On a cold day during fall quarter students from Geology 283, "Geology
for Engineers," pull on boots and heavy coats, stuff notebooks in
backpacks, and pile into big white vans to head for a location on the
Hocking River south of Athens. The class of future civil engineers is on
its way to see firsthand how a bridge on County Road 24 is threatened by
the eventual cutoff of a loop of river a few hundred yards upstream. When
this happens the flow of the newly straightened river will exert much more
force on the bridge abutments, possibly undermining them, explains Mary
Stoertz, assistant professor of geological sciences.
Dr. Stoertz spends a lot of time on the road with her students. She says showing them firsthand geological situations they may encounter later in their professional lives is far more valuable than just looking at slides or reading from a textbook. Three 13-passenger vans, owned by the Department of Geological Sciences, provide transportation for Dr. Stoertz's field trips, as well as for field trips for a large number of students from other departments of the College of Arts and Sciences.
"All civil engineering students must take this class," Dr. Stoertz explains.
I try to instill a little humility in students--I want them to know where they can get messed up if they don't have respect for natural systems. The Hocking River is a classic example of a natural system thwarting engineered designs. The river was straightened through Athens in 1971 and now there are meanders forming in the channel as silt is deposited. It has been dredged for years and now it's too costly to dredge it any more. It's anybody's guess what will happen with the river now. There are 500,000 cubic yards of sediment in the stream. At seven dollars a cubic yard to remove it, the price would be $3.5 million to get the river back to the way it was designed.
The vans pull up to a field and students pick their way through weeds and briars to the edge of the river where stone has been piled along the banks of the loop. As they walk the eroding shoreline upstream of the bridge, Dr. Stoertz asks what engineers should do in a situation like this. "Where should they have built the bridge?" she queries. She says that her last class came to the conclusion that there aren't any easy answers with a meandering river. At the least, planners must budget for the bridge's eventual repair or relocation. "This was a leap in understanding," she comments.
Next the students are transported to an apartment complex under construction on Home Street. The Hocking River is in view across a large field. "By law, the apartments are built up on top of about eight feet of fill," Dr. Stoertz explains to the students. "I want you to think about the implications of filling this flood plain. Look at the existing houses across the street. If there is a flood and this area fills, where will the excess floodwater go? Can you keep filling the floodplain indefinitely?"
The students cluster in groups, commenting on the differences in elevation of the older houses and new apartments. They make notations in their books and head for the vans.
Back at the university, Travis Bayes, a third-year engineering student, pauses as he leaves a van to comment that the field trips show students both sides of engineering. "It is more hands-on than my other classes because of the field trips," Mr. Bayes says, adding
This really helps me understand the problems...I never realized some of the different engineering concepts of natural systems before I took this class. I've learned that you have to think about what will happen after you've completed a project. If something fails, you're responsible for people's lives--you're responsible for longer than your lifetime.