Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Civil and Environmental Engineering Chair Message

Sharing our successes

 

Dear Alumni and Friends,

Thank you for taking a few minutes to peruse our annual newsletter. I am pleased to share some of our successes in what has been a challenging year for all of us. Despite the challenges of a global pandemic, we have continued growing our programs, supporting our students in remote delivery instruction, seeing many to graduation, and building our research enterprise.

As classes moved to remote delivery formats last spring, our faculty found innovative ways to reach students. This fall, for instance, Assistant Professor Mandy Hohner sent students personalized laboratory kits, so they could complete their lab work at home to later discuss in class. Our faculty made significant efforts to provide engaging classes, and our advising staff went the extra mile to help students navigate the world of remote learning. We were able to successfully support our students through completion of their springtime courses and to graduation. I am particularly pleased that this spring we saw the first graduates of our construction engineering program, all of whom were able to begin their careers even in this tumultuous economy.

As always, we continue to aspire to lead in research and education related to sustainable development, management, and safety of civil infrastructure systems. We pride ourselves on providing an engineering education based on strong fundamentals, giving students what they need to prepare for fulfilling careers that allow them to adapt and advance in a fast-changing world.

The number of graduate students in our program have continued to increase with the number of PhD students now exceeding the number of Master’s students. Our PhD students help support our program’s critically important research while our master’s students are sought by industry, especially in disciplines such as structures and geotechnical engineering. Our graduate students, such as Sarah Murphy and Ayumi Manawadu, have continued to win national and regional awards and fellowships for their outstanding performance.

Our multi-disciplinary research programs continue to have real-world impact in areas such as infrastructure, water and air quality, and health with total research expenditures reaching $6.7 million last year. Researchers in our new National Center for Transportation Infrastructure Durability & Life-Extension (TriDurLE), for instance, were able to develop a deicer from grape skin and other agricultural waste that worked better than common salt deicers. Professors Heping Liu’s and Jennifer Adam’s research has contributed to understanding climate change’s impacts to dryland areas and on the farming economy. Adam has received significant funding support for her research on developing a water supply investment plan for the Columbia River Basin and a USDA project to improve water-use and allocation efficiency in agricultural areas.

None of our successful work would be possible without the continuing support of our alumni and donors. I am so thankful to all of you who provide critically important student scholarships, faculty support through professorships, and funding to develop and improve our facilities and classroom technology.

We are an active and thriving program, though this year, with rare exceptions, most of us are not on campus. I am always happy to visit virtually even if I am not in my physical office. Please feel free to contact me anytime to set up a Zoom visit.

Go Cougs!

Balasingam Muhunthan