EERI Student Chapter Activities

Geotechnical and Structural Aspects of Earthquake Engineering: Presentations to Schools

Various Dates 2006-2007

The presentations were geared toward a general audience and included a slide show on the basic causes of earthquakes, general roles of geotechnical and structural earthquake engineers, and also had several demonstrations using a liquefaction simulation model, a response spectrum demonstration showing natural frequencies of SDOFs, and a portable structural frame on a shake table.  Providing an interesting engineering science lesson for K-12 students and posing open-ended questions is the primary goal of this program.  A list of locations for the presentations in 2006 – 2007 is given below:

• A full day of Jaime Rumage’s Linus Pauling Middle School 8th grade science classes, Corvallis, Oregon.  Each pair of OSU students taught three classes.
• OSU ASCE / CH2M-Hill Student Bridge Competition, Corvallis, Oregon.  Presented by Sean Clark and Andy George.  High School student audience.
• Classes of Melissa Farver’s Liberty Elementary School 6th grade science class, Albany, Oregon.  Presented by Sean Clark and Juan Hernandez.
• Various visits with High School students, Corvallis, Oregon.

 

 

 

Juan Hernandez and Sean Clark with liquefaction demo at Linus Pauling Middle School

 

 

Order of the Engineer Ceremony

June 16th, 2007

This year, the EERI student chapter, in conjunction with the OSU ASCE student chapter, continued the tradition started in 2005 and hosted the “Order of the Engineer” induction ceremony.

EERI members Juan Hernandez and Sean Clark, with the assistance of ASCE members Nichole Jackson and Sheri Billeter and EERI/ASCE Faculty Advisor, Tom Miller, organized the ceremony. The event was held on the OSU campus just before commencement 2007. This year the ceremony saw a growth in inductees and interest over the last several years.  38 new members of the Order were inducted this year, from nine different majors in the college.

Speakers included Sean Clark, President of EERI; Dr Ken Williamson, Head of CCE and BCE; Ken Archibald, ASCE Practitioner Advisor; Dr Todd Scholz, CCE; Dr. Tom Miller, CCE; Dr. Wayne Huber, CCE; and Dean Ron Adams from the College of Engineering.  

Hopefully, the student chapters of EERI and ASCE will continue the tradition and interest will continue to increase yearly.

 

2007 Inductees in Link #229 of the Order of the Engineer at Oregon State University

 

Lecture by Lt Colonel Wiley Thompson and Dr RobertYeats on Kashmir Earthquake

The main EERI lecture of the year was from Geoscience PhD candidate Wiley Thompson and Dr. Robert Yeats of Geosciences. They discussed the Kashmir earthquake of October 2005.  Wiley Thompson is a Lt. Colonel in the US Army, and was the person in charge of the rescue efforts for the people of the Kashmir region. Dr. Yeats is a Professor Emeritus of Geology at OSU.  He is also the author of numerous books and has published at least twice a year since 2000.  He went to Kashmir to study the earthquake itself and brought a huge amount of seismic expertise to the lecture.  He worked with an international team of scientists attempting to understand and therefore predict earthquakes of this kind better.

PEER Scholars Program - 2006

Josh Lehr and Kelsey Edwardsen participated in the PEER Scholars Program, traveling to four host universities to learn about various aspects of earthquake engineering.  The topics included seismology at Stanford, geotechnical engineering at UC San Diego, structural engineering at UC Irvine, and public policy at UC Los Angeles.