CONNECTIONS
Bridges Between Past & Future
Civil Engineering
Departmental Newsletter
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Fall 2004 Connections Newsletter (#5)
Happenings in the Civil Engineering Department
Homecoming was a great event this year for College of Engineering and especially for the Civil Engineering Department. First, we were able to celebrate the John Clark Endowed Professorship and recall the great contributions that Dr. Clark made to the Department, College, NMSU and nationally in water resources and water treatment. I think the dedication ceremony was very successful. I want to especially thank Dr. John Hernandez for planning the program and assuring the right people, such as Jackie Clark, Narendra Gunaji and former NMSU President Gerald Thomas, were included.
It was also a great time to celebrate with the Archuleta family. Adelmo was recognized as the Outstanding Alumni for the College of Engineering this year. At the recognition luncheon, we had the Outstanding Senior for the College of Engineering introduce Del to the audience. The student did a great job in making the introduction and had insights that few others would be able to share. The student was Daniel Archuleta, Del and Rebecca’s son who is a Civil Engineering senior graduating this December.
In this issue of Connections, we are highlighting the career of Professor Jesse V. Lunsford. I receive frequent questions about Jesse; we thought this would be great way to share information. Jess is living here in Las Cruces and comes
by the office on occasion.
As a faculty member of the CAGE (formerly CE) Dept. for over 22 years, Prof. Lunsford taught and advised numerous students as well as serving on various professional organizations. Both students and his professional associates remember him with fondness and gratitude for his advice and excellent performance. One of his major projects was a weather modification project for the Office of Atmospheric Water Resources of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. He was the director of the team at NMSU that tried to increase the quantity of precipitable sky water that could be contained and used within the Rio Grande Basin in 1966-1971. Preliminary results were discussed at the 14th annual New Mexico Water Conference (1969). An additional number of papers on atmospheric precipitation resulted from that research. But his primary research was in anaerobic digestion, stream sanitation, algae production and water reclamation and utilization. In 1973 he won the Fuller Award (Water Utility Man of the Year).
As a teacher, Professor Lunsford has always been highly regarded. He was faculty advisor for the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers for a number of years. In 1968 he was selected as the first Outstanding Engineering Faculty Member by the
student Engineers’ Council. Then, in 1980, he won the Bromilow Award for Teaching Excellence. At the ceremony he said that teachers should be “confident and competent” in their chosen fields, and that “young people respond best when they are accepted as individuals and respected with dignity.”
In 2004 the Jesse V. Lunsford Endowed Scholarship was established. When making his gift, alumnus David Burstein ’71 ’73 remarked that Professor Jesse Lunsford was among the best teachers he had during his years at the CE Dept. David made a $1000 gift to begin the endowment for the scholarship.
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Students in AMP
Students in the AMP (Alliance for Minority Participation) program are very active in the research area as well as their classes. Dr. A. Salim Bawazir (below left) and Jose Solis, a senior student in AMP (right) are checking the validity of their datalogger program for collecting salt cedar
evapotranspiration measurements in the picture below.
Satellite ET Estimates
Evapotranspiration (ET) is a major portion of the hydrological system. There have been a number of methods used to estimate ET, including using crop coefficients and climatic parameters. However, traditional
methods provide point measurements of ET and do not account for spatial variability in a large scale. Recent advances in remote sensing have made it possible to develop regional maps of ET with high precision.
Drs. Zohrab Samani of CAGE and Max Bleiweiss, of the Agricultural Experiment Station, have developed a procedure to use the combination of satellite data, ground level weather stations data, and point measurements of ET to estimate and develop regional ET maps. Using this method, the ET values were compared with direct measurement of pecan ET. The comparison showed that crop ET can be calculated from the model with high precision.
Results of ET in the Mesilla Valley for a single day are shown at left. The dark blue areas indicate very low ET due to residential and desert areas with low vegetation. The mountains in the east also exhibit low ET
from sparse vegetation. Rural areas where crops processing ET are in different shades of orange to red (indicating different ET rates). Note the large red area at the bottom center of the map – this is a pecan orchard of similar-sized trees with similar ET rates. The NMSU golf course is in greenish-yellow.
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ACADEMY OF CAGE (ACAGE)
The Civil Engineering Academy held its annual initiation ceremony at Hernandez Hall on October 29, 2003.
Five associate members became regular members at the ceremonies. They were:
Barbara L. Crockett, PE ’83, ’85, president of B. Crockett, inc.
Debra P. Hicks, PE/PSI ’83, president of Pettigrew & Associates
W.M. Tres Hicks, PE/PS ’84, field engineer & surveyor of Pettigrew & Associates
Jerry Paz, PE ’83, vice-president of Molzen Corbin & Associates
Lisa Webster, PE ’84, senior structural engineer, Chaves Grieves Engineers
In addition, three CAGE students received scholarships from the Academy:
Robert Fierro
Erik Menchaca
Kelly Robertson
John Clark Endowed Professorship
At the Academy meeting on October 29th, the first endowed professorship in the Dept. of Civil and Geological Engineering was announced. The John Clark Endowed Professorship was awarded to Dr. Nirmala Khandan. A number of Academy members contributed to the establishment of this endowment: John W. Hernandez, Harold “Chub” Foreman, Ed Foreman, Walter Hines, Norman Gaume, William & Norma Lorang, Bill Wells, Adelmo Archuleta, John Burkstaller, Edmund Archuleta, Frank A. Kozeliski, Lt. Michael A. Kozeliski, Samuel P. & Gloria Maggard, G. Parker Bell, David Burstein and Robert D. Hill.
Matching funds were provided by the U.S. Department of Education Title V Program.
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Bridge News
Dr. Rola Idriss received a $400,000 grant to install a second "smart bridge" on a new bridge to be constructed on I-25 interchange at the village of Dona Ana. Fiber-optic sensors will be installed in the bridges' concrete beams.
Daniel W. Mead Student Contest Award
Matthew J. Cramer, a student in the structures program of Civil Engineering, has won second place in the 2004 Zone III National Daniel W. Mead Student Contest for his essay paper. This contest is sponsored by the ASCE Committee on Student Activities (CSA). A check - in the amount of $150 - and a certificate was issued to Mr. Cramer. Congratulations on receiving this award!
Education Award
The 4th annual Conference of the New Mexico Alliance
for Graduate Education and the Professiorate was held October 14-16. Drs.
Zohrab Samani and Adrian Hanson, and two of their students,
Maritza Macias-Coral and Raymond De la Vega received the “Engineering
Poster Award” for their poster Producing Energy and Soil Amendment from
Combined Agricultural Waste. Participating universities were NMSU.UNM, UTEP,
New Mexico Tech, Rice University and the University of Puerto Rico.
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Library News
The NMSU library system has received a gift of
$9,000 from the Robert E. and Evelyn McKee Foundation of El Paso. The gift will
be used to purchase engineering resources (books, on-line journal subscriptions,
CD-ROMs, videos, etc.) for the libraries’ collections. Robert E. McKee is
remembered as the “master builder” who built major structures in El Paso as well
as Los Angeles, Dallas, New Orleans, and Atlanta.
The Branson Library has already purchased a subscription
to the on-line database Water Resources Abstracts. This database contains
abstracts from journals, conferences and reports covering engineering,
scientific and environmental perspectives on water resources. Coverage spans
1967 to the present. This database, used in conjunction with Engineering Village
database, will provide a major source for identifying bibliographic sources of
books, articles, and conference papers on water.
The Concrete Canoe Floats Again
In April, students of Civil Engineering took top honors in the Rocky Mountain regional competition in Fort Collins, Colorado to build a ‘concrete canoe’. Out of a total of 1000 points, based on design and construction, NMSU garnered 739, with its closest competitor, the Colorado School of Mines, coming in second at 432 points. Out of five competitions, NMSU placed first in constructing a concrete canoe, including a speed and distance race. The canoe, named the Phenomenon, was displayed in the Samuel P. Maggard Courtyard for several months.
David Serrano, one of the builders of the canoe, explained that as long as the unit weight of the concrete mix is less than the unit weight of water, it won’t sink. “It could be 50 feet wide and it’ll float.”
This was the first year that NMSU students competed in the Rocky Mountain regional contest, which included schools from Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Prior years NMSU competed against University of New Mexico and University of Texas, El Paso in the Rio Grande regional contest, but that contest was dissolved last year. UMN and NMSU transferred to the Rocky Mountain region. This meant that NMSU competed against 10 unfamiliar competitors, including some of the top engineering schools in the region.
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Julie Moore, Editor
Civil Engineering Department
New Mexico State University
P.O. Box 30001, MSC 3CE
Las Cruces, NM 88003-8801
