Water Resources: Hydraulics and Hydrology
No, there were really quite a number of courses at Iowa. Both Irene and I had some liberal
arts work before we went to Iowa so we didn't have to take some of the basic things. I had
algebra and trig, English, economics, and Spanish classes. Iowa had a large graduate
program in hydraulics at that time and even though we were undergraduates, we took many
of the graduate level courses in hydraulics. As an undergraduate, I took classes in
Mechanics of Fluids, Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, Water Measurements, Hydraulic
Computations, Hydrology, Hydraulic Turbines, and Irrigation and Drainage.
We became interested in hydraulics partly because we worked for the Corps in the hydraulics
lab as undergraduates. When we first went to Iowa, we thought designing a bridge would
be the most fun, but somehow we got into water from working in the laboratory.
How much in your undergraduate courses was design? Was there much in the area of design,
because you did a lot of that in your career?
No, Irrigation and Drainage included design. I think that Measurement of Water and
Hydraulic Computations both probably had some design, but they did not include design of
a major project.
Well, that would have been very unusual, wouldn't it, for an undergraduate to have anything
We have now in the senior year, a Capstone Design Course. A group of students work as a
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team, and they do everything from the planning, structure design, concrete design, hydraulics
and so forth. Usually the project is a bridge or something of that type. But we didn't do that
when I was in school.
Did your classes include anything related to project management?
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Nothing.
Nothing at all like that. So this was all sort of the equivalent of getting ready to be what
would be called a "junior engineer" at that time?
Right. Now,
in his graduate-level dam design course, talked a lot about how
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everything fit together. You wouldn't really have called it management, but we got some of
it there.
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