The partnership between the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) and the Texas A&M University Zachry Department of Civil Engineering (CE) is a natural — researchers, faculty and students working together to solve real-world problems important to the state and nation.

“Working with TTI is a big part of what we do,” says John Niedzwecki, CE head and Regents professor. “It’s not just transportation — TTI’s projects impact structural engineering, materials engineering, geotechnical engineering, construction and pavements, which are all important areas of study to CE students.”

Teaching

CE, ranked in the top 10 CE programs at public institutions in the nation, prepares students by giving them the fundamentals of civil engineering and a wealth of classroom knowledge. There’s no substitute for hands-on experience, and TTI serves as that bridge between academia and an engineering career, allowing students to work in the field while being mentored by leaders in the transportation industry.

“The undergraduate experience should prepare our students for the workplace upon graduation,” Jon Epps, TTI executive associate director and head of TTI’s Materials, Pavements and Constructed Facilities. “When our students enter careers in transportation, they already have practical knowledge they can put to work immediately.”

TTI relies on graduate students as both employees and innovators who bring different perspectives to their research. TTI employs approximately 100 undergraduate and nearly 100 graduate students who work on research projects sponsored by state and national sponsors.

Working with students in the field, the professors gain valuable knowledge through research and bring it back into the classroom. Students benefit from direct involvement with these projects by learning how things really work.

Research

In the 1950s, early leaders like Gibb Gilchrist and DeWitt C. Greer saw the opportunity to put Texas A&M research to work for the Texas Highway Department. In 1955, Fred Benson became the first director of TTI after serving as a faculty member in CE and dean of the College of Engineering. From that perspective, you could say TTI is a product of CE, and there have always been strong linkages between the two organizations.

“Land-grant universities like Texas A&M have the mission of teaching, research and service,” says Epps. “No other partnership serves this mission better than that between TTI and CE.”

In addition to sharing researchers, TTI and CE also share research facilities. TTI maintains state-of-the-art laboratories, buildings and outdoor test beds. The CE/TTI Building on the main campus of Texas A&M University houses a portion of TTI staff, many of whom are also faculty in the CE department.

“TTI helps Civil Engineering invest in new equipment every year, asking us what we need in order to pursue new research initiatives,” says Niedzwecki. “For example, we needed higher-speed current capabilities in the Haynes Coastal Engineering Laboratory as it was being constructed to be able to take on some new projects, and TTI stepped up to help us purchase the needed equipment.”

“Research is an important part of the undergraduate experience and a necessary part of graduate education,” says Epps. “Students are valuable TTI employees who give as much as they get back.”

Service

The culmination of TTI and CE’s work together is service to Texas, the United States and the world. The partnership puts research into the hands of those who need it — through outreach, workshops, training, and participation in professional and technical associations.

“Service activities are a means of connecting with industry professionals,” says Epps. “One of the greatest rewards of research is the implementation and use of developed research. Service activities provide an opportunity to move research from state of the art to state of the practice.”

Working with the transportation industry ensures that both TTI and CE are delivering the best research and developing the brightest transportation professionals possible

“Looking into the future,” says Niedzwecki, “I can only see this partnership strengthening as we move toward developing and applying new technologies and shared practices, and exploring educational opportunities in the broad field of transportation engineering.”

CE Professor’s Legacy is Educating the Young

“The goal of the air fair is to not only expose kids to aviation, but to apply STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] concepts in an aviation environment.”
Brian Heckman, vice chairman of the Dr. James Noel Foundation Board of Directors and event organizer

Nearly 80 fifth graders from Johnson Elementary in Bryan, Texas, participated in a unique, hands-on educational experience at Coulter Field Airport in Bryan, April 11.

The Dr. James Noel Foundation sponsored the day’s events along with support from the Bryan school district, Coulter Field, academic departments from Texas A&M University and the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI). The air fair promotes a practical application of math and science through aircraft- and aviation-related meteorological projects.

The late Dr. James Noel was an educator, teacher and friend to hundreds of students and pilots in Central Texas and around the country. As a professor in civil engineering at Texas A&M University, he influenced the lives of his students not only by his ability to explain subject matter, but by his concern for them as individuals.

Students learn about water droplet distribution during the Coulter Field air fair.

“The goal of the air fair is to not only expose kids to aviation, but to apply STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] concepts in an aviation environment,” says Brian Heckman, vice chairman of the Dr. James Noel Foundation Board of Directors and event organizer.

“Before the air fair, we visited Johnson Elementary and, with the help of Texas A&M students, conducted several teaching exercises to prepare them for their airport visit.”

A few days after the air fair, the volunteers returned to Johnson Elementary to analyze the data students collected from their fair projects, which included an Air Tractor, glider flights and weather balloons.

“This event provides students an opportunity to interact with pilots, engineers and college students outside the classroom,” says TTI Research Scientist Jeff Borowiec. “It was a great day for aviation education.”

Take the Interstate Highway System, for example. Most would agree that its construction enabled unparalleled economic growth for the United States. There was a downside, however.

“It encouraged suburban sprawl,” notes Dr. Shannon Van Zandt, coordinator of LAUP’s Master of Urban Planning program. “Our communities spread out, and that created new problems.”

That’s where urban planning comes in. Planners look ahead to see how community planning and design can maximize efficiencies and minimize human costs. To see how growth occurs, look at a large city from the top down and note the concentric highways, or loops, ringing its interior. “Like rings in a tree, traffic loops tell you something about the growth patterns of cities,” says Van Zandt.

But planning is complex and takes multiple perspectives to piece together the big picture. One thing that every LAUP graduate learns is that the value of a community — its people, buildings, access, design and economic prosperity — is greater than the sum of its parts.

A Natural Partnership

TOD, or transit-oriented development, for instance, is one of the modern approaches to planning communities. TOD is founded on the notion of sustainability — or building a long-lasting, environmentally friendly, energy-efficient and multimodal transportation system. That’s where LAUP’s partnership with the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) comes in.

“Marrying the concerns of modern transportation planning with TTI’s expertise helps leverage the strengths of both organizations to everyone’s advantage,” says Dr. Kenneth Joh, assistant research scientist with TTI, assistant professor and LAUP’s program coordinator for the Graduate Certificate in Transportation Planning (see below).

Modern planning strives to undo suburban sprawl by creating cozier, closer-knit communities that rely more on foot traffic and cycling and less on the automobile. This live-work-play approach, as it’s called, seeks to create communities where citizens, and particularly those who may not drive, can do all three in virtually the same space.

Enter TTI, whose mission to solve transportation problems and train tomorrow’s transportation professionals is a natural fit with LAUP’s. Partnering enables a multidisciplinary approach to solving multifaceted problems with multimodal solutions.

“It’s not enough anymore to simply build our way out of transportation problems,” says TTI Executive Associate Director Katie Turnbull, “and that’s what we team with LAUP to teach students. Transportation is part of the solution but not an end unto itself.”

Sharing Resources, Building Alliances for Education

Like Turnbull, numerous other TTI researchers share their real-world knowledge with students by teaching in the department. And LAUP faculty members, like Joh, lend their expertise on TTI research projects.

For TTI, LAUP provides access to innovative ideas from students just beginning to think critically about the transportation world. And TTI lends LAUP the agency’s reputation as a world-class institute.

“People all over the world know TTI,” acknowledges Van Zandt. “It’s a big magnet for bringing students in to the department and recruiting faculty to teach here as well.”

“Our partnership is robust, healthy and still growing,” says Ndubisi. “TTI has sought to strengthen our relationship at every turn. But I have to especially acknowledge our alumna, Katie Turnbull, for how much she’s personally given back.”

Turnbull sponsors the annual $1,000 Katherine F. Turnbull Transportation Planning Scholarship for Masters of Urban Planning. Turnbull says that she very much enjoyed the experience of getting her Ph.D. and wants to give back in a small way.

“Although I’m not involved with selecting the student,” Turnbull says, “it’s especially gratifying when it goes to someone who ends up employed at TTI.”

In those cases, it’s easy to see the TTI-LAUP connection completing a circle — like the traffic loops around a growing city — promising years to come of healthy growth through partnership.

“In my tenure at TTI, we’ve always been able to attract the best and the brightest of graduate students, and the recent group is at the top of the class. They are all excellent researchers,” says TTI Executive Associate Agency Director Katie Turnbull.

Many of these new faces came to TTI as graduate students and stayed as full-time employees. Veteran researchers cite fresh perspectives — especially on emerging technology — as the biggest benefit to having young professionals on a research team.

“Fresh ideas are always welcome. Graduate students often bring new methods or familiarity with another approach to an issue that adds to the quality of our research products,” says Curtis Morgan, manager of TTI’s Multimodal Freight Transportation Programs.

While bringing the latest state-of-the-practice to a team, graduate students benefit by gaining real-world experience, which makes their transition into the professional world easier.

“The key thing that TTI does is integrate students into all facets of research to give them a broad experience of the research process: meetings with sponsors, literature reviews, data collection. These students gain a comprehensive picture of research instead of just a slice,” says Turnbull. “The academic programs can market to prospective students to come to Texas A&M for an excellent education and get valuable research experience with TTI at the same time.”

Another major draw to Texas A&M University is the Graduate Certificate in Transportation Planning (CTP), a multi-disciplinary program developed between Texas A&M’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, the Department of Civil Engineering, and the Bush School of Government and Public Service. The CTP aims at providing students the knowledge to be broadly successful in the transportation profession, and offers specialized instruction tailored to building their skills and capabilities in three critical areas: multimodal systems planning, transportation and urban design, and transportation policy. Soon, the CTP will add a transit management track as well. (See more about the CTP.)

“Once we produce remarkable young graduates, it is especially nice to integrate them into our programs,” says Cinde Weatherby, director of the Center for Strategic Transportation Solutions at TTI. “Our graduate students and young professionals bring to projects their energy and real thirst for learning; they want to be challenged and empowered to make a difference. I believe that they really are making a difference in our programs.

One of the most robust relationships the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) enjoys with Texas A&M University is through its partnership with the Department of Agricultural Economics (AgEco). There is, of course, an obvious transportation connection of getting food to market and all that entails. But the organizations’ respective roots are more closely tied than that.

In 1950 — the year TTI was established — the late Charley Wootan, who went on to be a director for TTI, graduated with an agricultural economics degree from Texas A&M. He joined TTI in 1956 as an associate research economist and became the Institute’s director in 1976. Under his leadership, TTI grew into the largest university-based transportation research agency in the nation.

Fast-forward to 2011.

As our population ages, access to goods and services becomes an issue, especially for those living in rural areas. The issue of public transportation for the rural elderly hit home for Alicia Israel, a Texas A&M graduate student.

Graduate student Alicia Israel was looking for a challenging project as part of her work on a master’s degree through AgEco. Her undergraduate degree in applied mathematics had little to do with transportation, so the project — which examined the transportation issues faced by rural elderly people — provided the opportunity to learn a new aspect of her chosen field.

“I grew up in Pleasanton, south of San Antonio, so I do have rural roots,” Israel says. “My mother has a courier business there and is often asked by elderly neighbors for rides to San Antonio. Although I had no background in transportation research, I knew this project was worthwhile and could help with quality-of-life issues that many people without access to public transit face.”

The Value of Non-medical Transportation for Improving the Quality of Life for the Rural Elderly is one of numerous TTI/AgEco joint projects funded by TTI’s University Transportation Center for Mobility™ (UTCM).

“The association we have with TTI is deep and rich,” Dr. John Nichols, head of AgEco, says. “These projects have helped us think outside the box and given us access to TTI sources that we would not have otherwise.”

Nichols likes the idea of bringing new people with different perspectives into projects. “As a result, our students and faculty members are using their talents in a lot of different ways. And that helps us grow as a department.”

Creating the opportunity for that growth did not happen by accident. In 2007, TTI Director Dennis Christiansen and Director Emeritus Herb Richardson formed an executive committee for the newly formed UTCM.

“Their vision was to have input from various people from across the university,” Nichols says. And he would know. Nichols has been a member of the committee since its formation.

“Dr. Nichols has been an invaluable member of UTCM’s executive committee,” UTCM Director Melissa Tooley says. “His participation is integral to our success. We appreciate his input and his enthusiasm for finding new ways to work together — it’s clear why Texas A&M has one of the most respected agricultural economics departments in the country.”

Among the other joint projects between UTCM and AgEco are:

• Improving Intermodal Connectivity in Rural Areas to Enhance Transportation Efficiency: A Case Study,
• Valuation of Buyout Options in Comprehensive Development Agreements,
• Bio-fuels Energy Policy and Grain Transportation Flows: Implications for Inland Waterways and Short-Sea Shipping,
• Statistical Analysis of Waterway Network Congestion: Causes and Costs, and
• Effect of Climate Change on Transportation Flows and Inland Waterways due to Climate-Induced Shifts in Crop Production Patterns.

Getting goods to market cost effectively is a perennial challenge, and historically inland waterways have provided one of the most reliable shipping methods. Research into inland waterway transportation became the basis for two recent research projects between TTI and AgEco.

With a strong history of working together on meaningful projects, the TTI/AgEco affiliation bodes well for the future of this partnership in education.

“The connection has certainly allowed us the chance to bring in graduate students and give them opportunities they would not have otherwise,” Nichols says.

As for student Alicia Israel, the South Texas native wrote her master’s thesis on the work she did on the joint TTI/AgEco rural transportation project.  She is the first person in her family to go to college and, in May, graduated with her master’s degree.

“Before this project I did a lot of statistical analysis,” she says. “Now, I realize the human impact of the work we do. It was challenging, but it was an extremely rewarding experience.”

• Thirty-two percent of all fatal crashes involved alcohol-impaired driving (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA], 2007).
• In 2008, there were nearly 12,000 alcohol-impaired fatalities (NHTSA, 2008).
• One in five teens binge drinks. Only 1 in 100 parents believes his or her teen binge drinks (Institute of Medicine, 2003).
• Traffic crashes are the number one killer of teens, and 28 percent of fatal traffic crashes involving teen drivers are alcohol related (NHTSA, 2005, 2006).

These statistics have led Maury Dennis, a retired Texas A&M University professor and a current senior research scientist at the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), to dedicate his career to educating the public about problems caused by alcohol and drug abuse. Since 1997, Dennis has directed the Center for Alcohol and Drug Education Studies (CADES), which provides education and research related to alcohol and other drugs specifically as they relate to traffic safety.

CADES is also a central resource for collection and distribution of a wide range of literature related to alcohol and drug education. Center personnel engage in research to identify and evaluate approaches to preventing use and abuse of alcohol and other drugs.

CADES remained in Texas A&M’s Department of Health and Kinesiology in the College of Education and Human Development after Dennis’ retirement from the department in 2006. Since his employment at TTI the following year, Dennis has been successful in acquiring more than $500,000 in alcohol-related research projects for the center.

Earlier this year, with approval from Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp, administrative responsibility for CADES was transferred to TTI.

“The transfer makes a lot of sense,” says Dennis. “I think the center now has a very good chance of expansion because of individual TTI experts in alcohol- and driving-related issues. CADES is a perfect fit for the Institute.”

Under Dennis’ leadership, CADES developed numerous statewide education programs including the Texas DWI Education Program, the Texas Alcohol Education Program for Minors, and the Texas Drug and Alcohol Driving Awareness Program. CADES programs have been instrumental in teaching students, prosecutors, probation officers, expert trial witnesses and alcohol servers various aspects of alcohol-related issues.

“While the administrative responsibility for CADES has been transferred to TTI, the College of Education and Human Development will continue to be involved with center activities and research,” says Dennis.

Participants in the Abu Dhabi road safety audit course conduct a field exercise to identify roadway problems.