Report From the Chair

Erhard Joeres, Chair (32K JPG)

Welcome to the Spring 2001 issue of the Conduit. Several exciting events have passed since the last newsletter.

The ABET accreditation team's visit was a high point of the fall. We spent nearly two years preparing for this visit. The new ABET "Engineering Criteria 2000" are very different from the earlier enumeration of all of the inputs to a BS in civil engineering. Now an output-based approach states goals and objectives, measures to address those objectives, metrics for quantification and feedback loops for program change.

To illustrate: one output measure is students taking the Fundamentals of Engineering exam to become registered, the "metric" is the score achieved and the "feedback action" is added emphasis in that part of the curriculum where the score missed a stated norm. What may sound rather trivial becomes anything but the more one gets into it. The accreditation approval is expected this summer.

A memorable event was the recent visit of three generations of the Frazier family. Arthur Frazier got his BS in civil engineering from this department in 1928. He died last year at the age of 100. Frazier had a distinguished career with the US Geological Survey, where at his retirement he was chief of the USGS Division of Field Equipment. He is the inventor of the widely used "pygmy" flow meter. Frazier authored many publications and was named in a 1978 Water Resources Bulletin as "the foremost international authority" on water-flow meters.

In his estate, Arthur Frazier made a gift to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to endow both a graduate student fellowship in water resources engineering and fund an annual guest lecture by an expert in the water resources field. It was quite delightful to get to know the Frazier clan, to see pictures of Arthur from his undergraduate surveying summer camp and from his professional career and to introduce the family to the many activities of our water resources engineering faculty today.

Finally, news of our terrific students. At the American Society of Civil Engineers regional concrete canoe and steel bridge competitions at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on April 17-20, the concrete canoe team won first place. Its winning canoe weighed less than 100 pounds, a first in UW-Madison history. Our women's team stole the show with first-place in its division and a race time that placed it above all of the men's teams. Both the women's and men's teams will compete again in the national competition in San Diego in June. In the steel bridge competition our team placed second, also securing a position in the upcoming national competition at Clemson University.

Erhard F. Joeres
2205 Engineering Hall
1415 Engineering Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1691

Tel: 608/262-3542
Fax: 608/262-5199
E-mail: russell@engr.wisc.edu