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This spring, students got out of the classroom and on site for their Introduction to Transportation Engineering course lab component. They traveled to two Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) construction sites and the Lehigh Valley International Airport (LVIA).
“I view the lab as a time for hands-on, real-world learning,” says instructor Kristen Sanford Bernhardt, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. “The trips offer real-time perspective with real people on-site that we cannot replicate in the classroom. I have offered field trips in this course each time I have taught it and will continue to do so as college funding permits.”
Students learned about traffic monitoring and measures taken to minimize incidents at PennDOT’s District 5 Traffic Operations Center (TOC). As the center for monitoring LehighValley traffic conditions, the TOC uses cameras on Interstate 78 and Route 22 to keep track of congestion. It also works with state and local police to assess incidents and notify the public through highway advisory radio and changeable message boards.
The class also toured phase three of PennDOT’s $140 million Route 222 bypass project to learn the roles of civil engineers in the process and to explore social issues surrounding the acquisition of property and the planning of projects to minimize impact on neighbors.
Marquis Scholar Margaret Garcia ’07(Stamford, Conn.), who is pursuing a B.S. civil engineering and A.B. international studies, enjoyed seeing the various aspects of a road construction project – from leveling the earth to building bridges.
“It’s always valuable to see how classroom lessons play out in the real world, but I feel this is especially true in engineering,” she says. “The reason I’m a civil engineering [major] is because I like the concreteness of designing and building real things and understanding how they interact with people and the environment. I see those connections much clearer outside the classroom. I’m also a kinesthetic learner – I need to interact with what I’m learning about – so the field trips really tied things together for me.”
For the final field trip of the semester, students toured LVIA and learned about the airport’s expansion plans. Like the Route 222 project, students saw how civil engineers contribute to the planning and execution of a project and discussed how the airport’s plans affect the surrounding community.
Civil engineering major Debra Perrone ’08 (Fair Lawn, N.J.), who is interested in airport design, says the trips allowed her to apply what she was learning in class and gave her an inside look at a possible career.
“The concepts I have learned, I see applied every day,” she says. “It is very exciting to be driving down an interstate and understand why there is congestion or the reasons an intersection has a traffic signal.”
Christine Moore ’08 (Fredericksburg, Va.), who also conducted EXCEL Scholars research with Sanford Bernhardt this semester on PennDOT’s resource management, found the LVIA trip most beneficial as well.
“For some reason, people are just more interested in air transportation than other modes, mostly because we are not as exposed to it on a regular basis,” she says. “Just to be able to see behind the scenes of an airport and to get a better idea of the types of problems that are dealt with was fascinating.”
All three students credit Sanford Bernhardt’s innovative teaching style with helping them get the most out of the course and the field trip experiences.
“It isn’t often that college courses allow students to travel off campus,” says Moore. “The fact that Professor Sanford Bernhardt provided not only several different trips, but also linked each visit directly to the practical material we were learning, was unique.”
A core requirement for civil engineering majors, the class is designed to introduce students to transportation planning, traffic engineering, highway design, and bicycle and pedestrian transportation. Students also completed semester-long projects on issues of their choice. This semester’s topics included green transportation, high-speed rail, traffic signal coordination, transit-oriented development, New York City’s recent transit strike, walking-distance communities, magnetic levitation for transportation, airport security, and Boston’s Big Dig project.
“It is quite likely that a practicing civil engineer will work on transportation projects at some point during his or her career,” says Sanford Bernhardt. “Transportation projects involve all the other sub-disciplines within civil engineering; for example, a geotechnical engineer would work on the stability of highway embankment, a structural engineer would design a bridge, etc. An effective and efficient transportation system is vital for our social and economic progress, and it is important that there are people prepared to understand the technical issues when transportation is debated publicly.”
Sanford Bernhardt publishes her research in engineering journals and has involved Lafayette students in her work. Along with Mary J.S. Roth ’83, professor and head of civil and environmental engineering, she received the Glenn L. Martin Best Paper Award at the 2005 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition in Portland, Ore. They earned the national honor for their coauthored paper “Undergraduate Research: The Lafayette Experience.” Sanford Bernhardt, who taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia for four years, holds an M.S. and Ph.D. from CarnegieMellonUniversity and a B.S.E. from DukeUniversity.