Undergraduate Research Internships to Support Exploratory Research in Transportation Engineering

摘要

The Case Western Reserve University Department of Civil Engineering is in the process of expanding its teaching and research activities, Transportation Engineering as part of its initiative in the overall area of Infrastructure Performance and Reliability. Although the Department has traditional strengths in the areas of transportation materials and structures, it is not well know for Transportation Engineering. Because of this, the Department plans to refine its recruiting strategies to make more engineering students aware of the opportunities available at Case Western Reserve University. The goal of this 2008 OTC project was to use this funding opportunity as seed money to recruit students into transportation engineering research and to explore research activities that can become more substantial projects in subsequent years. Research initiatives will be conducted to examine transportation-related problems. The Research Internships in Transportation (RIT) program was modeled after the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, which has been used successfully to recruit students into the Department's programs in Environmental and Geotechnical engineering. Ultimately, the RIT program will lead to an increase in the number of engineers pursuing advanced degrees in Transportation Engineering in the State of Ohio, and to a series of research proposals designed to help CWRU partner with other Ohio universities and professional organizations to conduct innovative transportation research.