Not Making the Grade: Expansive Soils and Higher Education in Texas
Publication: Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 131, Issue 4
Abstract
Expansive soils are a serious geologic hazard in Texas; accordingly, one would expect Texas engineering colleges to offer a strong educational program on expansive soils at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. However, data from the geotechnical programs within the civil engineering departments of Texas engineering colleges suggest that while Texas educational programs cover the topic of expansive soils in varying degrees, the educational effort is highly skewed toward traditional geotechnical and foundation issues. In most cases, treatment of the expansive soil problem is limited and is not adequate when measured against the scope and extent of expansive soil problems in Texas.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The writer thanks the Texas geotechnical engineering faculty who assisted with this research by graciously providing information about their expansive soil courses and instruction. He also thanks the three anonymous reviewers of this paper for their helpful comments and suggestions to improve the manuscript.
References
American Society for Engineering Education (ASCE). (2001). ASEE publications and marketing, Directory of engineering colleges—Profiles, New York ⟨http://www.asee.org/colleges/⟩ (December 2001).
Bureau of Economic Analysis (2002). “Regional accounts data—Gross state product data—Texas.” U.S. Dept. of Commerce, ⟨http://www.bea.doc.gov⟩ (December 2002).
Chen, F. H. (1975). Foundations on expansive soils, developments in geotechnical engineering, Vol. 12, Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Grigg, N. S. (2000). “Demographics and industry employment of civil engineering workforce.” J. Prof. Issues Eng. Educ. Pract., 126(3), 116–124.
Jones, D. E., and Jones, K. A. (1987). “Treating expansive soils.” Civ. Eng. (N.Y.), 57(8).
Olive, W. W., Chleborad, A. F., Frahme, C. W., Schlocker, J., Schneider, R. R., and Shuster, R. L. (1989). “Swelling clays map of the conterminous United States.” U.S. Geological Survey, Map I-1940, 1:7,500,000 Scale. ⟨http://www.surevoid.com/surevoid_web/soil_maps/tx.html⟩ (December 2001).
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (2002). “Statistics portal—Gross domestic product.” ⟨http://www.oecd.org⟩ (December 2002).
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (2001). “Data and statistics.” Statistical Rep. FY 2001, Student Enrollment, Summary of Headcount Enrollment: 1996–2000, ⟨http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/⟩ (December 2001).
Texas Section, ASCE (2001). “Civil engineering papers.” Abstracts of the Proc., Texas Section, American Society of Civil Engineers, Fall 1995 through Spring 2001, ⟨http://www.texasce.org/papers.htm⟩ (December 2001).
Texas State Data Center (2001). “Texas census.” Census 2000 Profile Data, Descriptive Tables and Maps, ⟨http://txsdc.tamu.edu/⟩ (December 2001), Department of Rural Sociology, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, Tex.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2005 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 11, 2002
Accepted: Jul 29, 2003
Published online: Oct 1, 2005
Published in print: Oct 2005
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.