Teaching Geotechnical Engineering using Professional Practice

It is a famous q uote that “Every structur e is supported on soils or rock, t hose that aren’t, either fly, float, or fall over”. Soils are natural deposits on which humans have no control. Soils at no two sites are likely to be the same. Even, at a particular point at a sit e, different types of soils exist at different depths. Several theories and formulas have been developed since the birth of soil mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering in 1925. Most of these formulas have been developed from experimental data on soils that have some particular characteristics, which may or may not be applicable to soils with even slightly different characteristics. Due to this reason, Prof. Karl Terzaghi, who has been recognized as the father of soil mechanics, in 1936 stated that the accur acy of computed results in geotechnical engineering using theories and relationships never exceeds that of a “crude estimate ”. Therefore, principal fu nction of teaching theories in g eotechnical engineering in a classroom is to train students as to what and how to observe in the field. Keeping this in mind, necessity of incorporation of professional practice into the geotechnical engineering curriculum has been recognized by both the academicians and professional practitioners. Recently, the author developed a full, three credit course on “Geotechnical Engineering in Professional Practice” for undergraduate seniors and graduate students. The course has successfully been taught two time s at SIUC . This paper present s the details of the course, course outline, a nd the procedures used to teach this course. INTRODUCTION The ABET’s Engineering Criteria 2000 places significant emphasis on preparing graduates so that they can successfully enter and continue practice of engineering and it is the responsibility of the institution to satisfy these criteria. Therefore, participation of the industry and/or professionals in engineering education has become an integral part of engineering curriculum. Professional practice can be defined as the act of working first hand with situations for customers by using a combination of highly specialized knowledge and skills that are obtained through study, training, and experience (Aldridge, 1994). Professional practice requires that graduates from a four year engineering curriculum are capable of setting up and solving problems which do not have answers given at the back of books. For several years geotechnical engineering was based on past experiences through succession of experiments without any real scientific character (Skempton 1985). Although, structures were supported on soils since the beginning of mankind, soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering are still considered as the most recent branches of civil engineering. A new era in the development of soil mechanics started with the publication of a book in German titled Erdbaumechanic (Soil Mechanics) by Dr. Karl Terzaghi in 1925 (Puri and Prakash, 2004). Karl Terzaghi is considered as the father of soil mechanics. After publication of this first book on soil mechanics by Karl Terzaghi, the publications of “Theoretical Soil Mechanics” by Terzaghi (1943), “Fundamentals of Soil Mechanics” by Taylor (1948), and Soil mechanics in Engineering Practice” by Terzaghi and Peck (1948) placed the subject of geotechnical engineering on a firm footing (Puri and Prakash, 2004). GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING VERSUS OTHER DISCIPLINES Couttolenc (2000) stated that geotechnical engineering is not a list of procedures but list of challenges. The geotechnical engineers never have the same project in the same soil. Unlike other construction materials, strength of soils and dimensions of soils and rock layers can not be decided based on the project needs. Instead, projects need to be analyzed and designed based on what is available at a particular site. Chances of having the same subsurface conditions at any two project sites are slim to none. Therefore, the projects which look similar to others pose significantly different challenges for geotechnical engineers. Solving every geotechnical engineering problem requires significant amount of judgment, in addition to strong understanding of basic principles of soils mechanics and foundation design. Most of the schools in the United States and abroad teach basic principles of soil mechanics and foundation design in one or two courses. Students only learn basic principles, formulas, and theories in these courses without much exposure to applications. One of the reasons for limited exposure of students on applications aspects is that most of the faculty members