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Greetings from Iowa State University’s Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering! It has been another year full of exciting changes and successes for our department - albeit a bit unusual. I am extremely proud of how our students, faculty and staff have responded to COVID-19. Faculty and staff have been outstanding in moving our instructional content online, creating a safe environment for students, continuing their research while balancing the challenges of home life in a COVID-19 world. Students have also risen to the occasion as they wear their facial coverings and practice physical distancing. ISU CCEE has 31 tenure-track and term faculty in five unique areas (construction, environmental, geotechnical, structural and transportation engineering), as well as a transdisciplinary program in intelligent infrastructure engineering. In the last year alone, our research faculty have earned nearly $22 million in externally-funded research, which is a 210% increase in the last five years. We continue to be proud of our real-world undergraduate and graduate education models. Our undergraduate civil and construction engineers have 85% and 96% placement rates, respectively, at graduation. In addition, 82% of civil engineering undergraduates and 94% of construction engineering undergraduates complete at least one co-op or internship prior to graduation.
Follow our socials @ISUCCEE and on YouTube @ISUENGINEERING
In Sept. 2020, U.S. News and World Report ranked Iowa State’s civil engineering program tied for 34th overall, 22nd among publics at schools whose highest degree is a doctorate. This was followed by graduate rankings in March 2020, when ISU’s civil engineering graduate program moved up to 27th overall from a previous 36th ranking. We are dedicated to diversity and inclusion, both within our department and across our university. More than a quarter of our faculty members identify as women, and 29% of our student population identifies as women/minorities. This increase is an indicator that the engineering world is moving forward with an innovative and diverse group of professionals. We continue to work to enhance the inclusive environment in our program through our student, faculty and staff recruitment. Iowa State’s Construction Engineering Program is celebrating its 60th anniversary this fall, and the Iowa Board of Regents approved a new undergraduate major in environmental engineering; classes were first offered this fall. Next fall 2021, we will celebrate CCEE’s sesquicentennial. As we celebrate 150 years, we plan for the future, which includes enhancing our curriculums and facilities. Big changes in the next year.
CCEE to celebrate 150 years The Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering was established in 1871, just three years after the 1869 founding of Iowa State Agricultural College (later Iowa State University) as a land grant institution. We’ve seen extraordinary research and teaching methods since then. Still, we keep a dedication to excellence that has carried from past to present. CCEE will celebrate 150 years in the fall of 2021. We will have a multiple-day celebration culminating in a banquet on Sept. 18, 2021, where we’ll recognize inductions into our Hall of Fame and our new Distinguished Alumni recognition. We hope you can join us. More details on all our celebration events and history can be found at www.ccee.iastate.edu/150. Celebrate the CCEE 150th with us by using #CCEE150 on social media.
– David Sanders, PhD, FACI, FSEI, FASCE Greenwood Department Chair in Civil, Construction and Environmental
Direct questions regarding this publication to: Kristine Perkins, Editor Phone: 515-450-6261 Email: perkinsk@iastate.edu Website: ccee.iastate.edu Iowa State University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. Veteran. Inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies may be directed to Office of Equal Opportunity, 3410 Beardshear Hall, 515 Morrill Road, Ames, Iowa 50011, Tel. 515-294-7612, Hotline: 515-294-1222, email eooffice@iastate.edu. Copyright © 2020, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. All rights reserved.
Above and page 2 picture: Town Engineering in 1971 when it was the new home of Civil and Aerospace Engineering. Today, it is home to the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering.
Construction engineering celebrates 60 years The Construction Engineering Program, which first started offering courses in September 1960, celebrates 60 years this fall. Headed by Thomas Jellinger, the concept of the curriculum centered on teaching construction engineering based on best industry practices. By 1963, Iowa State graduated its first students in a bachelor of science in engineering operations. By 1970, the building construction program became the construction engineering program. “The ConE program has graduated six decades of great builders and will continue to do so for decades to come,” said Larry Cormicle, retired CCEE teaching professor. “As a teaching professor in construction engineering for 17 years, I was blessed with great students and support of ISU to move the construction engineering program to the next level that will continue for years to come.”
60
th
1960-2020
CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING
2019-20 BY T H E N U M B E RS
31 $22M 12.8 tenure-track faculty
externally-funded research
210%
increase from FY2015
term faculty
$725k
average in externally-funded research per CCEE tenure-track faculty member
ISU civil engineering graduate program tied for 27th overall and tied for 18th among public institutions in U.S. News and World Report rankings
863
undergraduate students
197 28
FA C U LT Y AWARDS AN D RECOGN ITION
29%
published journal articles
of student population identifies as women/minorities
masters students
98
doctoral candidates
63% increase from FY2015
In civil engineering, at schools whose highest degree is a doctorate, Iowa State’s undergraduate program is tied for 34th overall, 22nd among public institutions (Sept. 2020)
2019 CCEE Joseph C. & Elizabeth A. Anderlik Faculty Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Cassie Rutherford, assistant professor
TechConnect 2019 Innovation Award Halil Ceylan, PROSPER director, PEGASAS ISU site director, professor
2020 Postdoctoral Mentoring Award, 2020 CCEE Charles W. Schafer Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Service Behrouz Shafei, associate professor
2019 Regents Award for Faculty Excellence, 2020 Exemplary Faculty Mentor Award Shauna Hallmark, InTrans director, professor 2019 College of Engineering Inclusive Excellence Award Beth Hartmann, teaching professor
in press/peer-reviewed journals
33
2019 College of Engineering Award for Outstanding Achievement in Teaching Jenny Baker, associate teaching professor
96% placement rate for
undergraduate construction engineers at graduation and 85% placement rate for undergraduate civil engineers at graduation
2020 College of Engineering Award for Early Achievement in Teaching Kaoru Ikuma, assistant professor
2019 CCEE Charles W. Schafer Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Service Anuj Sharma, Pitt-Des Moines, Inc., Professor in Civil Engineering, associate professor 2019 CCEE Charles W. Schafer Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Service Omar Smadi, CTRE director, associate professor
Spring 2020 Teaching Innovation Award Aliye Karabulut-Ilgu, assistant teaching professor
2019 ISU Award for Outstanding Achievement in Research Sri Sritharan, ISU CoE Interim Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives, Wilkinson Chair in the College of Engineering, professor
2020 CCEE Joseph C. & Elizabeth A. Anderlik Faculty Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Say Kee Ong, professor
AASHTO High Value in Safety (Safety Concepts for Workers) Roy Sturgill, assistant professor
2020 CCEE Joseph C. & Elizabeth A. Anderlik Faculty Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 2019 Impact in Advising Award, College of Engineering Brad Perkins, teaching professor 2020 Exemplary Faculty Mentor Award, 2020 Regents Award for Faculty Excellence, 2019 Faculty Chris Rehmann, associate professor 2019 CCEE Joseph C. & Elizabeth A. Anderlik Faculty Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Matt Rouse, teaching professor
2019 ASCE Committee on Leadership and Management Service Award, National ASCE Marlee Walton, associate teaching professor 2019 Fulbright Specialist, Fulbright Foundation, 2019 Innovation in Construction Award, Asphalt Paving Association in Iowa Chris Williams, Gerald and Audrey Olson Professor in Civil Engineering
CCEE welcomes new faculty
ACI led by two CCEE alums For the first time in 116 years, the American Concrete Institute’s top two positions are filled by individuals who hold the same degree from the same university: Iowa State University civil engineers. Jeffrey Coleman (’76, civil engineering; ’77 master’s, structural engineering) was elected to serve as 2020-21 president of ACI in April, an organization he’s been a member of for 40 years. A long-time ACI member, Ron Burg (’77, civil engineering) has served as the ACI executive vice president since 2010. ACI is the world leader in providing technical information on the use of concrete, including the structural building code which is adopted by law in all 50 states and used by over 60 countries worldwide to design concrete structures. “This is by far the single greatest honor of my career, and I am proud to be serving such a wonderful organization with a fellow Cyclone,” Coleman said. Several other Iowa State civil engineers who have or had key roles at ACI include past ACI president, James Cagley (’58, architectural engineering), ACI’s first female honorary member, Mary Hurd (’47, civil engineering), and current CCEE department chair, David Sanders (’84, civil engineering), who has held many leadership roles at ACI.
Jonathan Wood, transportation engineering assistant professor, earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of Utah. Four years after completing his master’s, Wood earned a Ph.D. in civil engineering from Pennsylvania State University. Before taking on this role at Iowa State, Wood worked as an assistant professor at South Dakota State University before he was recruited to join the safety analytics team at Ford Motor Company. There, Wood led analytics related to highway safety, crash testing and vehicle safety, driver behavior, usage-based insurance, real-world impacts of driver assistance technologies, connected vehicle technologies and validation of autonomous vehicle systems.
Jeffrey W. Coleman
Ron Burg
Economic surfacing option
Photo courtesy of the Institution for Transportation
County roads departments in Iowa spend more than $110 million per year maintaining the over 71,000 miles of unpaved, gravel road surfaces in the state. Otta seal surfacing, a technology used throughout northern Europe and Africa, offers a lowcost solution to county road engineers. Until recently, however, the technology had not been tested in Iowa. Halil Ceylan, a professor in CCEE and director of the Program for Sustainable Pavement Engineering and Research (PROSPER) at InTrans, has been studying the issue for the past few years to determine both the feasibility of using Otta seals in the state and their costeffectiveness. “We can provide a better surface for around the same investments,” said Ceylan during a workshop on Otta seal. “Otta seal can be utilized as an alternative rehabilitation strategy to both unpaved roads and deteriorating road infrastructure systems.” The initial Iowa test was on a Cherokee County hot-mix asphalt roadway, which had been treated with crack seal, in 2017. Since then, the project has expanded to include at least 40 segments in six Iowa counties (Buchanan, Cherokee, Humboldt, Louisa, Ringgold, and Winneshiek) and seals were completed on both gravel roads and deteriorating portland cement concrete pavements.
Roy Sturgill, assistant professor of civil, joined the CCEE department last fall. Sturgill worked as a research engineer at the Kentucky Transportation Center at the University of Kentucky in their construction engineering and project management program for nearly seven years. Sturgill holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, a master’s of business administration, and a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Kentucky. He also holds a master’s in civil engineering from Virginia Tech with graduate certification in engineering education and preparing the future professoriate. He is a licensed professional engineer in Kentucky and Iowa.
Katie Madson, assistant professor, earned her bachelor’s in 2013 and master’s in 2018 in civil engineering from the University of Florida’s Department of Civil and Costal Engineering. Madson completed her Ph.D. from the M.E. Rinker, Sr. School for Construction Management at the University of Florida in 2020. Prior to returning to graduate school, she spent two years as a civil site engineer for Great Lakes Dredge and Docks. Madson’s primary research focus is on decision-making within the construction domain, including both decision-making under uncertainty, as well as developing decision support tools. Tom Foldes, assistant professor, earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Iowa State. Foldes is a licensed engineer in 13 states and has spent his career within the construction industry as a consulting engineer, design and build contractor, and as an outsource construction project manager. Pulling from his experience as an outsource construction project manager for corporate real estate clients, Foldes established Bluestone Engineering, a MEP firm and Bluestone Project Management, which is an outsource corporate real estate project management firm. Onur Avci, research assistant professor, received his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from Virginia Tech. After graduation, Avci worked in structural engineering firms in both Las Vegas and New York. Avci is a licensed engineer in two states: New York and Connecticut. Before coming to teach at Iowa State, Avci was an assistant professor at Qatar University, where his research team built the largest instrumented laboratory stadium structure in the world: Qatar University Grand-Stand. Within his research, Avci has been focusing on artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning used in structural engineering applications, as well as structural health monitoring, structural damage detection smart cities, structural resiliency, innovative and smart materials and multi-function metastructures.
CCEE receives large EPA grant Iowa State University was awarded an $800,000 grant through EPA’s Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Program for a research project on building resilience in vulnerable, older adult communities facing increased exposure risks to wastewater contamination from flooding in Puerto Rico. Kaoru Ikuma (pictured far right), CCEE assistant professor leads the research project that aims to improve the scientific understanding of how flooding can elevate the risk of exposure to wastewater-related contaminants among older adults in Puerto Rico. “This is a project that is truly a convergence of many fields—water resources, environmental engineering, humanitarian engineering, human development, and urban planning, which allows for impactful research that can help vulnerable communities,” Ikuma said. Others in CCEE conducting research for this grant are assistant professor Cristina Poleacovschi and associate professor Chris Rehmann.
Collaboration creates community resilience New environmental engineering major A new CCEE bachelor of science degree program in environmental engineering began in the fall of 2020. It was approved by the state’s Board of Regents at its April 1 meeting. While the major is new, CCEE has been offering a degree in civil engineering with an environmental emphasis for more than two decades. This new degree provides students with the engineering and science knowledge necessary to pursue successful careers in environmental engineering and related professions – in both the public and private sectors – as well as address critical challenges related to land, air and water quality. “Although the civil engineering program has had an environmental emphasis, students are excited to study environmental engineering in even more depth,” said Chris Rehmann, CCEE associate professor and faculty leader of the new program. Other CCEE faculty leaders of the new environmental engineering program include: Tim Ellis, associate professor; Roy Gu, associate professor; Kaoru Ikuma, assistant professor; Say Kee Ong, professor; and Rehmann.
CCEE assistant professor Cristina Poleacovschi studies how to build community resilience during challenges like natural disasters or economic changes. “As I look around at our responses to the coronavirus outbreak, I’m heartened to see us all come together in ways most likely to support strong communities,” said Poleacovschi, assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering. Strong public-private collaborations. Partnerships between public and private organizations make large-scale investment in infrastructure possible and help local business competitiveness and retention. Empower many stakeholders. Collaboration between public officials, like mayors and chambers of commerce, and empowering as many community stakeholders as possible is key to generating and working toward common goals. Protect the most vulnerable. Prioritize development strategies that address the most vulnerable by emphasizing community context and using local resources. Bridge between communities. Building connections with neighboring communities and institutions is needed for long-term recovery.
“Skin” detects cracks in bridges A new sensory skin developed by a group of researchers is the first scalable monitoring technology capable of automatically detecting, localizing and quantifying fatigue cracks in bridges—something that is nearly impossible for inspectors to see during a routine visual inspection. The team, comprised of civil and mechanical engineers from Iowa State University, The University of Kansas, the University of Arizona and the University of South Carolina, has developed the technology to mimic biological skin—composed of an array of soft sensors that is capable of detecting cracks locally over large surfaces. “Fatigue cracks occur in steel components, and an important number of bridges in the U.S. are vulnerable to these cracks that can lead to sudden structural failures,” said Simon Laflamme, Iowa State University Waldo W. Wegner professor in civil engineering and the lead principal investigator. The project, Robust Wireless Skin-Sensor Networks for Long-Term Fatigue CrackMonitoring of Bridges (Phase I), will be used to further develop and refine the sensor for the fatigue crack monitoring problem. This includes developments on the sensing materials, electronics and signal processing algorithms.
Soybean oil = cheaper asphalt roads Soon enough we may be driving into work on roads made with soybeans. Thanks to researchers and engineers at Iowa State University, soybean oil was used for the first time in Iowa to create a bio-based polymer that acts as a binding agent, or glue, in asphalt. “It’s cost-effective. It’s bio-based. It’s something that we produce here in Iowa. It improves performance and it promotes environmental stewardship, not only because it’s bio-based but you’re also being able to reuse more recycled content when you’re producing these roads,” Eric Cochran, professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering said. This really is a win-win for both the farming and construction industries. Asphalt is struggling with a shortage of organic compounds for petroleum-based polymers due to declining oil and gas resources and has been for years. “What it means is, for example, Interstate-35 between Ames and Des Moines, years ago when there was this shortage they didn’t have the polymer,” Chris Williams, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering said. “They paved it anyways without the polymer being available and it reduced the pavement life considerably. Now we have something that is here in Iowa, that can meet that need and supply going forward.”
UHPC making infrastructure safer There’s a dire need to repair aging infrastructure in the U.S., and an innovative building material could be a game changer. Embedded with steel fibers, ultra-high performance concrete is about five to 10 times stronger than standard concrete—and unaffordable for most government-funded projects. Iowa State associate research professor Brent Phares’ and engineering grad student Quin Rogers’ team has been doing research to help make infrastructure safer. Phares and his team, in collaboration with several other universities and the U.S. Department of Transportation, are developing nonproprietary blends they hope will be about half of the current cost of UHPC. Another goal is to determine how UHPC can be used strategically to extend the life of aging bridges. “What we’re doing here is taking these beams, damaging them to simulate some deterioration, and then using ultra-high-performance concrete to patch them,” Phares said. “The research is sort of showing that targeted use of this relatively expensive material can be a way to be really effective at repairing our existing infrastructure.”
GeoTechTools receives award, geosynthetics research Vern Schaefer, CCEE James M. Hoover Professor in Geotechnical Engineering, will receive the 2021 Wallace Hayward Baker Award from the ASCE Geo-Institute for his role in the development of GeoTechTools, which was launched in November 2012. Schaefer started working on the project in 2007 as a comprehensive, systematic selection tool to promote and conduct soil improvement technologies. In June of 2019, the platform was transferred to the Geo-Institute (G-I) of the American Society of Civil Engineers for the G-I to host, maintain, and update the system. Schaefer remains as the technical webmaster of the system, providing technical expertise to the G-I technical committees as they will now contribute the updating and technical content of the system. In addition, Schaefer and CCEE students, through a Minnesota DOT research project, are evaluating the structural benefits of geosynthetics in the pavement foundation of flexible (asphalt) pavements. The benefits depend on several factors such as geogrid location, geogrid stiffness, geogrid rib shape, hot mix asphalt thicknesses, and base aggregate thicknesses, and subgrade stiffness. Schaefer and his team are studying the factors through large-scale laboratory tests, field performance tests and numerical models.
813 Bissell Road Ames, IA 50011-1066
For interesting facts about CCEE history, visit ccee.iastate.edu/150. For example, Dean Anson Marston led the establishment of the Iowa Department of Transportation at Iowa State College in 1904 and was part of the founding and shaping of the National Advisory Board on Highway Research (today the Transportation Research Board). Pictures courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives / Iowa State University Library