximize the participation of the people who occupy [it] in an effort to safeguard it.” As an example, Flynn used the heroic efforts of the passengers on United Airlines’ flight 93 on September 11, 2001. (It is believed that the aircraft was headed toward the U.S. Capitol before its passengers attempted to retake control of the plane, which crashed in Pennsylvania.) “The day was consequential, but it would have been truly catastrophic,” Flynn remarked, if the plane had reached its destination. He explained that the people on that flight were armed with information and “were in the right place at the right time to do something really quite extraordinary to keep that day from being truly catastrophic for everyday Americans.” He argued that, to address a threat in the economic civil space, individuals in that space need to be armed with information and given relevant tasks.

Flynn asserted that from a strategic standpoint, no country has the capability to destroy the United States. Our downfall, should it occur, would probably be a result of fear. Fear, he said, comes from personal awareness of a threat to a vulnerability and a sense of powerlessness against that threat. “A lot of us know that we have threats and vulnerabilities, but if we feel that we have the tools to manage that, we embrace the risk,” he said.

Flynn believes that resilience is the key to combating the fear associated with terrorism in the United States. “Resiliency is fundamentally about building the capability to take the known threat and vulnerability and giving us things to do,” he said. Resilience, he explained, consists of the five Rs: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, restoration, and review. Flynn defined robustness as designing into a system “the ability to withstand a threat or at a minimum mitigate it when it reaches a certain threshold.” He described redundancy simply as not keeping everything in one environment, where it may all be subject to a single man-made or natural disruption. Resourcefulness, he asserted, does not require money; rather, it calls for leadership that can assess the situation and then mobilize resources and coordinate efforts to address it, including assigning priorities appropriately and making decisions that mitigate the consequences. Restoration is the ability to bounce back quickly, and review is the ability to continually adapt a system and “learn from what we are doing based on the experience.”

Flynn believes that protecting critical infrastructure is a significant component of resilience. Such protection would, he contended, confer both economic and security benefits. He said that investors would be more likely to invest in a country that was resilient and could withstand potentially catastrophic events than in one whose infrastructure they regarded as “fragile.” He also explained how investing in resilience made the United States competitive in the past and contended that doing so now would help the country move “out of the realm of paranoia or pessimism.”

Flynn sees resilience as part of the nation’s legacy and character. He stated that World War II veterans are revered because of the adversity they faced, and he is of the opinion that citizens of this country can discuss future adversities without paranoia. “We don’t have to talk about it as one hundred percent prevention. We can talk about it as something that we have to work through and do better than other societies,” he said. Flynn concluded with an excerpt from a speech that a young Abraham Lincoln delivered in Springfield, Illinois, in 1838:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

—Brett Hansen

Facing the Challenges of Sustainability

Within the next two decades, the world’s population will increase by almost 2 billion, and 95 percent of these new inhabitants will be living in developing or underdeveloped countries. This unprecedented growth will create staggering demands for energy, food, land, water, transportation, waste disposal, health care, and telecommunications. Without changes in consumption patterns, the world’s expanding population will experience the economic consequences that follow from reduced supplies of water, energy, and other natural resources.

The National Academy of Sciences sees 1979 as the year of the earth’s “tipping point”—that is, the year when the consumption of natural resources exceeded the earth’s ability to replenish them. While there are a multiplicity of collective and individual solutions, a culture of sustainability offers significant hope that humanity can take action to address its overuse of resources.

What action is ASCE taking to address this crisis? The Society’s commitment to sustainable development is clear in our Code of Ethics, which states (guidelines to practice for canon 1) that “engineers whose professional judgment is overruled under circumstances where . . . the principles of sustainable development are ignored, shall inform their clients or employers of the possible consequences.” The code goes on to say that “engineers should seek opportunities to be of constructive service in civic affairs and work for the . . . protection of the environment through the practice of sustainable development.”

ASCE’s Policy 418 (“The Role of the Civil Engineer in Sustainable Development”) states that “sustainable development is the challenge of meeting human needs for natural resources, industrial products, energy, food, transportation, shelter, and effective waste management while conserving and protecting environmental quality and the natural resource base essential for future development.” This policy embodies a commitment by ASCE to strengthen and broaden the education of engineers and to find innovative ways to achieve needed economic development while conserving natural resources. ASCE is working in different ways to achieve these objectives.

ASCE supports the development goals set forth in the United Nations Millennium Declaration as they apply to improving the quality of people’s lives around the world through science and engineering. ASCE works in collaboration with other domestic and international organizations to engage engineers in addressing the needs of the poor through capacity building and the implementation of measures that reflect the goals of sustainable development. By helping to meet the goals stated in the U.N. declaration, the engineering profession contributes to a world in which all people have access to the knowledge and resources with which to meet their basic human needs, and it helps to promote sustainable development in the areas of water supply, sanitation, food production, housing, construction, energy, transportation, communication, income generation, and employment creation.

The ASCE publication The Vision for Civil Engineering in 2025 (available at http://content.ASCE.org/vision2025/index.html) marks the culmination of almost five years of effort and represents the collective wisdom of more than 60 experts from around the world. The vision, which grew out of the Summit on the Future of Civil Engineering, a conference convened by the Society in 2006, states that civil engineers “shall be stewards” of the natural environment and its resources and notes that they will need to serve as master builders, innovators, and integrators; as managers of risk and uncertainty; and as leaders in shaping public policy. The report serves as a guide for developing policies and plans and charting progress within the civil engineering community. It is also a call to action to individuals and organizations, providing direction to achieve the vision’s goals.

ASCE’s expanded affiliation with Engineers Without Borders–USA (EWB) increases opportunities for engineers and engineering students to take part in hands-on engineering projects and to provide training to those living in poor communities so that residents there can implement sustainable solutions and become self-sufficient. EWB engineers also work to establish infrastructure for communities challenged to provide their residents even with life’s basic necessities. Through our support of EWB, ASCE has made a significant, long-term commitment to helping those in need. To learn more about EWB and about how to support the organization’s valuable work, visit the group’s Web site at www.ewb-usa.org.

ASCE provides various forums for discussing issues related to sustainable development in the engineering, environmental, and financial communities, and it facilitates dialogue with policy makers and key legislators. For example, the discussion at the international roundtable in Orlando, Florida, that formed part of ASCE’s 2007 annual conference focused on building water infrastructure for sustainable development.
ASCE’s working group in the Practice, Education, and Research for Sustainable Infrastructure (PERSI) initiative includes the American Institute of Architects, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, the American Planning Association, the American Society of Interior Designers, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Water Works Association, ASTM International, Autodesk, the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Construction Specifications Institute, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Institute of Building Sciences, and the U.S. Green Building Council. The working group’s memorandum of understanding establishes PERSI as an infrastructure community alliance whose members pledge to work cooperatively and collaboratively to promote and implement the principles of sustainable development.
Many of ASCE’s institutes and committees are integrating sustainability into their plans and programs. For example, the Coasts, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute is actively working to support PERSI’s goals, is planning workshops and short courses on such sustainability issues as energy conservation and climate change, and has made project sustainability a criterion in conferring its Project Excellence Award. Moreover, the Technical Activities Committee’s Committee on Sustainability is working with all ASCE units to develop a comprehensive sustainable development action plan and is preparing guidelines that ASCE’s sections, branches, and student chapters can use in promoting sustainability programs and activities at the local level.

The Engineer’s Forum on Sustainability, sponsored by ASCE, the American Society for Engineering Education, the IEEE, the ASME, and the AIChE’s Institute for Sustainability under the auspices of the American Association of Engineering Societies, considers a wide range of sustainable issues and recently delivered a report as part of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment that outlines ways of making campuses more environmentally benign. The Engineer’s Forum on Sustainability was established in 1997, and its mission is to help promote the principles and practice of sustainable development by providing a meeting place for the exchange of information, distributing information on engineering education that embodies the concepts of sustainable development, encouraging practicing engineers to apply sustainable development principles, and keeping abreast of international developments that can further the goals of sustainability.

As we enter 2008, I urge our members to take an active part in Society endeavors to find solutions to sustainability challenges. One of our Society’s highest callings is to prepare the engineering community—this generation and the next—to address and meet these challenges. The judicious use of our resources, especially water and energy, will go far in helping people in both developing and developed nations around the world.

—David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE

ASCE Lends a Hand to Renovate And Repair Outreach Center in Florida

At the close of the 2007 ASCE Annual Civil Engineering Conference, which was held in Orlando, Florida, in November, ASCE partnered with Rebuilding Together—an organization devoted to revitalizing houses for low-income homeowners—to renovate and repair Orlando’s Frontline Outreach Center. This is the fifth year in a row that Society volunteers have participated in a project of this type to round out their experience at the annual conference.

Fifty-five volunteers from ASCE, Rebuilding Together, and other organizations participated in the project, which took place on November 4. Their goal was to improve the functionality and appearance of the center. Volunteers painted the center’s gymnasium floor and installed a trench drain by digging, laying pipe, and covering the area with asphalt. They also striped the parking lot and constructed an enclosure for a trash dumpster. The parking lot, the dumpster enclosure, and the trench drain were designed by volunteer civil engineers from the Horizon Engineering Group, Inc., of Maitland, Florida, and Paul J. Ford and Company, of Orlando.

 “In their professional lives, civil engineers work to improve our quality of life, so naturally, in a volunteer capacity civil engineering and public service also go hand in hand,” remarked ASCE’s newly inaugurated president, David G. Mongan, P.E., F.ASCE, in a press release prior to the event. “Our members’ engineering skills will be particularly beneficial to this revitalization project,” he said.

The Frontline Outreach Center is Orlando’s oldest facility of this type for urban children, and it serves more than 1,000 people each day. This nonprofit facility provides educational, after-school, and leadership programs for children. The center’s Web site (www.frontlineoutreach.org) states that “we assist in the growth and development of youth and their families through our relationships in the urban community, suburbs, county, state, among businesses, and in the churches. All of these are important to our ability to serve families, to leverage support, and to equip world-class leaders from the urban center.”

ASCE began partnering with Rebuilding Together in 2002 as part of the celebrations marking its 150th anniversary. The service projects, however, have continued and have become an addendum to ASCE’s annual conference. Rebuilding Together and its affiliates rehabilitate nearly 10,000 houses and nonprofit facilities every year. ASCE members are among approximately 272,000 volunteers who donate their time and skills to Rebuilding Together annually.

This year’s event was organized by ASCE’s Committee on Volunteer Community Service, the Florida Section, the Younger Member Forum of that section’s East Central Branch, and Rebuilding Together of Central Florida. Those interested in being part of the volunteer endeavor next year should contact Alicia Karwoski at akarwoski@asce.org.

Roundtable Reviews Mentoring And Capacity Building in Afghanistan

The U.S. Trade and Development Agency hosted a roundtable discussion on November 20 in Arlington, Virginia, that addressed the progress of the program established in Afghanistan in which U.S. firms act as mentors to Afghan engineers and firms in order to expand the civil engineering profession there. The roundtable was held as a follow-up meeting to a workshop held last July at which senior members of the engineering profession, together with representatives of educational, government, and professional organizations, met to discuss ways of helping engineers and engineering in that country. (See “Workshop Seeks Mentors to Guide Afghanistan’s Reconstruction,” ASCE News, August 2007.)

“ASCE has a lot of capability. Our goal is to make that capability available to others,” said Mike Sanio, M.ASCE, the Society’s director of international alliances and the roundtable’s moderator, at the beginning of the discussion. The roundtable included participants from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (established in 2002 and administered by the World Bank), and several prominent engineering firms.

Abdul Hadi Rakin, P.E., M.ASCE, the chair of the Society of Afghan Engineers, briefly highlighted the success of the training program in Kābol (Kabul) during the past few months. He noted that during the first training session, which lasted six to seven hours per day for approximately two weeks, the trainers were concerned that attendance would drop after the first day. Instead, however, the audience for the training sessions grew, signaling the desire of Afghan engineers to participate and learn.

Michael Goode, P.E., M.ASCE, a senior infrastructure consultant for the Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc., headquartered in Pasadena, California, and the Society’s former director of grants and contracts, stated that, in his view, engineers are undervalued in Afghanistan and that most engineers there work for contractors. “From the owner’s perspective, the engineers are only a support to what the contractors have to do. The need is there for the government and the universities to get a better knowledge base,” he said.

The roundtable participants also discussed how to integrate engineering professionals into Afghanistan’s current infrastructure projects as reliable engineering consultants. Fredrick S. Berger, P.E., M.ASCE, a senior vice president of the Louis Berger Group, Inc., of Washington, D.C., suggested that Kansas University, which is currently receiving funds from the World Bank to strengthen the engineering program at Kabul University, create a “business incubator” that would help small Afghan engineering firms grow by providing them with full-time engineers and equipment. Other suggestions included hiring individuals as interns and creating a reward program for Afghan engineers who are willing to participate in training. Berger pointed out that, if a suitable model could be developed for helping Afghanistan, it could be helpful to other nations that may need similar assistance.

Keeping your family protected just got a lot easier with a new electronic tool designed expressly for ASCE members—the ASCE Group Term Life Insurance electronic brochure. This easy-to-use brochure makes it possible to access life insurance information online and to use interactive Web-based tools and calculators to evaluate different forms of insurance protection. ASCE felt that the brochure was the most user-friendly and effective way to deliver valuable information on life insurance to its members. To access the brochure and view important information on life insurance, visit www.ASCEinsuranceguide.com.

As we move into a new calendar year, I urge you to develop nominations for ASCE awards. The deadline is February 1 for awards for younger members, including the Edmund Friedman Young Engineer Award for Professional Achievement, the Daniel W. Mead Prize for Younger Members, the Collingwood Prize, and the Younger Member Group Award. Comprehensive information about these awards can be found at http://www.asce.org/awards.

Watch your e-mail boxes. The inaugural issue of ASCE SmartBrief is coming your way! This daily electronic bulletin is one more way we are improving our services to members and increasing the flow of important information to you. ASCE SmartBrief summarizes important news of the day that has a bearing on our profession and the world of civil engineering. ASCE is offering the bulletin to you at no cost, but to continue receiving it you’ll have to sign up by clicking on the link included in the first issue. So keep an eye out! We are certain you will find ASCE SmartBrief valuable to you as a professional.

Since February of last year, the Society’s continuing education department, in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Gulf Region Division (grd), has been presenting monthly Web-based training sessions for construction and engineering professionals in Iraq. This training initiative, which has received assistance from the firm SBH, LLC, from the Iraqi government, and from the ASCE international group in Iraq, has provided professionals in the region with vital access to technical training in the latest construction techniques. The courses have covered such topics as project management, reinforced masonry, the repair of concrete structures, project work plans, the renovation of slabs on grade, the fundamentals of design/build contracting, and the strengthening of concrete buildings. The training is delivered through an approach that combines distance learning with live classroom interaction. The live Web seminars have been presented by a select group of ASCE instructors, among them Douglas D. Gransberg, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, Alexander Newman, P.E., F.ASCE, Ann Tomalavage, P.E., M.ASCE, and Stu Walesh, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE. The technical presentations are translated into Arabic by Safa Shubat, P.E., who also facilitates discussions between the presenters and the participants in Iraq. This open, two-way communication would not be possible with written course materials or electronic presentations alone. It also gives Iraqi professionals access to high-quality training and the latest advances without requiring them to travel or incur risk. Class sizes have more than tripled, from 15 to 55, and the response from the attendees has been overwhelmingly positive. The Society extends its sincere appreciation to the grd and other partners that have supported and sponsored this vital training initiative. For more information about ASCE’s on-site training initiatives, contact John A. Wyrick, the manager of on-site training worldwide, by phone at (703) 295-6184 or by e-mail at jwyrick@asce.org.

—Patrick J. Natale, P.E., F.ASCE
Executive Director

SITUATION: A recent graduate accepts a position at a small engineering design firm. Her new colleagues form a tightly knit, congenial group, and she often joins them for get-togethers after work. But several months after she joins the firm, the firm’s president advises her that his wife has objected to her presence on the staff. Contending that it is “inappropriate” for a young, single female to work and socialize with a group of male engineers, many of whom are married, the president’s wife has been encouraging her husband to terminate the engineer’s employment, and although the president himself has no issues with the engineer or her work, he suggests to her that she may need to look for another job.

When the engineer’s immediate supervisor learns of this conversation and expresses outrage to the president, the president backs down and offers to “let sleeping dogs lie.” But soon thereafter at a company party the president’s wife raises the topic again, complaining loudly and openly about the young woman’s employment.

With everyone in the firm now aware of the wife’s objections, the engineer begins to notice a difference in her work environment. Although her colleagues are openly supportive of her, she nevertheless feels that the wife’s comments have altered their perception of her. She stops receiving invitations to her company’s parties and is excluded from after-hours gatherings. Even worse, while she had previously found her work both interesting and challenging, she no longer receives assignments from the firm’s president and she begins to sense that her colleagues are treating her as someone who will not be a long-term member of the staff. Believing that she is no longer taken seriously as an engineer and that she will have little opportunity to advance within the firm, she begins searching for a new position. However, before she can do so her supervisor announces a downsizing of the firm, and she is the first engineer to be laid off.

The young engineer contacts a former professor for help in finding a new job, and the professor in turn contacts ASCE’s ethics hotline to report the president’s conduct.

QUESTION: Is it an ethics violation for an engineering employer to exclude and ultimately discharge an employee on the basis of sex, age, or marital status?

DECISION: While ASCE’s Code of Ethics is silent on the issue of employment discrimination, canon 6 reads as follows: “Engineers shall act in such a manner as to uphold and enhance the honor, integrity, and dignity of the engineering profession.” Canon 7 enjoins engineers to “provide opportunities for the professional development of those engineers under their supervision,” and paragraph (d) in the guidelines to practice for that canon states that engineers are to “uphold the principle of mutually satisfying relationships between employers and employees with respect to terms of employment.” These strictures suggest that a member is obliged to act in this way for all employees, regardless of gender.

While the Committee on Professional Conduct (CPC) staff contact believed that the employer’s conduct raised a potential ethics violation under either canon 6 or canon 7, the contact believed that a more effective means of addressing the matter might be through the complaint process of federal or state human rights agencies. The contact noted that by excluding and ultimately discharging an employee on the basis of gender, the employer may have violated federal, state, or local laws prohibiting discrimination.
For example, title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 reads as follows:

(a) It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer -
      (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or
      (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Employees who feel their title VII rights have been violated may file a complaint through their local Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and employers found to have violated a worker’s rights may incur civil liabilities. Moreover, while the federal Civil Rights Act covers only employers who have 15 or more employees, many states and localities have adopted legislation that bars discrimination by smaller employers and have established civil rights divisions to investigate violations of such laws.
As the engineer’s former employer was not a member of ASCE, the CPC could not open an investigation into the conduct in question. The female engineer found new employment shortly thereafter and elected not to take any further action against her former employer.

In 2000 ASCE established the Committee on Diversity and Women in Civil Engineering, and in 2005 it adopted Policy 417 (“Achieving Diversity and Equity”). Noting that women and members of minority groups historically have been underrepresented in the engineering profession, this policy affirms ASCE’s goal of promoting diversity within the civil engineering community, and it encourages members to provide an “equitable opportunity for participation of all people within the civil engineering profession without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or physical challenges.” As ASCE continues to work toward enhancing diversity within the civil engineering profession, it is possible that future editions of the Code of Ethics may include an express obligation to treat employees fairly irrespective of gender, race, or any other factor, trait, or characteristic extraneous to engineering ability.

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.

Nodes Named Arizona DOT’s Assistant State Engineer
In October Scott E. Nodes, P.E., M.ASCE, was promoted to assistant state engineer in the Arizona Department of Transportation (DOT). Nodes has more than 20 years of engineering experience, having worked as a transportation engineer for the Oregon DOT and as a transportation engineer for local governments in Arizona. He also worked as a transportation engineering manager and was the acting transportation technology group manager for Arizona’s DOT for a year and a half. Nodes earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Ohio State University and a master’s degree, also in civil engineering, from Arizona State University. He is a registered professional engineer in Arizona and Oregon and is also a registered professional traffic operations engineer.

Pearson Receives Marshall Scholarship
Lee Pearson, S.M.ASCE, a student at Duke University, has been selected as one of 40 recipients of Marshall scholarships, which are awarded for graduate study in the United Kingdom and are funded by the U.K. government. The scholarships are open only to U.S. citizens who hold an undergraduate degree from an accredited four-year college or university in the United States and have a grade point average of at least 3.7. Pearson plans to study ecological economics at the University of Edinburgh during his first year and engineering for sustainable development at the University of Cambridge during his second. A double major in civil and environmental engineering and biomedical engineering at Duke, Pearson has been actively involved in water resource projects in Uganda through the university’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders–USA.

Wills Named AISI Vice President
The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) announced that Robert J. Wills, P.E., M.ASCE, has been promoted to vice president of its construction market development department. In this position he will be responsible for overseeing AISI’s construction market programs as they relate to commercial buildings, residential construction, and the transportation and infrastructure markets and to the institute’s construction codes and standards program. Wills replaces Delbert F. Boring, Jr., P.E., M.ASCE, who stepped down after 31 years of service. Wills was formerly AISI’s director of construction codes and standards and has more than 18 years of experience with AISI. He has been active in the standards development field as a member of ASTM International, asce, the National Fire Protection Association, the International Code Council, and the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. Wills holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Mississippi State University and is a registered professional engineer in Alabama.

Erzurumlu Honored as Eminent Graduate
H. Chik Erzurumlu, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, received the Distinguished Engineering Graduate Award from the University of Texas at Austin at commencement ceremonies held on December 8. The annual selections, made by the Cockrell School of Engineering, are based on, among other factors, outstanding professional records, public service, and support of education. Erzurumlu is emeritus dean and a retired professor of civil engineering at Portland State University. As the founding dean of Portland State’s Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, he was instrumental in transforming a pre-engineering program into a comprehensive college that now has more than 1,900 students enrolled in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in five engineering fields and computer science. Erzurumlu has also been active in asce and the National Society of Professional Engineers, serving in leadership positions at the local and national levels. He also represents asce within ABET, Inc., serving as a member of the Engineering Accreditation Commission.

Fleming Receives Educator Of the Year Award
Lorraine N. Fleming, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, has been selected to receive the National Society of Black Engineers’ Janice A. Lumpkin Educator of the Year Award. The award honors college faculty members who are outstanding teachers of engineering, science, or mathematics and who support the society’s mission “to increase the number of culturally responsible black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally, and positively impact the community.” Fleming is a professor at Howard University and a former chair of its civil engineering department. Since joining the Howard faculty she has led initiatives to attract and retain African-American students in engineering, science, technology, and mathematics, and she was instrumental in bringing two major National Science Foundation research projects on undergraduate engineering education to Howard University. Fleming has also participated in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning—a program within the Car- negie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching—as a Carnegie scholar, and in 2006 she received an award from the foundation for her work in helping teachers become more effective.

Sterling Honored with OTC Award
Gordon H. Sterling, M.ASCE, has been selected to receive the Heritage Award, bestowed by the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC). Sterling is an expert in deepwater ventures and has a number of record-setting projects in the Gulf of Mexico to his credit. He served as the manager of deepwater projects for the Shell Oil Company and coauthored the book Deepwater Petroleum Exploration & Production: A Nontechnical Guide (Pennwell Books, 2003). Within ASCE Sterling served as the president of the Coasts, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute. Established in 1997 to mark the 50th anniversary of the offshore industry, the Heritage Award recognizes individuals who have rendered distinguished service and made significant contributions in work to develop offshore resources. Sterling was cited for championing Shell Oil Company’s deep-water ventures in the Gulf of Mexico and for his leadership of the OTC.

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.

Mir Ali, P.E., F.ASCE, is an associate with Jacobs Carter Burgess in Dallas and is the firm’s manager of bridge services. He has 30 years of professional engineering experience in civil and structural engineering work that has focused on transportation, in particular, mass transit and highway projects. He also has expertise in the design, inspection, rehabilitation, and seismic retrofitting of bridges. Ali has managed numerous multimillion-dollar construction projects, most notably Jubail Industrial City, in Saudi Arabia, and the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, in Boston. He was also the project manager for the Fee Fee Creek Bridge, in Maryland Heights, Missouri, which received an award from the Concrete Council in 2003. Ali has been a member of ASCE since 1983 and currently chairs the group within the Texas Section’s Dallas Chapter that is allied with the Structural Engineering Institute. Since 1997 he has taught courses in Boston, St. Louis, and Dallas for those preparing to sit for the Principles and Practice of Engineering Exam. In 2004 he was named the outstanding engineer of the year in private practice by the St. Louis chapter of the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers. Ali holds a bachelor of engineering degree in civil engineering from the University of Karachi, in Pakistan, and a graduate degree in concrete materials and structures from the University of London and is a registered professional engineer in 12 states and in Pakistan.

Sadik Al-Musawe, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is the president and chief executive officer of SAM Engineering & Testing, LP, of Irving, Texas. He received an undergraduate degree in engineering from London South Bank University (formerly South Bank Polytechnic), a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a doctorate from the University of Florida at Gainesville. Al-Musawe is a registered professional engineer in Texas, and his expertise is in the field of geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering. He began his career serving as a soil and geotechnical engineer in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia. After working with private engineering firms in Florida and Texas and practicing as an engineering consultant, he established his own engineering firm in 1994. In his 30 years of professional experience, Al-Musawe has produced reports and established design and construction criteria and construction specifications in the areas of foundation designs, retaining walls and slopes, and soil and rock mechanics. He has also carried out state-of-the-art field-testing of soils and construction materials. His research interests center on the hydraulic conductivity of clay liners and the rutting of asphaltic pavement under cyclic loads. Al-Musawe has been a member of ASCE since 1985.

Jahangir Bakhteri, Ph.D., Reg. Eng., F.ASCE, is an associate professor at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, where he has taught since 1999 specializing in structures. Before his university appointment he practiced as a structural and design engineer with firms in Afghanistan and Malaysia. He is a chartered engineer in India and a registered professional engineer in Malaysia. Bakhteri received a bachelor of science in civil engineering from Kabul (Kābol) University, in Afghanistan, and master’s and doctoral degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. He began his career as a structural design engineer with Afghanistan’s public works ministry, where he designed various earthquake-resistant building structures. Later he worked for private engineering consulting firms in Malaysia designing high-rises and load-bearing brickwork structures and then decided to use his experience to help prepare future generations of engineers at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Bakhteri has contributed to the advancement of civil engineering through applied research and experimental study as well as through numerical investigations of concrete and masonry structures. He has published his findings in engineering journals and made presentations at international conferences. He is credited with developing a slicing technique that uses finite-element techniques as part of an approximation method for analyzing hydroelectric powerhouse structures. Bakhteri has been an active member of ASCE since 1996.

Zeki Demirbilek, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, has nearly 30 years of service to the engineering community, the last 17 years with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He has played a key role in moving academic research into the Corps’s coastal engineering practice by promoting the development of advanced modeling tools. Early in his career Demirbilek made significant contributions to the design and analysis of tension leg platforms during the early stages of their development by carrying out research that focused on predictive modeling tools. His recent work has dealt with the development of advanced wave modeling technology for coastal inlets, structures, and navigation projects and with hydrodynamic loadings and mooring design estimates for novel military applications. Demirbilek holds patents and has published books on tension leg platforms and on wave forces on inclined and vertical wall structures. He has also served on American Petroleum Institute advisory committees that have provided input in the preparation of the institute’s practice manuals. An active member of ASCE for nearly 25 years, Demirbilek has been an assistant editor, associate editor, and editor of the Society’s Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal, and Ocean Engineering and has chaired committees dealing with waves and wave forces and with computer applications in coastal engineering. He is a current member of the Ocean and Offshore Engineering Committee, which is part of the Coasts, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute, and he also serves on that institute’s Awards Committee. He is an associate editor of the international journal Ocean Engineering and a member of its editorial board. Demirbilek has more than 50 journal and conference papers, 20 technical notes and manuals for practicing engineers, and 120 technical reports to his credit. The holder of a bachelor’s degree from the Deniz Harp Okulu (Turkish Naval Academy) and a doctorate from Texas A&M University, he is a licensed engineer in Texas and California.

Antoine N. Gergess, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is an associate professor and dean of students at the University of Balamand, in Lebanon. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the American University of Beirut and a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of South Florida. Gergess is a licensed professional engineer in Florida and Lebanon. Earlier in his career he practiced as a structural engineer with Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan and with Parsons Brinckerhoff, and he worked for DMJM as a bridge specialist in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Puerto Rico. His research has focused on bending techniques for high-performance steel girders. Gergess is recognized for his expertise in complex bridge design, and the notable projects to which he has contributed include the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, a cable-stayed structure over Boston’s Charles River; a cantilever bridge for the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority’s light-rail system; and a posttensioned voided slab bridge over the Tamiami Canal in Miami, a first for Florida. Gergess has been an active member of ASCE since 1989 and has served on the board of the Florida Section’s Miami-Dade Branch. In 1991 he was honored with the Florida Outstanding Young Engineer of the Year Award by the South Florida Section (now part of the Florida Section).

Jeffrey S. Glenn, P.E., D.WRE, CFM, F.ASCE, is the water resources service group leader for the transportation and public infrastructure program at Reynolds, Smith and Hills, Inc. Based in Orlando, Florida, he has more than 20 years of experience managing, supervising, and performing hydrologic and hydraulic modeling for a variety of projects throughout the East Coast and Texas. Glenn has developed and applied computer-based hydrologic and hydraulic models for municipal, land development, and research projects and has conducted many hydraulic modeling projects and bridge scour evaluations both in this country and abroad. He worked closely with the transportation departments of 10 states to develop solutions and create standardized evaluation procedures for bridge scour problems. In the 1980s Glenn wrote a computer program, Water Surface Profiles with Encroachments in the Flood Plain, for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that calculates water surface profiles in irregularly shaped channels under gradually varying steady-state flow conditions, and the program is used today by all engineering firms contracted by FEMA for floodplain mapping. Among his notable projects, Glenn was an important contributor to a FEMA flood insurance study of Brays Bayou, in Houston, and was the principal hydraulic modeler in work to improve the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Plant, in Washington, D.C. This project included three-dimensional modeling of a secondary sedimentation basin in the wastewater treatment facility. Additional capacity was required in that project, but the facility could not be expanded physically. Glenn has been active within ASCE since 1984, serving on national technical committees and as president of the New Hampshire Section. He has served on the Transportation Research Board and has 10 articles in technical journals to his credit. He is a diplomate of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers and has obtained certification from the Association of State Floodplain Managers. Glenn received a bachelor’s degree from New England College and a master’s degree in civil engineering from Pennsylvania State University and is a licensed professional engineer in Florida and seven other states.

Tony C.G. Lau, P.E., F.ASCE, is a project manager engineer with HDR Hawaii Pacific Engineers. He has more than 16 years of experience specializing in site development, water and wastewater infrastructure design, and regulatory compliance studies. Lau manages the production of civil, public works, utility infrastructure, and planning design documents. His notable and award-winning projects include a water treatment plant upgrade at the U.S. Navy base on Guam, which garnered an award for outstanding project management and creativity; the development of programming documents for a magnetic silencing facility at Pearl Harbor; and a water capacity study at a naval facility on Diego Garcia that led to solutions for upgrading the freshwater system to meet future demand. Lau has been active within ASCE on multiple levels for 16 years, promoting the profession and working to increase membership and participation at the local level. He served as president of the Hawaii Section and of that section’s Younger Member Forum, and during his time at the helm the groups were recognized with zonal and national awards. While serving on the section committee dealing with history and heritage, he was instrumental in having an irrigation system on Maui declared a civil engineering landmark, and as chair of ASCE’s Committee on Younger Members he worked to encourage the growth of younger member groups at the local and national levels. In addition to his outreach work to encourage students to consider careers in civil engineering, he is involved with a number of local civic charities and causes. He was named Hawaii young engineer of the year, and he has been the recipient of ASCE’s Edmund Friedman Young Engineer Award for Professional Achievement and numerous awards from the Society’s Western Regional Younger Member Council. Lau received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is a licensed civil engineer in Hawaii.

Richard E. Lilyquist, P.E., F.ASCE, is the director of public works for the City of Lakeland, Florida. He is a licensed professional engineer in Florida and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Florida. Lilyquist has dedicated most of his professional career to public works engineering in Florida and South Carolina. Early in his career he worked on water and wastewater treatment plant structures for Smith and Gillespie Engineers, Inc., and as a structural engineer for Flood Engineers, Inc., he worked on highway bridge projects. He began his public service in 1987 as assistant county engineer for Highlands County, Florida. Later he served as the director of environmental services and as county engineer for Spartanburg County, South Carolina, where he managed transportation projects, implemented flood damage prevention ordinances, and directed new projects for the collection and disposal of solid waste. Lilyquist has been the director of public works for Lakeland since 1998, overseeing an annual operating budget of more than $37 million. His work includes developing and implementing long-range transportation and storm-water programs. One of his most notable achievements came after a record-breaking hurricane season in 2004, when he directed an operation that successfully removed more than 230,000 cu yd (175,904 m³) of storm debris in a matter of weeks. Lilyquist has been an active member of ASCE since 1982 and in 1999 was named engineer of the year by the Florida Section’s Ridge Branch. In addition to his work in community outreach projects, he serves as a mentor to students and has set up an engineering intern program in Lakeland’s public works department. His accolades include the Outstanding Government Official Award, conferred on him by the Chamber of Commerce of Lake Placid, Florida, and an award for outstanding service from the Florida Association of County Engineers and Road Superintendents.

Hugo A. Loaiciga, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is a professor of geography at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he has taught and conducted research since 1988. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the Universidad de Costa Rica in 1978 and began working as a civil engineer in that country. Later he received master’s and doctoral degrees in civil engineering from the University of California at Davis. A licensed professional engineer in Costa Rica and California, Loaiciga has made novel contributions to the development and application of probabilistic methods for planning, analyzing, and operating water resources engineering works. His groundbreaking work includes the development of innovative methods for the design and construction of ground-monitoring networks used in remediating contaminated groundwater sources; a novel method of forensic hydrology used to ascertain the effect of human-induced changes on flood hazards; and a technique for extracting water from aquifers that furthers the goals of sustainable development. Loaiciga’s accolades include ASCE’s 1994 Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize and the Environmental and Water Resources Institute’s 2002 Service to the Profession Award. He has been active in many national organizations, has served as associate editor of Water Resources Research and the Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, and has lent his expertise to many ASCE task force committees. He currently serves as chair of the Environmental and Water Resources Institute’s KSTAT Standards Committee, which concerns itself with the statistical spatial estimation and spatial averaging of hydraulic conductivity using geostatistical theory.

Loaiciga has numerous publications to his credit and has been an invited speaker both in this country and abroad.

Ronaldo Luna, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, is an associate professor at the University of Missouri at Rolla (recently renamed the Missouri University of Science and Technology). Since the early 1990s he has taught and conducted research at Tulane University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Purdue University, and the University of Missouri. Before that he held the position of senior engineer at Hart Crowser, Inc., in Seattle and was a geotechnical engineer with Bechtel Corporation in San Francisco. His expertise is in the areas of geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering, hazard modeling, numerical modeling, and information systems. Luna has received more than $2 million in funding for research that has involved the development of methodologies and systems based on geographic information systems for mitigating such earthquake hazards as liquefaction and ground motion amplification. This work has led to remote sensing technologies that characterize the spatial and spectral properties of soil surfaces. Luna has been the recipient of numerous awards for teaching excellence and innovation, and he was instrumental in establishing a soil dynamics laboratory at the University of Missouri. Chosen as a Fulbright scholar in 2005, he traveled to Guatemala and lectured for eight months there on landslides induced by earthquakes and heavy rain. He also delivered the keynote lecture to the graduating class at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala in 2005. Luna lends his time and expertise to Engineers Without Borders–USA and was a faculty mentor during the 2005–06 academic year. Within ASCE he served as a faculty adviser to the student chapter at Tulane and was a member of the geotechnical steering committee within the Louisiana Section’s New Orleans Branch. He has also served on the Geo-Institute’s Computer Applications and Numerical Methods Committee and was an editor for ASCE’s first geotechnical conference in China.

David M. Schnurbusch, P.E., F.ASCE, received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Vermont and is a registered professional engineer in Texas. He is the president and chief executive officer of USA Professional Services Group, Inc., a firm based in Dallas that specializes in land planning, zoning, engineering, surveying, landscape architecture, and construction administration services. With more than 30 years of civil engineering experience, Schnurbusch has been responsible for the land planning, zoning, site engineering, and construction administration of more than 400,000 single-family lots in Texas. Active within ASCE since serving as an officer of the student chapter at the University of Vermont, Schnurbusch has served as president of both the Texas Section and the Dallas Branch, and he is currently the director of ASCE’s Region 6. His accolades include the 1990 Young Engineer of the Year Award and the 1998 Civil Engineer of the Year Award. He also received the Texas Section’s 1997 Professional Service Award and its 2003 Award of Honor for his eminence and attainments in the engineering profession. Schnurbusch is also active in a number of local civic organizations and causes.

O. Christopher Webster, P.E., F.ASCE, is a principal with Schnabel Engineering, Inc., a geotechnical engineering firm employing 400 people in 20 offices coast to coast. His current position is that of manager of the firm’s Charlottesville, Virginia, branch. Webster has 23 years of experience as a consulting engineer specializing in geotechnical design, soil exploration and foundation systems, earth dams, gravity dams, slope stability studies, and the management of large geotechnical projects. Among his notable projects, he led the design and investigation of geotechnical aspects for the $84-million Carter-Harrison Research Building, at the University of Virginia, and for the university’s $143-million John Paul Jones Arena, and he has also worked on projects involving power plants, industrial facilities, schools, and potable water and wastewater treatment facilities. Webster has been a guest lecturer at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture and an adjunct instructor in the university’s civil engineering department, where he has taught soil mechanics. In addition to mentoring young engineers in his firm, he acquaints middle school students with the opportunities and challenges offered by a career in civil engineering and serves as an adviser to the ASCE student chapter at the University of Virginia. Webster is a former president of the Virginia Section’s Blue Ridge Branch and was recognized by the branch for his leadership in activities to mark the Society’s 150th anniversary. He has also been an officer in the Virginia Section’s geotechnical group. Webster holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in civil engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is a licensed professional engineer in Virginia.

Michael H. Wenning, P.E., F.ASCE, studied civil engineering at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy before transferring to Purdue University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree. He is currently a department manager for both the Indianapolis and the Columbus, Ohio, offices of American Structurepoint, Inc., a multidisciplinary consulting firm for which he has worked since graduation. He has been involved in more than 500 bridge replacement and rehabilitation projects, which have included highway, railroad, and pedestrian structures. A licensed professional engineer in three states, Wenning has been an active member of ASCE for more than 25 years and is a former president of the Indiana Section and of that section’s Metropolitan-Indianapolis Branch and a former chair of the District 9 council. He currently serves as director of District 9. Wenning was honored with the Indiana Section’s 2004 Engineer of the Year Award for his contributions to the engineering profession in that state. Under his leadership the bridge department at American Structurepoint has been recognized with a number of awards for innovative and high-quality bridge and transportation projects.

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.

David F. Schulz, P.E., M.ASCE, died on October 7 at the age of 58 after an extended illness. Schulz received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Purdue University and earned a master’s in business administration from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management while pursuing graduate studies in transportation engineering at the university. Later he was an adjunct professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and in 1992 he joined Northwestern as the first director of its Infrastructure Technology Institute. He also served as the director of the Milwaukee County Department of Parks, Recreation, and Culture and was elected Milwaukee’s county executive. Schulz was active in transportation planning in southeastern Wisconsin and northeastern Illinois and served as deputy public works commissioner and budget director for the City of Chicago.

Le Val Lund, P.E. M.ASCE, died on November 30 at the age of 84. Born in Los Angeles, he earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the California Institute of Technology and then began 42 years of service with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP). He also earned a master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Southern California. While at the DWP, he served as the principal waterworks engineer and worked on dam safety, soil evaluation, earthquake safety, drought management, and many other issues related to protecting water supplies and public safety. After he retired he contributed to asce’s investigations of earthquakes in Japan, Turkey, El Salvador, and the United States. He also served as the chair of the Society’s Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering and was the recipient of numerous honors and awards. He was active in many Society activities, both locally and nationally, especially those dealing with infrastructure risk management.

George L. Winfield, A.M.ASCE, died on December 1 at the age of 64. A native of Petersburg, Virginia, Winfield graduated from Howard University in 1972 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. In 1973 he earned a master’s degree in bioenvironmental engineering from Howard and then joined Baltimore’s Department of Public Works. There he served under five mayors over a period of approximately 30 years and in 2000 was appointed director of the department. During his tenure he oversaw repairs to Loch Raven Dam and a renovation of Lake Montebello. Winfield also sat on the city’s Board of Estimates, which approves spending and contracts, and oversaw a $1-billion renovation of the city’s wastewater system.

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.

Sponsor: ASCE Sacramento Section.

Paper Topics: The goal is to bring owners, designers, fabricators, material suppliers, contractors, researchers, professors, and students together to focus on orthotropic steel deck bridges. Attention will be given to, among other aspects, design, fabrication, inspection, and maintenance.

Deadline: Abstracts of no more than one page are to be e-mailed to asce@asce-sacto.org by February 29, 2008.

Contact: For updated information, visit www.orthotropic-bridge.org.

Sponsor: ASCE Los Angeles Section and the University of California at Irvine.

Paper Topics: The objective of the conference is to focus on various topics related to energy-efficient and environmentally compatible engineering design and construction projects. Other state-of-the-art papers related to the built environment and energy conservation also are
encouraged.

Deadline: Abstracts not exceeding one page are to be e-mailed to Ayman Mosallam, Ph.D., the conference chair, at mosallam@uci.edu by January 31, 2008.

Contact: Ayman Mosallam, Ph.D., Henry Samueli School of Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-2175; telephone (949) 824-3369; fax (949) 824-2117; e-mail mosallam@uci.edu.

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.

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’s Committee on Professional Practice is looking for full and corresponding members to serve on 4 of its 12 constituent committees. Serving on a Society-level committee gives you a unique opportunity to influence the profession, affect ASCE’s policies at the national level, and network with other civil engineers who practice in the public and private sectors. Full members and corresponding members are being sought for the Committee on Business Practices, the Committee on Career Development, the Committee on Employment of Civil Engineers, and the Committee on Licensure and Ethics. You may begin as a corresponding member to learn more about a committee before becoming a full member. As a corresponding member, you have the same opportunities, duties, and privileges as full members, but you are not reimbursed for expenses incurred in traveling to meetings. Full committee members typically serve on a committee for up to four years. 
• The Committee on Business Practices develops products that enhance the practice of civil engineering. It also writes articles on business practices for various ASCE journals and develops and reviews policy statements related to the practice of civil engineering. It is looking for full and corresponding members. 
• The Committee on Career Development designs various programs and products to help civil engineers reach their full potential. Its work includes promoting lifelong learning and providing mentoring programs for members. It is seeking corresponding members.
• The Committee on Employment of Civil Engineers develops policies, procedures, and standards that take into account the economic, social, and ethical dimensions of the profession. It discusses and reports on current issues and trends that affect civil engineering employment. This committee is looking for full and corresponding members.
• The Committee on Licensure and Ethics promotes the licensure of civil engineers and strict adherence to ethical standards in civil engineering practice through programs, policies, and procedures. It is seeking corresponding members, especially engineers with experience on state licensing boards or with the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying.

For detailed information about committee activities, refer to the Professional Activities section of ASCE’s Official Register (www.asce.org/or). Those interested in committee service should contact Alicia Karwoski, the Society’s manager of professional practice, at akarwoski@asce.org by February 22. Be sure to indicate the committee you’re interested in and to submit a brief résumé as an attachment.

• Dan M. Frangopol, Sc.D., F.ASCE, a professor of civil engineering at Lehigh University and the first holder of the Fazlur R. Khan Endowed Chair of Structural Engineering and Architecture, has organized a series of lectures that pay tribute to Khan’s legacy of excellence in structural engineering and architecture. The lectures will be at Lehigh’s Sinclair Lab Auditorium. The first, “Engineering of Major Architecture, Then and Now,” will be delivered by Richard Tomasetti, p.e. m.ASCE, the chairman of Thornton Tomasetti, Inc., of New York City, on Friday, February 15, at 4:10 PM. Jeremy Isenberg, Ph.D., p.e., Hon.m.ASCE, a former president and chief executive officer of Weidlinger Associates, Inc., also of New York City, will deliver a lecture entitled “Structural Design for Security: Past Accomplishments and Future Directions” on Friday, March 14, at 4:10 PM. The third lecture, “Overcoming Barriers to Durable Steel Bridge Systems,” will be presented by John W. Fisher, Ph.D., P.E., Hon.M.ASCE, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at Lehigh. It will be on Friday, April 18, also at 4:10 pm. For more information, visit www.lehigh.edu/frkseries. Questions may be directed to Leslie J. Ladick at (610) 758-6123 or ljl2@lehigh.edu.
• ASCE members can represent the civil engineering profession on Capitol Hill by applying to participate in the Congressional Fellows Program. This program provides an opportunity for an ASCE member to work on the staff of a senator, House member, or congressional committee. With his or her one-year appointment as a congressional staffer, an ASCE congressional fellow becomes directly involved in the process of crafting federal legislation and advising members of Congress. The candidate will learn how the federal government operates, develop leadership skills, and perhaps have an effect on the civil engineering profession. To learn more about the program, visit www.asce.org/pressroom/publicpolicy/cfprogram.cfm. This is an excellent opportunity for members to expand their horizons, get involved, and make a difference.
• ASCE is seeking nominations for awards honoring outstanding achievements. The nomination deadline for the following awards is March 1:
• The John I. Parcel–Leif J. Sverdrup Civil Engineering Management Award is conferred in recognition of outstanding leadership and management in the civil engineering profession. Candidates are ASCE members who have made outstanding contributions in the field of civil engineering management. Other criteria include evidence of personal and professional integrity.
  
• The Edmund Friedman Professional Recognition Award honors achievements in advancing the science and profession of engineering. Candidates are ASCE members (but not distinguished members) who have contributed substantially to the status of the engineering profession by establishing a formidable reputation for professional service, improving the conditions under which professional engineers render service to the public in the public or private sectors, improving civil engineering education, or providing guidance to young civil engineers.
• The Civil Government Award recognizes meritorious service in an elective or appointive position. Candidates are ASCE members (but not distinguished members) whose performance has helped to raise the stature of the engineering profession. The award is intended to recognize outstanding performance by engineers serving as members of Congress, mayors, governors, city managers, city council members, municipal department heads, state or county officials, or members of state legislatures. Nominees must be registered professional engineers. Those holding positions that traditionally have been held by engineers or positions that are filled on the basis of civil service examinations are not eligible.
• The Government Civil Engineer of the Year Award is conferred in recognition of outstanding performance by a civil engineer in the public sector. Candidates, preferably licensed professional engineers, must be ASCE members in good standing. They must have 15 years in public service, at least 5 of them at a senior administrative level, and must be currently employed in the U.S. public sector. Other criteria include participation in civic or humanitarian endeavors and evidence of personal and professional integrity.

Parcel-Sverdrup, Friedman, and Civil Government Award nominations may be submitted to the Honors and Awards Department, ASCE Headquarters, 1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Reston, VA 20191-4400. Nominations for the Government Civil Engineer of the Year Award may be e-mailed to akarwoski@asce.org or mailed to Alicia Karwoski, Professional Activities Department, ASCE Headquarters, 1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Reston, VA 20191-4400. Questions may be directed to Karwoski at (703) 295-6324 or (800) 548-2723, extension 6324. For further information and downloadable forms, visit www.asce.org/awards.

• The Atmospheric Water Management Standards Committee, part of the Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI), will meet on Friday, April 25, and Saturday, April 26, in Westminster, Colorado. The meetings will run from 7 AM to 10 PM and will be held in conjunction with the American Meteorological Society and Weather Modification Association conference. The goals include reviewing and revising ASCE/EWRI 39 (Standard Practice for the Design and Operation of Hail Suppression Projects) for a first ballot. For additional information, contact George Bomar, the committee chair, at gbomar@license.state.tx.us.
• The Border International Water Quality Standards Committee, part of the Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI), will be meeting in El Paso, Texas, on Saturday, February 2. The meeting will run from 10 AM to 6 PM and will be at the offices of the International Boundary and Water Commission. It will be separated into three parts. During the morning session, members will discuss a final revision of EWRI/ASCE 33 (Comprehensive Transboundary International Water Quality Management Agreement) based on comments received during the public comment period. In the afternoon, the committee will discuss whether the revised international water quality standard, with final public comments included, requires a final ballot or only editorial changes. The committee will also meet with potential translators or their representatives to prepare a draft agreement governing the translation of ASCE/EWRI 33 into Spanish. In the evening the EWRI’s Standards Development Council will review the progress being made by the committee and adopt a schedule for attaining goals within the 2008 fiscal year.
• The next meeting of the Structural Engineering Institute’s Fiberglass Reinforced Plastics Stacks Standards Committee will be on April 23 in Philadelphia. For more information, contact John J. Carty, the committee chair, at rpeng@mis.net.
• The working group within the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) charged with revising ASCE/SEI 4 (Seismic Analysis of Safety-Related Nuclear Structures) will be meeting May 1–2 in Summerlin, Nevada. The meeting will be at the Bechtel/SAIC offices. Those interested in participating or obtaining additional information should contact the working group chairman, Michael Salmon, at salmon@lanl.gov.
• Task Committee 2 of the Subcommittee on Seismic Loads, part of the Structural Engineering Institute’s Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures Standards Committee, will meet on Friday, February 1, in San Francisco. The meeting will be at Degenkolb Engineering, 355 Montgomery Street, and will run from 9 AM to 5 PM. For more information, contact Jon Kiland at kiland@kpwse.com.
• The Automated People Movers Standards Committee, part of the Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI), will be meeting in Miami at the Courtyard by Marriott Miami Downtown February 28–29. The sessions will be from 9 AM to 5 PM on February 28 and from 8:30 AM to noon on February 29. The following topics are expected to be discussed: changes to ASCE/T&DI 21 (Automated People Mover Standards) requested by personal rapid transit (PRT) interests; model elevator code developments affecting automated people movers in Denver, San Francisco, and other cities; decisions by the International Electrotechnical Commission’s committee TC9 regarding the resumption of work on an automated urban guided transit standard; proposed revisions to the National Fire Protection Association’s standard NFPA 130 (Standard for Fixed Guideway Transit and Passenger Rail Systems) relating to automated people movers; a review of automated people mover injuries and accidents to determine whether there are gaps in the standards that need to be addressed; and maintenance procedures for the four parts of ASCE/T&DI 21. The committee may decide to include other topics. For more information about the meeting, contact Jonathan C. Esslinger, P.E., F.ASCE, the T&DI’s director, at (703) 295-6295 or jesslinger@asce.org.