The North American Geosynthetics Society hosted “Educate the Educators: A Geosynthetics Training Program for University Professors” on 28–29 July 2015 in Austin, Texas.
This program provided core geosynthetic content, background information, and materials for use in the classroom so that participants can offer fundamental geosynthetics instruction in their engineering programs. The primary goal of the event was to teach every participant how to offer at least one 50-minute class on geosynthetics at the undergraduate level. Lecture notes and a hands-on learning module were provided to support this fundamental lecture. Additional class content and resources for senior undergraduate and graduate courses was also presented, discussed and provided.
The training sessions were be led by NAGS members Dr. Jorge Zornberg of The University of Texas at Austin, geotechnical consultant Dr. Barry Christopher and Dr. Richard Brachman of Queen’s University. Corporate sponsors contributed to technical education by providing informative and interesting case histories as well as special hands-on laboratory explanations and demonstrations by technical experts.
“The quality of the program and the reception of the material by the attendees was excellent,” stated John Henderson, PE, President of NAGS. “Educate the Educators is one of the key strategic programs for NAGS to fulfill our mission to improve the knowledge base of civil engineering professionals about geosynthetics.”
Educate the Educators hosted 43 visiting professors from North America and participants from Italy, Peru, China, Indonesia and Egypt.
This non-commercial educational event was chaired by Mr. Boyd Ramsey of GSE Environmental and created by the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS). The event was hosted by the IGS’s North American Chapter (NAGS) and supported by generous sponsors: Geosynthetic Materials Association, Geosynthetic Institute, TenCate Geosynthetics, Erosion Control Technology Council, Presto Geosystems, GSE Environmental, Huesker, Thrace-Linq, and TRI.
