Episode 96. Innovation, Education, Communication: TTI’s University Transportation Centers.

Allan Rutter (00:14):
Hey everyone. Welcome to Thinking Transportation–conversations about how we get ourselves and the stuff we need from one place to another. I’m Allan Rutter with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Allan Rutter (00:26):
Research has always been part of TTI’s DNA from our beginning, nearly 75 years ago. In 1950, the Texas A&M College System Board of Regents created TTI as a state agency to do highway research for and on behalf of the state of Texas and the State Highway Department. We’ve also been part of research funded through the University Transportation Center Program, or UTCs, from the program’s creation by the U.S. Congress in 1987. Today we’re gonna talk about how TTI is involved in many different UTCs and what is being accomplished through them. We’re joined by Dr. Melissa Tooley, TTI’s assistant agency director for federal affairs and UTC operations who, in addition to having a PhD in civil engineering, is also a licensed professional engineer. She’s been with TTI for about 18 years. Melissa, welcome.

Melissa Tooley (01:19):
Thank you, Allan. I’m so happy to be here.

Allan Rutter (01:22):
We’re gonna talk in more detail about the University Transportation Center programs at US DOT, but I thought I’d monologue a little bit about how UTCs fit into the overall research portfolio within the U.S. Department of Transportation. The way I look at it after my experience–and I’m gonna ask, Melissa, you to correct me–I see three big buckets of U.S. DOT-related research: the agency research at the DOT, Modal Administrations Cooperative Research Programs, and UTCs. First off, within the U.S. DOT, the Office of Secretary of Research and Technology coordinates research conducted by individual modal administrations, and they do that through contracts and research centers. And the office also administers a number of research programs of its own, like the Volpe Transportation Center, the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, and the new Advanced Research Projects Agency Infrastructure, or ARPA-I. Now, Modal Administrations are also involved in cooperative research programs administered by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies.

Allan Rutter (02:31):
The oldest of these is the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, or NCHRP, in which the Federal Highway Administration works alongside state DOTs through their association to develop and administer an annual set of research projects. Now, the Federal Aviation Administration, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and Federal Transit Administration are also involved in cooperative research programs for aviation behavioral transportation, safety, and transit. TTI has performed many research projects under these programs. And finally, there are the University Transportation Centers, also administered by the OST Research Office. Now, what else would you add to that overview of transportation research involving U.S. DOT?

Melissa Tooley (03:21):
Yeah, there are a few things I would add to that, Allan. First of all, Congress does sometimes specify research projects and studies in the authorization bills. For example, in the IIJA, Congress authorized studies and research projects on topics like disaster relief mobilization, air-quality improvements, permeable pavements, stormwater management… It’s kind of a vast array of projects that Congress had interest in. And some of those will be done within U.S. DOT. And some of those will be farmed out to universities and research institutes. And then second, you mentioned ARPA-I–that office is facing some challenges. That program was authorized in the IIJA, and there was an amount funded to set up and operate the office. The problem is they haven’t had any funds appropriated to actually fund their research and programs. And I think it’s noteworthy that there’s a group of UTCs that are actively supporting efforts to support the research efforts of of ARPA-I.

Melissa Tooley (04:29):
So, I think there’s a lot of industry support for funding that. So we’ll see if that comes to pass. And then one of the other things that it’s important to point out that differentiates the UTC Program from a lot of the other, like cooperative research programs and things that you mentioned, is that in those other programs, the research problems are already defined. And they go out for proposals from universities and research institutes to address problems that are already defined for the UTC Program. Once that center selects a focus area, they are able to not only address research problems, they’re able to actually define what those problems are. So it enables UTCs to provide thought leadership as we move forward through our transportation challenges. And that’s one of the things that makes the UTC Program unique.

Allan Rutter (05:23):
Well, that’s a great point, and segues into a conversation we’ll have in a little bit about how University Transportation Centers actually do their work. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I appreciate you helping our listeners understand the distinction between appropriators and authorizers. Uh, <laugh>, they don’t always see eye to eye.

Melissa Tooley (05:41):
Yeah, I think it’s really kind of a common thing that just because something is in an authorization bill doesn’t mean that it’s automatically going to happen. There have to be funds appropriated for all of the items in the bill. And I think a lot of people may or may not get that distinction.

Allan Rutter (05:59):
But speaking of authorizations, I understand that UTCs were first created by Congress in 1987 in that year’s service transportation authorization. What were UTCs first conceived to do?

Melissa Tooley (06:16):
You know, when the authorization bill in 1987 set up the UTC Program, it was originally conceived as just a research program for universities, specifically in 10 different regions around the country. So, there was a regional UTC for every one of 10 regions, and they were gonna focus on research. And those regional centers were all determined by competition. So the program was originally conceived as a fully competitive regional UTC Program. When ISTEA passed in 1991, the focus of the program was expanded to include education and technology transfer. And over time, the UTC Program now has kind of an equal emphasis on research, education, and workforce development and technology transfer and commercialization. So that’s one of the things that kind of makes it unique in that some research programs, the output of that research is the ultimate goal of the research project. With the UTCs technology transfer is pretty much baked into the program from the beginning. The research outputs that we produce from the UTC Program have to be translated into practice, and we focus on that from the very beginning of our research endeavors. The other thing that we do is focus on education and workforce development. And that’s one of the great benefits of university-based research is that we’re able to bring that education focus through the students that we work with. And we also have a number of other programs in place that help with education and workforce development as well.

Allan Rutter (07:54):
So, generally speaking, how do UTCs come together? How are they put together? Who…is there some sort of fantasy draft? I mean, how do these guys go about doing their thing?

Melissa Tooley (08:08):
Well, it’s kind of like matchmaking, to be perfectly honest. You know, in the beginning, UTCs could be either single institutions or consortia. We are now required to be a consortium to compete for a UTC grant. When we have a competition in place, or when we have an authorization bill that’s about to be passed, typically universities will start reaching out to their colleagues across the country to talk about partnering on UTCs. I know at TTI, we started well before the IIJA passed. In fact, we typically start well before an authorization bill passes to reach out to our colleagues and start forming teams to compete across the various tiers. Also, we’ll reach out to look for opportunities to partner too, because some universities, for whatever reason, aren’t in a position or don’t want to lead a consortium. They’ll start reaching out, looking to join other people’s proposals. And we do a lot of that at TTI, and we’ve been very, very successful in doing that over the years.

Allan Rutter (09:18):
You mentioned in passing the tiers that part of what Congress has done over time, in addition to those regional transportation centers, there’s national tiers and then Tier 1 kinds of things. What’s the distinction between those descriptors or labels or buckets?

Melissa Tooley (09:36):
Yeah, over the evolution of the program, there’s been several different tier structures, but it seems to have kind of settled into the three tiers that you described. The national tier, it’s funded at $4 million a year, and there are five UTCs that are selected in that tier. The purpose of the national tier is to provide thought leadership on one of those statutory focus areas that the IIJA laid out. Now there are seven of those, and there’s only five national centers. So those centers are expected to be kind of like, you know, the flagship bearer for that particular priority area. And it is the most well-funded tier. The second tier is the regional tier. It has been competitive since day one. It’s funded at $3 million a year. And again, there are 10 of those regions around the country. And then there are 20 Tier 1 centers that are funded at $2 million a year.

Melissa Tooley (10:42):
They provide a couple of different opportunities. One is they can do kind of a deep dive into a specific topic. Like, for example, TTI–our Tier 1 that we lead focuses on, you know, the nexus of transportation and public health, which is a very focused topic within the transportation enterprise. So, for a larger university, we’re able to really dive into that topic through tier one. Another cool thing about Tier 1 is that a smaller university that may not be as competitive in the regional tier; the national tier can be competitive in Tier 1. So, Tier 1 gives universities of all sizes opportunities to compete and be successful within the program.

Allan Rutter (11:28):
So, one of the things you mentioned was that while the 10 regional centers have always been competitive, Congress in its practice or wisdom, depending on whether there’s earmarks or not, has sometimes specified what the Tier 1 centers are. But more often than not, or at least the last couple of iterations, have been fully competitive. How does that affect how TTI goes about reaching out to folks? How do we compete in a fully competitive environment as opposed to trying to do our work through the appropriations earmarking?

Melissa Tooley (11:59):
Well, first of all, we stopped seeking earmarks for one thing when earmarking went away and the program went fully competitive. To be honest, it didn’t really change the way that we approached the competitions. The regional centers have always been competitive. And TTI did lead one of the original regional centers. In fact, the SWUTC center was in operation until 2016. So every time there was a reauthorization bill, TTI competed to keep that grant. And so that matchmaking process went on every single year. The most recent competition that SWUTC was successful in–we had added two additional universities in Louisiana to the consortium. So, that consortium continued to kind of grow and evolve with the subsequent bills. When the SWTUC center ended, we had an earmarked center that was put into the bill for SAFETEA-LU, which passed. It was one of the authorization bills where SWUTC competed and was successful.

Melissa Tooley (13:00):
And we had the earmark center that became the University Transportation Center for Mobility, which is what I was brought to TTI to set up and operate for the Institute. Since then, when the program went completely competitive with MAP-21 and the FAST Act, we went through this matchmaking process every time we were in a competition mode–the same process that I described earlier–and have been very successful. Of the 11 UTCs that TTI has been a part of, 10 were selected by competition. Only one was earmarked and that was UTCM and the Safety Law bill.

Allan Rutter (13:43):
Wow. So, clearly through either experience or repetition or having a good approach, that good approach has been met with some success. Let’s talk a little bit about how UTCs function before we get into the specific UTCs TTI leads or belongs to. These guys, they’re selected for multiple years. How do the UTCs decide which research projects to pursue?

Melissa Tooley (14:08):
Well, you know, the authorization bills designate statutory research priorities within the bill. For example, in the IIJA, there were seven, as I mentioned earlier. Those pertain to mobility, safety, congestion reduction, environment, cybersecurity. And then there are two related to infrastructure. One focuses a little bit more on infrastructure resilience, and the other is more infrastructure durability. So, it’s more hard science pavements and materials, geotechnical-type things. So, those are the seven areas. Now, the UTCs and their competition proposals will select one of those to, kind of, guide their research and programs. So their whole program; like, let’s say that they’ve selected infrastructure durability as their focus area. Their entire program will rotate around infrastructure durability. So, when they’re writing their proposal, in order to give the selection committees an idea of the type of work that their consortium can do–the contribution that they can make to the state of the practice in that area–a lot of times they will typically prescribe the first year or even two years of their research and program funding within the proposal.

Melissa Tooley (15:30):
So, they’ll have a whole program of education research and tech transfer that’s focused on infrastructure durability for that third year or second year, depending on how much of their funding they’ve prescribed in the proposal. Typically, they’ll go out with a call for proposals from the researchers at the universities within the consortium, who will then provide research ideas to the steering committee for that UTC. They will go out and get feedback from their stakeholder groups and select research programs from that moving forward. And they’ll typically do that on a yearly basis all the way through the end of the grant. Now, there’s a couple of other models that people use. There are some UTCs that have a more focused group of researchers that they will go out to specifically, you know, rather than do like kind of a broad call. That can be a very successful model for some UTCs.

Melissa Tooley (16:30):
And then I actually know of a UTC a couple of competitions back that actually designated their entire program. They had a small number of projects that were envisioned to evolve over the lifetime of the grant. So they basically had these maybe five or six projects with a five- or six-year research plan for each one of ’em. And that I thought was an interesting model. At the end of the day, it didn’t work out, but I thought it was really an interesting idea. However, the model that I described earlier where you prescribe a couple of years, and then go out for calls, is really the way that TTI has always operated. The ones that we lead and the ones that we are involved in operate the same way.

Allan Rutter (17:14):
Well, again, that sounds like, as you mentioned, it helps the folks at OSTR understand what it is that we’re intending to do. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And it’s met with some success, so why argue with it? And what you’re describing is that for a UTC member institution, these research projects through the UTC pretty much function like any other sort of sponsored research, this is what we’re gonna do. The UTC is basically the sponsor to the researcher.

Melissa Tooley (17:43):
Right, absolutely. And those projects function exactly like they would from any other research sponsor. The only difference is, you know, the research sponsor is right there within TTI. But yes, we require a project plan, guidelines, milestones, you know, Gantt charts. I mean, everything that you would normally have to do for say a TxDOT project or NCHRP, you have to do for a UTC project as well. And we’re required to report on that to U.S. DOT on a regular basis as well. So, you know, we ask for this information from our PIs because we know that DOT is gonna ask us for that information as part of our report requirements.

Allan Rutter (18:25):
Which makes perfect sense. Let’s talk a little bit about the most recent round of UTC selections. First, TTI was involved in one of those five national centers you mentioned that was selected. What is that center? Who’s leading it and what are some of the things about it that make it special?

Melissa Tooley (18:43):
Well, that center, the National Center for Infrastructure Transformation or NCIT, as we call it, is led by Prairie View A&M University under the leadership of Dr. Judy Perkins, who is a Regents professor in The Texas A&M University System. The partners for NCIT are TTI, our sister agency, TEES, is also a partner. Our other partners are the Blinn College District, Rutgers University, Michigan State University, and Arizona State University. So, we have a lot of geographical diversity within that consortium, which you typically see in a national center, right? If it’s a national center, you’re not gonna want it to all be concentrated in one area of the country. So we’ve got universities in the north, south, east, and west for NCIT that is a very special center in that it provides a unique opportunity for several entities within the Texas A&M System to partner together.

Melissa Tooley (19:47):
Those being again, Prairie View, TTI, and TEES to work together on this national center under Prairie View’s leadership. But there’s a couple other things that make that center very special. First of all, before the IIJA competition, there had never been a national UTC selected from the heartland. They all were in coastal states on the East or West Coast. So we felt like that was a pretty big gap. I mean, after all the years of the program, they had never selected a competition, a national center anywhere but on the coast. In this competition, there were actually two both in Texas, one of which is at Prairie View. So we were glad to see that heartland hole get filled in this competition, and the heartland of the country has transportation challenges, just like the coasts do. And really some unique challenges, too. So we were glad to see an infrastructure focused national center be located in the heartland so we could address the needs of rural America as well as urban America. The other thing that makes this center really special is that it is the first competitively awarded national center that’s ever been named at an HBCU or minority-serving institution, too. So we are very, very excited about that. And under Dr. Perkins’s visionary leadership, we’ve already accomplished some pretty amazing things here within our first two years.

Allan Rutter (21:21):
You’re helping Dr. Perkins in part of that administration of the UTC. What are some of the highlights of early accomplishments of the NCIT center?

Melissa Tooley (21:31):
Yeah, it’s that I serve as deputy director under Dr. Perkins, who is our director. And we just completed a virtual colloquium just in the last few weeks that had 150 unique participants. We had 51 speakers who presented the status of their research projects. We talked about our education and workforce development projects, and the PIs on those also spoke. We also talked about our transportation technology transfer efforts. So it was a three day event. Very successful. We were just thrilled. Secretary Buttigieg did the opening statement via video. So, it was a triumph. We were very excited with the success of that event and technology transfer at its finest. So it gave our researchers a chance to kind of interact with each other. We did a virtual reception, you know, we’ve got a call for proposals out right now. So it gave them a chance to kind of mix and mingle and seek opportunities to collaborate.

Melissa Tooley (22:35):
And I know of several projects that are being developed for our internal problem statement competition right now that are a direct result of the connections made at the colloquium. So it function exactly like we intended it to in our proposal. Another program that we have is the Highway Construction Workforce Partnership that was developed in partnership with the Texas Asphalt Pavement Association and the heavy highway industry in Texas to develop a training program for disadvantaged youth where they will come out with a certificate that will enable them to get a job in the heavy highway industry. They get the basics of math like they’ll need to use for estimating and things like that, but they actually get to operate equipment and lay pavement on a road, which we’ve built out at the RELLIS campus, and that they’re slowly paving over time every time we do one of these sessions. We’ve graduated 16 students already, almost all of whom are now actively working in the heavy highway construction industry, either at a construction company or at TxDOT.

Melissa Tooley (23:42):
So we’re really excited about that program and where it may go. We’re also looking into perhaps expanding that program to veterans in addition to disadvantaged or underrepresented groups. We have 18 research projects ongoing at NCIT. We also, as a consortium, competed for and won the U.S. DOT Advanced Bridge Technology Clearinghouse. That proposal went out under Rutgers’ leadership, and all of our partners are participating in that project. Gosh, I mean, there’s so much. We hosted a reception at TRB last year. We’re gonna do another one this year along with a student poster event that we’re gonna do before the reception to give our students some exposure and give them an opportunity to do more presentations. So, we’re giving our students opportunities to do a lot of things and get themselves out in front of their peers and PIs from other institutions. And right now, you know, I think one of the things that I didn’t talk about earlier is that congressional support is very important for the UTCs because it is a congressionally directed program and that it is in the authorization bills.

Melissa Tooley (24:55):
We are working on an NCIT newsletter right now that is focused to a congressional audience to let them know, Hey, here’s what we’ve been doing with this grant money for this program that you put in the bill. And we think that’s really exciting. In fact, this is something new that we’re trying at NCIT. We have three newsletters a year. One is focused to our academic colleagues, one is focused to our stakeholders in industry, and the third is directed toward a congressional audience. So that’s another really cool thing that we’ve done with newsletters, but that’ll give you some idea of some of the things we’ve done.

Allan Rutter (25:31):
Well, certainly one of the things that’ll, I hope, be clearly communicated through that congressional-oriented newsletter is the breadth of activity that’s going on should make them feel pretty good about this part of the infrastructure bill that we put in.

Melissa Tooley (25:46):
Yeah, absolutely. We’re really excited about it.

Allan Rutter (25:50):
Now we’re also part of one of those 10 regional UTCs. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. I think it’s the Southern Plains Transportation Center? Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you and Dr. Puppala are involved in that?

Melissa Tooley (26:05):
Yeah. That center is led out of the University of Oklahoma. It is a really big consortium that includes universities in every state in our region. And those states are Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico. That center focuses on infrastructure as well, specifically climate change and how it is impacting infrastructure. Dr. Puppala and I serve as associate directors for that center. I represent TTI and he represents the TEES side. We work very closely together. I might also add that Dr. Puppala is an associate director for the NCIT center as well. So he and I worked together on that center also. But this particular center has done quite a bit of research on resilience and climate impacts in the region. TTI’s contribution has to do with how port facilities are gonna be impacted by climate change and resiliency for port facilities. So we’re very excited about that consortium as well.

Allan Rutter (27:11):
TTI through the university as lead agency for one of those 20 Tier 1 UTCs. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yes. You had mentioned that earlier in a conversation. Tell us a little more about what the Center for Advancing Research in Transportation, Emissions, Energy and Health, CARTEEH, is and its members.

Melissa Tooley (27:32):
Yes. CARTEEH has won in two consecutive competitions. It is the Tier 1 center that is our marquee UTC for TTI. The consortium consists of TTI, Georgia Tech, and Johns Hopkins. It was the first time that a medical research institution had been included in the UTC Program. This past competition, they added the Morehouse School of Medicine, which is a medical school that is also an HBCU. They also added North Dakota State to get that tribal element into their research. And UC-Riverside–sorry, that’s the University of California at Riverside–and The University of Texas-El Paso. So it’s a very broad consortium for a Tier 1. I mean, includes really all along the southern border and all the way back up through North Dakota and into the east and back down. So they’ve got a lot of geographic and topic diversity within that consortium. They started out really doing mostly transportation emissions and how they impact public health, but over time have really branched out more into transportation impacts on air quality of the electrification of the vehicle fleet and some of the challenges involved. So that center has grown and evolved over time, and I think in a very positive and competitive way. Very well-run center, very impactful research.

Allan Rutter (29:06):
And finally, let’s talk a little bit about other Tier 1 UTCs that involve TTI: Maritime Transportation Research and Education, and the University Transportation Center for Railway Safety. Who is TTI involved with in those and what kinds of stuff are they doing?

Melissa Tooley (29:22):
Yeah, sure. MarTREC, which is the Maritime Transportation Research and Education Center, is headlined at the University of Arkansas. The other partners in that center are Jackson State University, Louisiana State University, the University of New Orleans, of course, Texas A&M/TTI, and Vanderbilt University. And if you look at the members of that consortium, they are really uniquely positioned to focus on maritime transportation. This is a very good example of the matchmaking process that we go through. There’s quite a few port facilities within the state of Arkansas that go into the Mississippi and then go south to New Orleans. So they do a lot of maritime logistics research. They do a lot of port resilience research. They’ve been around for three competitions. And they had been competitive successfully once already. And we were not a part of that consortium originally. And then when the FAST Act competition came up, I contacted a colleague at the University of Arkansas and said, Hey, you guys are doing some great stuff. We’ve got some people that could really, I think bring value to your program. Would you be interested in perhaps adding us to your consortium? And she checked with her consortium members and they all agreed that that would make their proposal more competitive the second time around. And we were indeed successful in that competition. And we’ve been a part of that consortium ever since.

Allan Rutter (30:59):
Of course, that maritime center deals with both inland waterways and port facilities on the coast.

Melissa Tooley (31:04):
Yes, it does, because the University of New Orleans does a lot of coastal port facility research. They also do a lot of education and workforce development, like, for barge captains and things like that. So it’s a really kind of unique program within the UTCs.

Allan Rutter (31:20):
And the final one I mentioned has to do with railway safety, which as a train boy, I’m very excited about.

Melissa Tooley (31:26):
<laugh>. Right, exactly. And we’re excited about that one, too. It’s led out of The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, or UT-RGV, as we call it for short. And then the partners are Texas A&M, TTI, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. And that particular center focuses on three different things: railway mechanical systems, which essentially is just, you know, better mechanical components for better performance of railways; railway operation systems, which includes things like railway crossing safety, railway operations safety; and then railway infrastructure systems, which is things like new and more durable materials and systems, safety assessments, and advanced technology for monitoring railway infrastructure.

Melissa Tooley (32:18):
But also, Allan, I want to point out that one of the big things about competition is that it actually provides more opportunity for TTI than earmarking did because we have the opportunity to not only compete for a lead, we can also be a part of all these other teams, which is why after that FAST Act competition, after things went completely competitive, we were a part of four UTCs, one of which we led.

Melissa Tooley (32:42):
And then after the most recent competition we were, we ended up being a part of five, one that we lead and four that we’re partnered on. So one of the things that Agency Director Winfrey wanted to do was take a more systematic approach to how we manage our UTCs. So. We put together a UTC management office within TTI to manage the administrative part of our UTC involvement. And what that does is free our PIs to do what they do best, which is research, education, and technology transfer, and let our office deal with things like the match requirements, the report requirements, managing our relationships with the leads for our various UTCs. And we feel like this kind of systematic approach, this institutional office that supports our UTC activities, is gonna position us really well for the next competition.

Allan Rutter (33:40):
You’ve been involved in UTCs for quite a while, both as a UTC director and at the administration level, helping coordinate proposals, working with other institutions through the Council of University Transportation Centers, and then helping connect UTC research to other organizations. What are some of the biggest shifts and changes in the UTC program that you’ve seen in that involvement?

Melissa Tooley (34:07):
You know, it seems that every time an authorization bill passes, the priorities of Congress might change slightly. Consequently, the focus areas, the selection criteria and the priorities might change with every new bill. For example, the IIJA brought a new priority area. Cybersecurity was new in this last bill. So things do change slightly according to the priorities of the committees of jurisdiction for the authorization bill. But I’ve always said, although the lens may change from which, you know, we view transportation issues, transportation problems really don’t, we’re always gonna need safe, reliable, and efficient ways to move people and freight, but there may just be more or less emphasis on certain issues as to how we get there.

Allan Rutter (35:03):
And one of the things in talking about the NCIT center that got you really excited is some of the accomplishments that that center is doing. What are some of the other big accomplishments you’ve seen as part of UTCs that you’ve been a part of with TTI?

Melissa Tooley (35:17):
You know, there’s been a number of programs at TTI that were initially either seated with UTC funds or were significantly enhanced by UTC funding. Just a few that come to mind–obviously our activities in electrification, our activities in connected and automated vehicles, TSMO, which is transportation systems management and operations. I know actually that whole field was pretty much seated at TTI with UTC funding, alternative financing. As you know, the Highway Trust Fund is not sustainable. So we started looking at alternative financing years ago with the UTCM grant, maritime transportation and ports, innovative materials for pavements and bridges, and all the other physical infrastructure that we need in this country. Hurricane evacuation technologies … some of the benefits are a lot more subtle. For example, the ability of TTI to build expertise on emerging issues. I talked a little bit earlier about the fact that the UTC Program gives us the opportunity to define the issues as well as address them.

Melissa Tooley (36:30):
This provides one way that TTI can provide thought leadership and have that thought leadership be funded by a consistent source. That benefit is one of the greatest benefits of the program itself. On the education side, we’ve had a summer internship program that’s been sponsored by our UTCs for 10 years, and six of our UTCs over the last 10 years have participated in that program; 93 students have completed that program over the last 10 years. And 17 of those researchers stayed on with TTI after the program as student researchers, or even transitioned to full-time roles at TTI. I know of at least two or three people that stayed on as student researchers and then stayed on as full-time TTI employees after being a part of our student internship program. And then SWUTC, our regional center that I talked about earlier, that grant alone supported almost 1,300 students over the life of that grant, 95% of whom entered the transportation profession.

Melissa Tooley (37:32):
This has had immeasurable impact on the transportation profession as a whole, because all of those people went out into practice. That’s a lot of people. And you go to meetings like TRB and an awful lot of those people have either worked at or been touched by TTI in some way. And that’s just one of our UTCs and its impact. And then technology transfer, you know, again, it’s a three-legged stool. CARTEEH spun off a technology company from the results of one of their research projects that’s been very, very successful. We commercialized a hurricane evacuation technology that we developed with UTC support funds. I mean, who knows what interesting and cool things we’re gonna develop with our new UTC grant? And I think the sky’s the limit in what we can accomplish in the years to come.

Allan Rutter (38:26):
One of the things that’s pretty clear for both what you’ve been able to describe and the passion with which you’re able to do it, is that, you know, we as Texans are really fortunate that your expertise and experience has been applied in so many successful UTCs that have involved TTI. I can tell from that enthusiasm that you’ve got a real passion for this. What are some of the other reasons you’re excited to show up for work every day?

Melissa Tooley (38:50):
<laugh> Well, thank you. Honestly, professionally speaking, what motivates me to go to the office every day is the opportunity to provide resources for other people to do what they do. I mean, TTI has breadth depth in virtually every area at the transportation enterprise. We have researchers who are the very best at what they do. I mean, it’s absolutely mind blowing the depth of expertise we have at this institution. They just need the resources to do it. And in my mind, there’s no better way to provide those resources than the UTC program because not only do they have the opportunity to address transportation issues, they have the ability to define those transportation issues as well. And I’m beyond blessed to be a part of TTI’s five new UTCs. Honestly, this is the best job ever.

Allan Rutter (39:47):
Well, I’m happy that you’re doing it both as somebody who’s been able to be a recipient of those resource connections and to be able to work with you. So Melissa, thanks for joining us today.

Melissa Tooley (39:58):
Thank you. I appreciate the invitation, Allan.

Allan Rutter (40:02):
In the early part of the 20th century, Helen Keller would conclude telling her story to audiences by saying, “We live by each other and for each other. Alone, we can do so little. Together, we can do so much.” Melissa has explained how TTI and other universities have worked together through the UTC program to accomplish the three goals Congress set out for the program: transportation research, education and workforce development, and technology transfer.

Allan Rutter (40:32):
Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard or learned something, please take just a minute to give us a review, subscribe and share this episode. I invite you to join us next time for another conversation about getting ourselves and the stuff we need from point A to point B. Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of The Texas A&M University System. The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau. I’m your host, Allan Rutter. Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you next time.