From January 2012 to January 2013, I was a graduate research assistant on an NSF-funded project, “Advancement of Unsaturated Soils Theory into the Undergraduate Civil Engineering Curriculum.”

While knowledge of unsaturated soil mechanics is vital for professional engineers in the field, the subject is seldom addressed in undergraduate engineering classes, and typically not introduced until coursework well into master’s and doctoral programs. Thus, the aim of the project was to develop course content for undergraduate engineering students on the subject of unsaturated soil mechanics. This content would then be piloted at six partner institutions for evaluation and iterative improvement.

For this project, I created learning modules in cooperation with ASU engineering faculty as subject matter experts (SMEs). The modules were designed to be a ready-to-use solution for any engineering instructor interested in teaching unsaturated soil mechanics. They were piloted at partner institutions, and final versions were available as free, publicly-available downloads for any interested instructor.