Geosynthetics April/May 2020 - 54

IGS-NA NEWS
IGS NORTH
AMERICA
The mission of IGS North
America is to provide
leadership in advancing
the education and research
of geosynthetics, in strong
cooperation with IGS, via:
» Organization of and
participation in technical
conferences, seminars
and workshops
» Development and
dissemination of tools for
geosynthetics education
» Recognition of technical
contributions and innovations
regarding geosynthetics
» Stimulation of geosynthetics
research and their applications
through the IGS-NA Awards of
Excellence Program

By John McCartney
and Richard Brachman

Letter from the chair

he North American Chapter of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS-NA) had
a productive 2019, and we are looking forward to several exciting activities in 2020.
We held the third installment of Educate the Educators in December 2019 in La Jolla, Calif.
In addition, IGS-NA was a sponsoring organization of the Geosynthetics Conference
2020: CASE STUDIES, March 8-10, in North Charleston, S.C., and organized a workshop
entitled "Professional Issues in Geosynthetics Engineering." Presentations at the workshop
included "Ethics in Geosynthetics and Civil Engineering" by Boyd Ramsey, "Geopipes" by
Michael Pluimer and "Geosynthetic Installation Issues for Designers" by Chris Eichelberger.
Finally, IGS-NA is a sponsor of the GeoAmericas 2020 conference in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, Oct. 26-29. As part of this conference, IGS-NA organized a paper competition for
IGS-NA student members. The winners will receive funds to attend the conference.
In addition to these events, we are working with different partner organizations to offer
state-of-the-art webinars on exciting geosynthetics topics. Please keep your eyes open for
these in the future.
John McCartney

Changing practice by changing education-IGS North America
Educates the Educators
By Richard Brachman

John McCartney, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE,
is professor and department chair
of the Department of Structural
Engineering at the University
of California San Diego and the
president of IGS-NA.

Richard Brachman is a professor
at Queen's University (Kingston,
Canada) and past-president of
IGS North America.

A chapter of the International
Geosynthetics Society

0420GS_p48-cv4.indd 54

The North American Chapter of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS-NA)
held its third Educate the Educators (EtE) event on Dec. 9-10, 2019, at the University of
California, San Diego. Richard Brachman (Queen's University), John McCartney (University
of California, San Diego) and Ben Leshchinsky (Oregon State University) served as the
instructors. After a half-day on the fundamentals of geosynthetics, the remainder of the
two-day event provided specialized technical training on environmental, transportation
and reinforcing applications of geosynthetics.
The 2019 EtE class was comprised of 22 professors (19 from the USA, 3 from Canada) at
the assistant to associate professor rank who all want to teach geosynthetics in their courses.
They were the ideal target audience for EtE, as one-third initially identified as geosynthetic novices while the rest had intermediate knowledge on geosynthetics. This served
as an excellent common starting point for lectures and discussions aimed at equipping our
class with new knowledge and materials to teach geosynthetics.
EtE 2019 was made possible with the generous financial support of TenCate
Geosynthetics Americas, CETCO/Minerals Technologies Inc., Solmax, HUESKER Inc. and
the International Geosynthetics Society. Industry sponsor representatives John Lostumbo
(TenCate), Adam Maskal (Solmax) and Lilma Schimmel (HUESKER) were also part of
the instructional team. In addition to delivering high-quality technical case histories, their
active, hands-on involvement in the geosynthetics identification workshop was a key part
of the training we offered.

3/23/20 6:15 PM

Geosynthetics April/May 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Geosynthetics April/May 2020