Year 2005 UCD— ITS— RR— 05— 25
Integrated Graduate Education & Research Traineeships:
Transportation Technology & Policy Final Grant Report
Patricia L. Mokhtarian
IGERT Principal Investigator
Joan S. Tolentino
IGERT Program Manager
Institute of Transportation Studies ◊ University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue ◊ Davis, California 95616
PHONE: ( 530) 752- 6548 ◊ FAX: ( 530) 752- 6572
WEB: http:// its. ucdavis. edu/
FINAL REPORT
National Science Foundation
Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeships Grant
TRANSPORTATION TECHNOLOGY AND POLICY
Institute of Transportation Studies
One Shields Avenue
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA 95616
December 2005
Prepared by:
IGERT Principal Investigator: Patricia L. Mokhtarian
Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
and Chair, Transportation Technology and Policy Graduate
Group
IGERT Program Manager: Joan Tolentino, Institute of Transportation Studies
i
IGERT FACULTY
More complete descriptions of ITS- Davis affiliated faculty are found in Appendix A.
Principal Investigator
Patricia Mokhtarian, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Chair of the Transportation Technology and Policy Graduate Group, and
Associate Director for Education of the Institute of Transportation Studies
Co- Principal Investigators
Robert Flocchini, Land, Air and Water Resources
Director of the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory
Robert Johnston, Environmental Science and Policy
Daniel Sperling, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy
Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies
Steven Velinsky, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering
Co- director of the Advanced Highway Maintenance and Construction Technology Center
Faculty Advisors of IGERT Fellows ( Names of Fellows)
Lee Branstetter, Economics ( Nylander) – no longer at UCD
Andrew Burke, ITS- Davis ( Gardiner, Herbert, Kornbluth)
Daniel Chang, Civil and Environmental Engineering ( Held, Leeman)
Harry Dwyer, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering ( Grupp) – emeritus
Robert Feenstra, Economics ( Forest, Lepore, Sparber)
Andrew Frank, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering ( Harmon, Kornbluth)
Joanna Groza, Chemical Engineering & Materials Science ( Gardiner)
Susan Handy, Environmental Science & Policy ( Hough, Nicholas, Winston)
Robert Johnston, Environmental Science & Policy ( Clay, Rodier) – emeritus
Kenneth Kurani, ITS- Davis ( Congleton)
Marshall Miller, ITS- Davis ( Kershaw, McCaffrey)
Patricia Mokhtarian, Civil and Environmental Engineering ( Clay, Ory)
Robert Moore, ITS- Davis ( Sundaresan) – no longer at UCD
Debbie Niemeier, Civil and Environmental Engineering ( Hendren, Kear, Morey)
Tayhas Palmore, Chemistry ( Butlin, Melnick) – no longer at UCD
Daniel Sperling, Civil & Environmental Engineering & Environmental Science & Policy
( Badrinarayanan, Brodrick, Caldwell, Chen, Eggert, Friedman, Hamilton, Lutsey, McCarthy,
Rachlin, Rivasplata, Weinert, Williams)
Pieter Stroeve, Chemical Engineering & Materials Science ( Quinlan)
Steven Velinsky, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering ( Stiles)
James Wilen, Agricultural Economics ( Salon)
ii
IGERT STUDENTS
STUDENT
GEN-DER
PROGRAM
UNDERGRAD
MAJOR
FACULTY
ADVISOR
ADVISOR’S
HOME DEPT.
Badrinarayan, P. M TTP Geography Sperling CEE/ ESP
Brodrick, C. J. F TTP Environmental Eng. Dwyer MAE
Butlin, Nathan M Chemistry Chemistry Palmore Chemistry
Caldwell, Matthew M TTP Eng’g Physics Erickson MAE
Chen, Belinda
F TTP
Biology,
Environment
Sperling
CEE/ ESP
Clay, Michael M TTP Regional Planning Johnston ESP
Congleton, Chris M TTP Culture, Technology Kurani ITS
Eggert, Anthony M TTP Mechanical Eng. Sperling CEE/ ESP
Forest, Adam M Economics Economics Feenstra Economics
Friedman, David M TTP Mechanical Eng. Moore ITS
Gardiner, Monterey M TTP Materials Science Groza Chem. Engr.
Grupp, David M Mech Eng Mechanical Eng. Dwyer MAE
Hamilton, Pete M TTP Engineering Sperling CEE/ ESP
Harmon, Fred M Mech Eng Electrical Eng. Frank MAE
Held, Anthony M CEE Civil Engineering Chang CEE
Hendren, Patricia F TTP English Niemeier CEE
Herbert, Jesse M TTP Chemical Eng. Groza Chem. Engr.
Hough, Jill F TTP Agric. Economics Sperling CEE/ ESP
Kear, Tom M CEE Civil Engineering Niemeier CEE
Kershaw, Tod M TTP Electrical Eng. Miller ITS
Kornbluth, Kurt M Mech Eng Mechanical Eng. Frank MAE
Leeman, Whitney F CEE Civil Engineering Chang CEE
Lepore, Jason M Economics Economics Feenstra Economics
Lipman, Tim M Ecology Anthropology Sperling CEE/ ESP
Lutsey, Nicholas M TTP Agricultural Eng. Sperling CEE/ ESP
McCaffrey, Zach M TTP/ Mech E Computer Eng. Miller ITS
McCarthy, Ryan M CEE Structural Eng. Ogden ESP
Melnick, Ryan M Chemistry Biophysics Palmore Chemistry
Morey, Jennifer
F Ecology
Community/ Reg’l
Environment
Niemeier
CEE
Nicholas, Mike M TTP Natural Science Ogden ESP
Nylander, David M Economics Economics Branstetter Economics
Ory, David M CEE Civil Engineering Mokhtarian CEE
Quinlan, Forest M Chem Engr Engineering Stroeve Chem. Engr.
Rachlin, Aaron M TTP Geology Sperling CEE/ ESP
Rivasplata, Charles M TTP Civil Engineering Sperling CEE/ ESP
Rodier, Caroline F Ecology History Johnston ESP
Salon, Deborah
F Ag Econ
Physics
Wilen
Ag & Re-source
Econ
Sparber, Chad M Economics Economics Feenstra Economics
Stiles, Jim M Mech Eng Mechanical Eng. Velinsky MAE
Sundaresan, Meena F TTP Mechanical Eng. Moore ITS
Weinert, Jonathan M TTP Mechanical Eng. Sperling CEE/ ESP
Williams, Brett M TTP Philosophy Sperling CEE/ ESP
Winston, Emily F TTP Mechanical Eng. Handy ESP
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some descriptive portions of this report have been taken from ITS- Davis Biennial Reports and
the ITS- Davis electronic newsletter, e- news ( see http:// www. its. ucdavis. edu/ news/ index. html).
These documents are mostly written by Jamie Knapp, with contributions from ITS- Davis faculty
and staff.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
IGERT FACULTY............................................................................................................. i
IGERT STUDENTS.......................................................................................................... ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................. iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................. iv
LIST OF TABLES........................................................................................................... vi
LIST OF FIGURES......................................................................................................... vi
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY............................................................................................. vii
1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 1- 1
2. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM AND ITS ACCOMPLISHMENTS................. 2- 1
2.1 Overview of the Program.......................................................................................... 2- 1
2.2 Budget ...................................................................................................................... 2- 2
2.3 Equipment ................................................................................................................ 2- 2
2.4 Fellowships............................................................................................................... 2- 3
2.5 Distinguished Visiting Speaker Series..................................................................... 2- 6
2.6 Graduate Research Conferences at UC Davis........................................................ 2- 7
2.6.1 Travel Behavior, Planning, Modeling and Policy, April 3- 4, 2000................ 2- 8
2.6.2 What Will Move You? June 26- 27, 2003......................................................... 2- 8
2.7 New Courses Offered ............................................................................................... 2- 8
2.8 Internships............................................................................................................... 2- 12
2.9 Recruitment............................................................................................................. 2- 13
2.9.1 Brochures.......................................................................................................... 2- 13
2.9.2 Other Recruitment Activities ........................................................................ 2- 14
2.10 Ethics...................................................................................................................... 2- 14
2.11 Evaluation............................................................................................................. 2- 15
2.11.1 Database Development...................................................................................... 2- 15
2.11.2 Alumni Surveys................................................................................................. 2- 16
2.11.3 Mid- Course Corrections................................................................................... 2- 17
2.11.4 Faculty Interviews............................................................................................. 2- 17
3. EVALUATION RESULTS....................................................................................... 3- 1
3.1 Student- Related Effects............................................................................................ 3- 1
v
3.1.1 Has IGERT helped UCD attract better and/ or more diverse students
to transportation?........................................................................................................... 3- 1
3.1.2 Has IGERT helped improve the training experience for transportation
students at UCD?............................................................................................................ 3- 6
3.1.3 Has IGERT facilitated better career outcomes for transportation
students at UCD?............................................................................................................ 3- 9
3.2 Research- Related Effects....................................................................................... 3- 12
3.2.1 Has IGERT funding led to important new knowledge?................................. 3- 12
3.2.2 Has IGERT stimulated new discoveries that would not have
occurred otherwise?..................................................................................................... 3- 14
3.3 Program- Related Effects………………………………………………………… 3- 15
3.3.1 Has IGERT stimulated new, especially interdisciplinary,
collaborations that would not have occurred otherwise, or accelerated such
collaborations?.............................................................................................................. 3- 15
3.3.2 Has IGERT stimulated new, especially interdisciplinary, course
offerings?..................................................................................................................... . 3- 16
3.3.2.1 Permanent TTP- Oriented Classes…………………………………………….. 3- 17
3.3.2.2 Selected Ad Hoc TTP Classes…………………………………………………. 3- 18
3.3.3 Have IGERT resources been synergistically leveraged to contribute
to other accomplishments of the program, and conversely?.................................... 3- 19
3.3.4 Has IGERT contributed to the internal and external visibility of the
program?........................................................................................................... 3- 23
3.4 Campus- Related Effects – Institutionalization.................................................... 3- 24
3.4.1 Institutionalization of the TTP Program.......................................................... 3- 24
3.4.2 General Campus Institutionalization Activities.............................................. 3- 24
3.4.2.1 New Administrative Position and Cross- IGERT Consultation......................... 3- 24
3.4.2.2 Campus- level Recruitment Activities................................................................ 3- 25
3.4.2.3 Campus- level Responsible Conduct of Research ( RCR) Activities................... 3- 25
3.4.2.4 Commitments to New IGERT Proposals........................................................... 3- 25
4. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................. 4- 1
4.1 Summary................................................................................................................... 4- 1
4.2 Comments to NSF..................................................................................................... 4- 3
APPENDICES
A. ITS- Davis Affiliated Faculty
B. Programs of the Two Graduate Research Conferences
C. Supplemental Educational Materials:
noteworthy educational highlights, syllabi of new courses
D. IGERT Student Activities, Accomplishments, and Testimonials
E. Transportation Program Recruitment Materials:
vi
cover letter, poster, old brochure, new brochure, recruitment seminar flyers, Power Point
recruitment talk, e- mail recruitment message
F. Database Screens
G. Alumni Evaluation Surveys
H. TTP and CEE Annual Program Statistics
I. List of Papers and Research Reports Produced with IGERT Funding
J. Overviews of Selected IGERT- Supported Research Projects
K. Campus- Level Diversity Recruitment Activities
L. Campus- Level Responsible Conduct of Research ( RCR) Activities
LIST OF TABLES
ES. 1 Growth in Key Transportation Indicators at UC Davis.................................... vii
2.1 IGERT- funded Equipment Purchases.................................................................. 2- 3
2.2 IGERT Student Awards.......................................................................................... 2- 5
3.1 Gender Distribution of Students by IGERT Status and Program, 1998- 2005.. 3- 3
3.2 Comparison of GPAs and GREs for Completed IGERT and non- IGERT
Students....................................................................................................................... ... 3- 6
3.3 Degree Program Distribution of Alumni Survey Respondents........................... 3- 7
3.4 Perceptions of the Graduate Program................................................................... 3- 8
3.5 Comparison of Job Characteristics for IGERT and Non- IGERT
Respondents.................................................................................................................. 3- 10
3.6 Current Employment of All IGERT Fellows....................................................... 3- 11
3.7 Comparison of Job Satisfaction Ratings for IGERT and Non- IGERT
Respondents.................................................................................................................. 3- 12
4.1 Growth in Key Transportation Indicators at UC Davis...................................... 4- 1
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 Relationship between the TTP IGERT and TTP Degree Programs.................. 1- 1
2.1 Allocation of IGERT Funds: $ 2.66 Million Total................................................ 2- 2
3.1 GRE Scores of Completed IGERT Fellows........................................................... 3- 4
3.2a Average GRE Percentiles of Newly- Enrolled TTP Students, 1999- 2004......... 3- 5
3.2b Average GRE Percentiles of Newly- Enrolled CEE Students, 1999- 2004......... 3- 5
vii
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The UC Davis IGERT grant for Transportation Technology and Policy ( TTP) began October 1,
1998 and officially concluded September 30, 2005, although no students were funded in its
seventh and final year. The TTP theme of the grant was shared by the degree- granting program
of the same name ( the students in which overlapped, but did not completely coincide, with
IGERT recipients), and focused on the need to integrate the often- segregated policy and techno-logy
sides of transportation, so as to better prepare students to address today’s and tomorrow’s
complex transportation- related challenges. The budget totaled $ 2.66 million, which directly
funded 43 students in eight different degree programs ( including research, teaching, international
internships, and travel activities), 14 distinguished speakers, two graduate research conferences,
a variety of recruiting practices, laboratory and computing equipment, project administration,
and this evaluation. More than 2/ 3 of the budget directly funded students.
In less than 15 years, the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis ( ITS- Davis, established
in 1991) has vaulted into the top ranks of university transportation centers. IGERT has had
everything to do with this meteoric rise: the IGERT grant was active for nearly half of that peri-od,
and was seminal in supporting numerous and diverse research and educational activities of
the Institute. Table ES. 1 summarizes the growth in various key indicators during the
approximate time the IGERT grant was in force.
Table ES. 1: Growth in Key Transportation Indicators at UC Davis
1997- 98 2004- 05 Percent increase
Faculty associated with ITS- Davis 37 54 46%
Departments/ organizations of all faculty
associated with ITS- Davis
12 18 50%
Depts./ orgs. of core transportation faculty 6 9 50%
Transportation graduate students 40 ( est.) 80 100%
Industry and foundation support $ 500 K $ 1.5 M 200%
Total research expenditures $ 2.12 M $ 2.96 M 40%
As shown by the table and discussed at greater length throughout this report, the IGERT grant
enabled ITS- Davis to:
• attract more, and more diverse, students to the study of transportation;
• encourage the campus to create more transportation faculty positions;
• attract outstanding new transportation faculty members in several different departments;
• broaden and deepen the curricular offerings in transportation;
• foster new research and education collaborations;
• develop innovative research approaches, discoveries, and solutions; and
• enrich the learning experience at UC Davis in a variety of ways.
Although the evaluation of the program is necessarily largely qualitative, a number of observa-tions
can confidently be made. In this section we highlight some of the key impacts of the
IGERT program at UCD; other valuable observations can also be found in Chapters 2 and 3 of
the report.
viii
• IGERT was a significant factor in leveraging new faculty positions in transportation for
the campus, and played a role in making the campus transportation research and educa-tion
milieu an attractive one to prospective faculty hires. The outcome was an increase in
the number of transportation faculty on campus ( at least six new full- time tenured or
tenure- track appointments during the life of the IGERT program, in four departments),
extraordinarily high- caliber new faculty, and a firm commitment to interdisciplinary
education in general and the TTP program in particular on their part.
• The IGERT grant appeared to help increase the gender diversity of transportation
students at UCD, as 23% of IGERT recipients were female, compared to 19% of non-
IGERT transportation students enrolled during the same period. This is likely due in part
to our higher- than- average proportion of women faculty: 11 ( 20.4%) of the 54 faculty
associated with the Institute of Transportation Studies ( ITS- Davis) are women, compared
to an average of 8% women faculty in engineering colleges nationwide. However, tar-geted
efforts to recruit underrepresented minority students were not effective and were
difficult to sustain.
• Although the transportation program at UCD has had little difficulty in recruiting suffi-cient
qualified students through relatively ad hoc methods, there are some challenges to
doing so in a more systematic way, given the relative lack of visibility of transportation
as a field of study to undergraduates, and the diverse disciplinary avenues by which
students can arrive at an interest in transportation.
• Perceptions of the effectiveness of their graduate program at UCD differed little between
IGERT and non- IGERT alumni, with average ratings for both groups falling between
“ good” and “ very good” on most aspects. Transportation students who did not receive
IGERT support directly still benefited in numerous indirect ways from the IGERT grant.
• Due in large part to the consciousness raised by the emphasis of the IGERT program on
the subject, ethics issues are now taught in a number of core and elective classes taken by
transportation graduate students at UC Davis.
• Although the international internship opportunity offered through IGERT was not heavily
utilized, students continue to take part in significant international collaborative activities
outside the rubric of IGERT.
• IGERT fellows and their co- authors have produced at least 33 journal articles, conference
proceedings, and book chapters, and 56 research reports. The research covers a wide var-iety
of topics, including telecommuting, work status choice, smart parking, carsharing, re-gional
transportation and land use models, attitudes toward travel, hydrogen- fueled and/
or fuel- cell vehicles, light- duty diesel vehicles in Europe, rural vehicles in China, heavy-duty
truck auxiliary power units, low- speed modes, air quality policy and modeling, and
transnational comparisons of transportation modeling and planning. Much, perhaps most,
of this research would not have occurred without IGERT, including studies using the
equipment that IGERT made it possible to purchase.
ix
• The presence of the IGERT grant contributed substantially to the image and reality of
ITS- Davis having a vital, thriving program that warrants further investment on the part of
others. Thus, it was instrumental in:
o attracting other key sources of funding ( US Departments of Transportation and
Energy; University of California Transportion Center; Honda endowment;
industry, foundation, and individual support);
o generating and supporting major new initiatives ( Fuel Cell Vehicle Modeling
Program; Transportation and the Hydrogen Economy; Road Ecology Center;
Pavement Research Center; China Center for Energy and Transportation;
fundraising campaign with the College of Engineering; new faculty positions
approved for campus- wide Transportation and Energy for the Future initiative);
and
o fostering closer ties with other parts of campus, notably the Graduate School of
Management through its Business Development Certificate Program and Little
Bang/ Big Bang entrepreneurship competitions ( see Appendices C and D).
• Many if not most of the elements of the TTP IGERT program have been institutionalized
at UCD. The TTP degree program per se is certainly here to stay. New faculty are
solidly rooted and are likely to make outstanding careers here. New courses are making
their way through the course approval process. The internship program is likely to
remain small in scale, but unquestionably valuable.
• At the campus level, a number of institutionalization activities have occurred and are
underway, including establishing a new administrative position, holding regular meetings
of key personnel across all current and prospective IGERT grants, offering centralized
support of recruiting and professional development activities, and offering financial and
other support of new IGERT proposals ( see Section 3.4.2 for details).
The TTP IGERT grant has not only offered a tremendous benefit to transportation research and
education at UCD, we believe that the IGERT program nationwide has had a galvanizing effect
on graduate education in the United States. We have only three suggestions to offer to NSF with
respect to the IGERT program:
1. Judging by the experience at UCD, multiple IGERT grants on the same campus generate a
synergistic effect in terms of visibility to the administration, and administrative support in
response, that exceeds the sum of their parts. Thus, we would hope that at a minimum, the
prospect of a future IGERT award constituting the third or fourth award to a given univer-sity
would not be considered a liability. At a maximum, that outcome could arguably be
considered an asset, and hence counted as a merit rather than a demerit of a given proposal.
2. Only two of our IGERT recipients took advantage of the international internship opportun-ity
offered through IGERT ( although several others had significant international experien-ces
outside of IGERT). As indicated, the typical internship lasts at least three months, and
the international internship program was set up to allow periods of two months to a year.
For many students, an absence of even two months ( especially in a foreign country) could
be difficult to manage, particularly for those with families ( young children, working
spouses, etc.). In addition, the barriers of distance, language, and culture do make it more
difficult to lay the initial groundwork for the connection between student and host. Thus,
x
our recommendation with respect to such programs in the future is to support “ mini- intern-ships”
of much shorter durations – e. g. a week to a month. In this way, a student can travel
abroad, often in connection with an international conference that will be an invaluable ex-perience
in its own right, and then stay behind ( or come early) to work with an international
host for a few days or weeks. Making one or two such visits a year for the several- year
duration of one’s PhD program could be extremely effective, especially partnered with
modern communication technologies that enable the continuation of any collaborations
from a distance.
3. As we understand the policy, NSF sets the stipend rate for its training programs, and
requires that any fellowship recipient be paid at that rate. When the stipend rate was
$ 15,000 a year, as it was at the outset of the grant, that was roughly commensurate with
( actually a few hundred dollars less than) the typical engineering research assistant’s
( RA’s) salary at UCD. As the set rate kept rising, however, it eventually far outstripped the
standard RA salary. The NSF stipend has now doubled to $ 30,000 a year, whereas annual
RA salaries for TTP and CEE students at UCD are $ 18,285 – 23,602 ( for 50% time during
the nine- month academic year and 100% for the three summer months). The specific salary
within that range is not at the discretion of the program, but is tied to educational
milestones such as whether the student has an MS degree or has passed the PhD qualifying
exam or not. Thus, a new graduate student without a prior MS would receive a 64% higher
stipend as an IGERT fellow than as an RA. Such a large disparity in support between two
students in the same degree program naturally led to some resentment and jealousy of the
“ haves” on the part of the “ have- nots”. We urge NSF to allow programs at least some
flexibility in setting stipend amounts, to more closely reflect local circumstances and
practices.
1- 1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
This report has two main purposes: ( 1) to summarize the activities associated with the National
Science Foundation’s IGERT grant on Transportation Technology and Policy ( TTP) to the
Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis ( ITS- Davis), and ( 2) to
evaluate the effectiveness of the grant. Effects are reviewed in four areas: students, research, the
transportation program at the University of California, Davis ( UCD), and the UCD campus.
To avoid confusion, it is important to clarify at the outset that the phrase “ Transportation Tech-nology
and Policy” has two different but overlapping meanings throughout the report. It first
refers to the name of an interdisciplinary degree- granting program at UCD, a program which
offers the MS and PhD degrees, and which has international as well as domestic students. The
TTP degree program was formally approved in February 1997, immediately transferred five
existing students from other programs into TTP, and admitted its first cohort of new students in
Fall 1997. When the IGERT call for proposals was issued, we realized that the interdisciplinary
outlook embodied in the TTP degree program precisely matched the spirit of the IGERT pro-gram.
Accordingly, it was natural to tailor the theme of our IGERT proposal to the TTP pro-gram,
and hence to name our IGERT program TTP as well. However, we took care from the
beginning to stress that the IGERT program would be open not just to TTP degree students, but
to any eligible transportation student on campus, with a collective balance between technology,
policy, and “ hybrid” specializations. As shown in the front of this report and in Table 2.2, the
majority of IGERT fellows were TTP degree students, but 20 out of 43 were in other programs.
Figure 1.1 illustrates the relationship between the two meanings of TTP: during the grant period,
most domestic PhD students in the TTP degree program were TTP IGERT fellows, but domestic
PhD students in other programs were also TTP IGERT fellows, and domestic MS as well as
international MS or PhD students in the TTP degree program were not TTP IGERT fellows. In
the remainder of the report, where the context does not make clear which of the two meanings is
intended, we will distinguish them by referring to “ TTP degree” or “ TTP IGERT”, respectively.
The rest of this report is organized into three chapters. Chapter 2 describes the IGERT program
activities and accomplishments, Chapter 3 evaluates the effectiveness of the program, and
Chapter 4 presents some conclusions and recommendations. A series of appendices provides
supporting documentation.
Figure 1.1: Relationship between the TTP IGERT and TTP Degree Programs
IGERT TTP TTP DEGREE
PROGRAM
Domestic PhD* students in
other programs
18
Domestic
PhD TTP
degree
students
12
Domestic* and int’l. MS and
int’l PhD TTP students
14
Notes: Numbers in each region are illustrative for a given point in time, not cumulative totals for the duration of
the IGERT grant. * Out of 43 IGERT fellows in all, 3 were MS only. The proposal allowed for this on an
exceptional basis, e. g. where recruiting such a student for the PhD appeared likely.
2- 1
CHAPTER 2: DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM AND ITS ACCOMPLISHMENTS
2.1 Overview of the Program
Our IGERT program was relatively simple. As indicated in the Introduction, the theme was
Transportation Technology and Policy. As the name suggests, the program strove to integrate
the study of those two often- segregated aspects of transportation, and to foster the development
of solutions that take both aspects into account. We want those people who are focusing on the
technological side of transportation to be aware of the broader behavioral, social, political, and
economic context of their work. In this way they can more effectively consider the political and
market feasibility of a given technological solution, as well as its downstream environmental and
societal impacts. Conversely, we want those focusing on the policy and planning side of trans-portation
to have the rudiments of understanding about the technologies they are regulating and
planning for. In this way they can develop more realistic policies, and more effectively analyze
the impacts of various policies.
Thus, our primary goal was, and continues to be, to provide education and training that will
better prepare students to address today’s and tomorrow’s complex transportation- related chal-lenges.
As detailed in the remainder of this report, the IGERT grant enabled us to attract more,
and more diverse, students to the study of transportation; attract new transportation faculty mem-bers
in several different departments; develop innovative approaches, discoveries, and solutions;
and enrich the learning experience here in a variety of ways.
To be eligible for the IGERT program, individuals simply had to be domestic PhD students ( or,
in a few cases, MS students expressing an interest in continuing for the PhD) in a transportation-related
field, with transportation- based research interests. IGERT fellows were identified
through annual calls to ITS- Davis faculty, asking them to nominate prospective fellows from
among those applying to their respective programs, as well as from among continuing students.
Virtually every eligible student nominated in this way was accepted as an IGERT fellow, and
funded for up to three years.
Aside from the requirements to conduct a research project ( see Section 2.4) and to attend the
weekly ITS- Davis seminars ( see Section 2.5), IGERT fellows had no additional expectations
placed on them. There were a number of other programmatic components, however. IGERT
funding enabled the acquisition of major new items of equipment that supported a variety of
research projects ( Section 2.3), as well as state- of- the- art general- purpose computers available
for shared use by students. In addition, most IGERT fellows purchased personal computers with
their educational allowances. These computers were left with ITS- Davis and circulated to non-
IGERT students as fellows finished their degrees, thereby helping maintain the computing
infrastructure of the program as a whole.
IGERT funding also supported student travel to research conferences ( Section 2.4); distinguished
visiting speakers at UC Davis ( Section 2.5); two graduate student research conferences hosted by
ITS- Davis and organized by our students ( Section 2.6); several course offerings ( Section 2.7);
internships, including international experiences ( Section 2.8); a number of activities related to
new student recruitment ( Section 2.9); and the evaluation of the program ( Section 2.11 and
Chapter 3). And although no direct funding was involved, the IGERT program also prompted a
more extensive treatment of ethics in the curriculum ( Section 2.10). Each of these activities is
described further in the remainder of this chapter.
2- 2
2.2 Budget
Figure 2.1 illustrates the final allocation of the $ 2.66 million IGERT budget. More than two-thirds
of the budget went directly to student support, with less than 11% spent on administrative
activities. Thus, keeping the design of the program “ lean” enabled us to maximize the amount
available for student support, where we believe it did the most good.
Figure 2.1: Allocation of IGERT Funds: $ 2.66 Million Total
Fellowships
68.25%
Student Conference
Travel
1.94%
Equipment
10.80%
Brochures
0.47%
Speaker Series
0.74%
PhD Conferences
1.43%
International Internships
0.08%
Administrative Support,
etc.
10.77%
Indirect Costs
5.54%
Fellowships
Student Conference Travel
Equipment
Brochures
Speaker Series
PhD Conferences
International Internships
Administrative Support, etc.
Indirect Costs
2.3 Equipment
The initial $ 200,000 equipment budget provided with the IGERT grant offered the opportunity to
acquire several high- value state- of- the- art measurement instruments. This equipment has bene-fited
graduate student education and research in Mechanical Engineering, Civil and Environmen-tal
Engineering, Chemistry, and Environmental Science and Policy departments as well as the
ITS- Davis- hosted interdisciplinary Transportation Technology and Policy program. Collective-ly,
the equipment is used for measurement of physical phenomena such as the performance and
emissions characteristics of alternative vehicle propulsion systems, the measurement of demo-graphic
characteristics and travel behavior, and the statistical analysis of data relevant to tech-nological
development, policy evaluation, or both. In the evaluation interviews, some faculty
noted that the equipment purchased through IGERT enabled research that would not have been
conducted otherwise ( see Section 3.2.2).
While much of the budget went to specialized equipment residing in the labs of the responsible
faculty member, the funding also offered the opportunity to upgrade the general- purpose
2- 3
computer lab open to all transportation graduate students affiliated with ITS- Davis. This is one
of several ways in which IGERT funding also benefited non- IGERT fellows.
Table 2.1 provides a breakdown of how the equipment funds were budgeted and spent.
Table 2.1: IGERT- funded Equipment Purchases
Item Budget Total Cost to 9/ 30/ 05 Department Faculty
PC Computer Lab:
includes 7 PC's, 1 digital
camera, 1 laptop, 1 color
printer $ 40,000.00 $ 44,201.54 ITS- Davis Mokhtarian, Pat
GTS PC Notebook $ 14,000.00 $ 7,002.52 Envir. Sci. & Pol. Johnston, Bob
Analyzer $ 40,000.00 $ 40,000.57 Civ. & Env. Eng. Niemeier, Deb
Fuel Cell Equip $ 10,000.00 $ 7,960.04 ITS- Davis Burke, Andy
Fuel Cell Tester $ 20,000.00 $ 19,461.77 ITS- Davis Burke, Andy
Dynamometer $ 26,000.00 $ 29,647.21 Mechanical Eng. Dwyer, Harry
Galvanostat $ 35,000.00 $ 34,995.75 Chemistry Palmore, Tayhas
GPS Datalogger $ 15,000.00 $ - ITS- Davis Turrentine, Tom
Total $ 200,000.00 $ 183,269.40
2.4 Fellowships
During the first and second years of the IGERT grant, the following types of awards were made
( see explanations below): student fees ( California), non- resident tuition ( out- of- state), Research
and Teaching Assistantship matching stipends, dissertation stipends, educational allowance sti-pends,
bonus stipends for students obtaining prestigious outside awards ( such as an Eisenhower
or EPA STAR fellowship), international internships, and travel to conferences. Initially, we
were under the erroneous impression that fellowships had to have “ no strings attached”. Accor-dingly,
we were reluctant to offer “ full- ride” fellowships, because we considered the research
assistantship experience to be an invaluable part of a student's graduate education: the best way
to “ mainstream” a student into the program, to establish a faculty mentor, to continue training
more intensively than the classroom interaction allows, and to lead the student to thesis research
topics that are likely to be productive and satisfying both to the student and the mentor. It has
been our experience that students on a “ full- ride” fellowship are often marginalized members of
the program, and flounder when it comes to settling on a solid research topic. Thus, we initially
expected IGERT fellowship money to be combined with RA ( and potentially TA) support.
At some point we mentioned this issue to NSF staff and were informed that “ research fellow-ships”,
in which a requirement for a meaningful research activity was attached to the award,
were not only allowed but quite common. We immediately changed our award policy then, and
began offering full- ride research fellowships. Thus, starting with the third year of the grant, the
research and dissertation fellowships were combined into a single research fellowship category.
Receipt of a research fellowship was conditional on the student and the faculty advisor agreeing
on a research project that the student would conduct. This change in policy resulted in the ability
to give more and larger awards than was previously the case.
Not only was the initial receipt of an award conditional on having a proposed research project
sketched out and agreed upon between the student and the advisor, continuation of the award in
future years was contingent upon showing satisfactory academic and research progress during
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the preceding year. Satisfactory research progress required the completion of at least one sub-stantive
research document ( report or paper) during the previous year; most students easily met
and exceeded that requirement. In a few cases students had to be reminded of this requirement
( through a brief probationary period during which a document had to be completed); in a very
few cases, continuation of the award had to be suspended or terminated due to non- performance.
Table 2.2 shows the total of individual awards ( by department), numbers of students in each
department receiving awards, numbers of awards given for each category, subtotal awards by
department, and total of all awards given.
The types of fellowships described below were awarded at various points during the IGERT pro-gram.
Toward the end of the program, we understood that NSF required essentially an all- or-nothing
award, i. e. that any IGERT fellow had to be funded at the same, NSF- established rate.
Thus, in the final years of the program, most of these types of fellowships were no longer
awarded:
Fees and/ or Tuition: Covered in- state fees and/ or part of the non- resident ( out- of- state) tuition
depending upon the student’s residency status. For out- of- state students, California residency is
established after one year, at which point the non- resident tuition is no longer needed.
Research: This fellowship adhered to the student, not to a faculty member’s lab or program.
The research had to be conducted under a faculty member’s supervision, however. Thus, the
award was contingent on receipt of a brief ( 1- 2 pp.) description of the proposed research and
signed by both a faculty member ( agreeing to the supervision) and the student ( agreeing to con-duct
the research). Continuation of the fellowship was subject to suitable progress on course-work
and research, as defined by the faculty advisor.
Educational Allowance: This fellowship reimbursed other expenses of education, including
books, supplies, and equipment ( such as a computer). Equipment purchased this way was the
property of UCD, inventoried to UCD, and remained with UCD when the student left. It
required budget and justification of proposed expenses and submission of valid receipts for
reimbursement after the application was approved.
Teaching: Needless to say, gaining experience teaching is an important part of the professional
preparation of many PhD students, and the more opportunities they have to do so, the more com-petitive
they are on the job market ( at least the academic job market), all else equal. Allowing
advanced PhD students to teach also increases the breadth of curricular offerings in the program,
and/ or frees ladder- rank faculty to extend their own teaching in new directions. Thus, the stu-dent
who is teaching, the students being taught, the faculty, and the program as a whole can
benefit from such opportunities. This fellowship required submission of an extended course syl-labus,
justification of the course, and qualifications to teach the course. Funding was contingent
upon final enrollment ( a minimum of five had to be enrolled, per UCD course requirements).
The stipend was based on the formula $ 1000 ( U * G), where U = number of units ( 1, 2, or max
of 3) and G = 1 if grading is S/ U and 2 for letter grading. Thus, a 3- unit graded course would
receive the maximum stipend of $ 6,000.
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Table 2.2: IGERT Student Awards
Dept./
Prog. No. Research In- state
fees
Non-resident
tuition
RA/
TA
match
Educ.
allow. Teach Disser-tation
Bonus
Int’l
intern-ship
Travel TOTAL
Ag Econ 1 34,731 13,807 5,171 8,798 1,000 1,800 65,307
CEE 5 77,532 16,725 3,500 26,275 9,600 800 134,432
Chem 2 32,426 9,182 25,095 30,000 1,700 98,403
Ch. Engr 1 18,000 3,219 6,281 800 28,300
Ecology 3 18,000 6,326 4,669 6,000 960 3,500 39,455
Econ 4 54,500 10,260 9,500 2,266 76,526
Mech. E 4 132,773 49,418 3,437 32,573 15,000 800 234,001
TTP 23 821,519 171,204 94,591 12,045 106,572 6,000 11,040 3,000 24,800 1,250,771
TOTAL 43 1,189,481 280,141 104,091 26,419 210,263 12,000 45,000 21,600 4,000 34,200 1,927,195
Actual
Expenses 1,206,785 250,084 56,786 3,006 169,092 6,000 99,176 17,592 2,062 37,733 1,848,316
NOTE: These figures are based on the maximum amounts authorized in the award letters; final actual amounts differ slightly, as indicated in
the last row. “ No.” refers to number of students receiving awards; dollar amounts reflect multi- year totals.
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Bonus for Outside Awards: This fellowship was to reward those students who received com-petitive
outside awards such as Eisenhower and EPA STAR fellowships, and hence to motivate
them to apply for such awards. It paid them 20% of the outside award stipend, or 20% of what
the total university stipend support would have been without the outside award ( whichever was
larger), up to a maximum of $ 5,000.
International Internships: This fellowship paid one round- trip coach airfare between Davis,
California and the international host institution, plus a $ 250/ month cost- of- living supplement for
periods ranging from two to 12 months. The assumption was that the base salary would be paid
from some other source – such as by the host, a faculty research grant, or a fellowship of some
kind ( including IGERT). See Section 2.8 for further details.
Travel Award: Attending professional conferences offers a myriad of benefits, including expo-sure
to cutting- edge research and the opportunity to network with both senior scholars and with
peers in one’s own cohort of students. Presenting a paper offers further benefits, including gain-ing
experience in the clear communication of technical material, and obtaining critical feedback
on one’s work. These benefits, directly accrued by the students attending the conferences, are in
turn indirectly reflected back into the program as the now stronger and more knowledgeable stu-dents
integrate their experiences into their further studies, including their interactions with facul-ty
and other students.
This award was given to those students who attended domestic conferences relating to their re-search.
The maximum allowed for students who were not presenting a paper was $ 800, and for
those who presented a paper, $ 900. Airfare, lodging and meals could be included, subject to
UCD’s per diem allowances. We originally limited the award to one per year, per student, with a
maximum of three awards to any one student. We eventually eliminated those constraints, sub-ject
to ongoing review.
2.5 Distinguished Visiting Speaker Series
Each quarter, ITS- Davis sponsors a series of weekly seminars, covering a broad range of topics
in transportation technology, policy, planning, and analysis methodologies. IGERT recipients
were required to attend these seminars ( subject to freedom from conflict with course schedules),
thereby exposing them to many diverse facets of the transportion field. The IGERT grant ena-bled
us to sponsor a distinguished speaker each quarter, drawing on more senior and more distant
speakers than our previous seminar budget had allowed. Below are the names, affiliations, and
topics of the IGERT distinguished speakers we hosted:
• Winter 99 - Edward J. Haug, Carver Distinguished Professor, University of Iowa,
Foundations for Vehicle Virtual Proving Ground Simulation ( technology)
• Spring 99 - Frank S. Koppelman, Professor, Civil Engineering, McCormick School of
Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, Advances in Logit Choice
Models ( policy analysis)
• Fall 99 - Gloria Jeff, Deputy Administrator, Federal Highway Administration, Washing-ton,
DC, Partnerships in the 21st Century ( policy)
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• Winter 00 - David Kittelson, Professor, Mechanical Engineering, University of Minn-esota,
Measurement of Engine Exhaust Particle Size ( technology)
• Spring 00 – Joseph Berechman, Professor and Chair, Public Policy, Tel Aviv University,
Israel ( visiting at City University of New York), Transport Infrastructure Investment and
Economic Growth ( policy analysis)
• Fall 00 – Mark Levine, Director, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Law-rence
Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, Transportation, Energy, and Carbon
Emissions in China ( policy/ technology)
• Winter 01 – Robert Williams, Senior Research Scientist for the Center for Energy and
Environmental Studies, Princeton, NJ, Toward Zero Emissions for Coal in
Transportation and Other Applications ( technology/ policy)
• Spring 01 – Eileen Claussen, President, Pew Center on Global Climate Change,
Arlington, Virginia, Transportation and Climate Change Policy ( policy)
• Winter 02 – Martin Wachs, Director, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of
California, Berkeley, Thinking Differently About Transportation Finance ( policy)
• Spring 02 – Terry Friesz, Professor, Systems Engineering & Operations Research,
George Mason Univ., Some Unsolved Problems Related to Dynamic Traffic Assignment
and Disequilibrium Design ( technology)
• Fall 02 – Paul Waddell, Associate Professor of Public Affairs and Urban Design and
Planning, University of Washington, Seattle, The Tangled Web of Transportation and
Urban Development: Recent Advances in Urban Simulation ( policy/ technology)
• Winter 03 – Richard Forman, Professor, Harvard University, Road Ecology: To Mesh
Transportation and Nature ( policy)
• Spring 04 – Chandra Bhat, Associate Professor and Associate Chairman for Adminis-tration
and Planning, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Texas, Austin, A
Utility- Theory Based Model of Multiple Discreteness: Formulation and Application to
Leisure Time- Use Decisions ( policy analysis)
• Spring 04 – Mei- Po Kwan, Associate Professor and Chair of Graduate Studies, Dept. of
Geography, Ohio State University, Internet Use, Space- Time Constraint and Human
Activity Patterns ( policy/ technology)
2.6 Graduate Research Conferences at UC Davis
We hosted two graduate student research conferences as part of our IGERT grant: one in Year
Two with a policy/ planning focus, and one in Year Four with a technology focus. Agendas for
the two conferences are included as Appendix B.
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2.6.1 Travel Behavior, Planning, Modeling and Policy, April 3- 4, 2000
The first conference was held April 3- 4, 2000 at the Buehler Alumni Center at UC Davis, and
was attended by 60 people. Of those 60, 41 were students, 16 were with government entities,
and 3 were with industry. There were 19 people from the Sacramento area, which comprised the
industry and government attendees. Twenty- two students made presentations, representing the
following universities: UC Davis, University College London, UCLA, UC Berkeley, University
of South Florida, UC Irvine, University of Delaware, University of Minnesota, University of
Toronto, Umea University, Sweden, University of Michigan, UC Santa Barbara, Texas A & M,
and University of Massachusetts.
The conference focused on travel behavior/ policy/ planning. Keynote speakers were: Dr. Wyn
Jennings ( National Science Foundation) who presented a talk on the history of IGERT, goals of
the program, why ITS- Davis was selected, and what ITS- Davis should strive for; and Hani
Mahmassani ( L. B. Meaders Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Texas, Austin and
President, International Association for Travel Behaviour Research), who gave a commentary on
lessons learned from past and current travel behavior research, with a look to the future.
2.6.2 What will Move You? June 26- 27, 2003
The second conference was held June 26- 27, 2003 at the Buehler Alumni Center at UC Davis,
and was attended by 71 people. Of those 71, 67 were students and 4 were with government
entities from the Sacramento area. Twenty- one students made presentations, representing the
following universities: UC Davis, Northwestern, University of Utah, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, University of Florida, Georgia Tech, University of Washington, Texas A & M,
University of Minnesota, University of Texas, University of North Carolina, California Poly-technic
- San Luis Obispo, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Pennsylvania State, and West Virginia
University.
The conference focused on new mobility, social aspects of technology, and advanced propulsion
and fuels. Keynote speakers were: Jeff Morales, Director, California Department of Transpor-tation;
Thomas Gross, Senior Executive Member, Board of Directors, U. S. Department of
Energy, who spoke on future transportation goals; John Wallace, Former Director, Ford Motor
Company’s TH! NK Technologies Division, the title of whose talk was “ May You Live in
Interesting Times”; and Susan Shaheen ( Special Topics Speaker) from the Innovative Mobility
Research Program, University of California, Davis, who spoke about opportunities for enhancing
transportation management and choice.
2.7 New Courses Offered
ITS has been able to offer a number of ad hoc courses, leveraging IGERT funding with other
available resources to broaden its curriculum. Some of these courses were one- time or occa-sional,
while others are intended to be permanent. Transportation Technology is a core require-ment
for the TTP program, intended to provide a foundation in transportation technologies to
those from a non- engineering background, and is currently offered every year, taught by Paul
Erickson, Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering. Two new courses
introduced for the 2004- 05 academic year include a Transportation Orientation Seminar, which
will be offered every Fall and led by Susan Handy, Associate Professor of Environmental
Science & Policy; and Leadership, Professionalism, and Ethics seminar, offered every Spring
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and led by Daniel Sperling, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Environmental
Science and Policy. Both courses will be offered to first year students and other interested
students.
Collectively, these courses have served transportation students in a variety of programs including
Transportation Technology & Policy ( TTP), Civil & Environmental Engineering ( CEE), Mech-anical
and Aeronautical Engineering ( EMA), Chemistry ( CHE), Economics ( ECN), and Chemi-cal
Engineering & Materials Science ( ECM). Following are the 27 ad hoc courses ( 19 one- time
or occasional; 8 on their way to becoming permanent) that have been offered during the term of
the IGERT grant, along with enrollments for each course. Further discussion of selected courses
is found in Section 3.3.2, and brief syllabi are included in Appendix C.
Fall 98
• Instructor Tim Lipman, PhD candidate, Basic Principles of Transportation, Energy &
Environmental Systems ( technology). Tim Lipman was funded by IGERT to teach
this course. Total enrollment was 5 ( all TTP students).
Winter 99
• Instructor Shimshon Gottesfeld, Los Alamos Nuclear Lab, Processes and Materials
In Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells ( technology). Total enrollment was 12 ( 11 TTP
students and 1 ECM student).
• Instructor Mark Delucchi, Research Scientist, Full Social Costs of Transportation
( policy analysis). Total enrollment was 6 ( 4 TTP students and 2 CEE students).
• Instructors Tom Turrentine, Research Anthropologist, and Ken Kurani, Research
Engineer, Reflexive Methods in Transportation Research ( policy analysis). Total
enrollment was 5 ( all TTP students).
Spring 99
• Instructor John Holtzclaw, Sierra Club, World Class Transit For the Bay Area ( policy
analysis). Total enrollment was 10 ( 9 TTP students and 1 CEE student).
Fall 99
• Instructor Ken Kurani, Research Engineer, Workshop on the Future of Mobility
( technology/ policy). Total enrollment was 7 ( 5 TTP students, 1 CHE student, and 1
CEE student).
Winter 00
• Instructor Andy Burke, Research Engineer, Electric Energy Storage and Conversion
Technology ( technology). Total enrollment was 3 ( all TTP students).
• Instructors Lee Branstetter, Assistant Professor, Economics and Robert Feenstra,
Professor, Economics, Transportation Economics ( policy analysis). Assisted by
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Teaching Assistant Adam Forest, PhD candidate from the Economics Department and
partially funded by IGERT. Total enrollment was 7 ( 6 TTP students and 1
Economics student).
Spring 00
• Instructor David Friedman, PhD candidate, Basic Principles of Transportation,
Energy & Environmental Systems ( technology). David Friedman was funded by
IGERT for this course. Total enrollment was 5 ( all TTP students).
Winter 01
• Instructors Tom Turrentine, Research Anthropologist, and Ken Kurani, Research
Engineer, Space, Time, and Identity ( policy). Total enrollment was 5 ( all TTP
students).
Spring 01
• Instructor Robert Moore, Director, Fuel Cell Vehicle Modeling Program, ITS- Davis,
Fuel Cell Systems, Vehicles, and Fuels ( technology). Total enrollment was 8 ( 6 TTP
students, 1 CEE student, and 1 Mech. Engr. student).
Winter 02
• Instructor Sitaram Ramaswamy, Fuel Cell Vehicle Modeling Program, ITS- Davis,
Fuel Cell Vehicle Technology. Total enrollment was 8 ( 3 TTP students, 3 EMA,
1EEC, 1MEC)
Spring 02
• Instructor Tim Lipman, Postdoctoral Researcher, Key Principles of Transportation,
Energy, and Environmental Systems. Total enrollment was 15 ( 8 TTP, 7 CEE)
Fall 02
• Instructor Pat Conroy, Automated Traffic Management Information Systems
( ATMIS) Program Manager, Program for Advanced Transit and Highways ( PATH),
UC Berkeley, Intelligent Transportation Systems. Total enrollment was 13 ( 9 TTP, 4
CEE)
• Instructor C. C. Chan, Fellow, Royal Academy of Engineering, UK, Modern Electric-
Drive Vehicle Technology. Total enrollment was 13 ( 11 TTP, 1 CEE, 1 EMA)
Winter 03
• Instructor Marshall Miller, Research Engineer, Fuel Cell Modeling Program, ITS-Davis,
Fuel Cells and Energy Storage. Total enrollment was 16 ( 10 TTP, 5 EMA, 1
CEE)
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• Instructor Susan Handy, Associate Professor, Environmental Science & Policy,
Transportation- Land Use Connection. Total enrollment was 12 ( 7 TTP, 1 ARE, 4
CEE)
Spring 03
• Instructor Michael Clay, PhD Candidate, Urban Modeling. Michael was funded by
IGERT to teach this course. Total enrollment was 5 ( 2 TTP, 3 CEE)
• Instructor Patricia Mokhtarian, Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering,
Traveling for its Own Sake: A Multidisciplinary Exploration. Total enrollment was 2
( 1 TTP, 1 CEE)
• Instructor Marshall Miller, Research Engineer, Fuel Cell Modeling Program, Hydro-gen
Technologies and Pathways. Total enrollment was 13 ( all TTP students)
• Instructor Brett Williams, MS/ PhD Student, Key Technological Principles of Trans-portation,
Energy, and Environmental Systems. Total enrollment was 4 ( all TTP
students)
Fall 03
• Instructor Joan Ogden, Associate Professor, Environmental Science & Policy, Hy-drogen
Journal Review. Total enrollment was 17 ( 13 TTP, 2 CEE, 2 EMA, 1 under-graduate)
Winter 04
• Instructor Paul Erickson, Assistant Professor, Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineer-ing,
Introduction to Transportation Engineering. Total enrollment was 5 ( 4 TTP, 1
EMA)
• Instructor Bob Moore, Researcher, ITS- Davis, Fuel Cell Fundamentals. Total en-rollment
was 19 ( 10 TTP, 9 EMA)
• Instructor Lewison Lem, PhD, Transportation Policy Manager, Automobile Associ-ation
of America, Current Transportation Funding in CA and the Bay Area. Total
enrollment was 6 ( all TTP students)
Spring 04
• Instructor Susan Handy, Associate Professor, Environmental Science & Policy,
Transportation Planning & Policy. Total enrollment was 17 ( 10 TTP, 7 CEE)
• Instructor Mark Delucchi, Research Scientist, ITS- Davis, Study of Dual- Transpor-tation-
Infrastructure/ New- Town Plan. Total enrollment was 2 ( all TTP students)
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2.8 Internships
Internships offer advantages in three different respects: the sponsoring organization benefits from
the intelligence and up- to- date education of extremely bright students; the student benefits from the
application of “ classroom” knowledge and newly- learned analytical and conceptual skills to mean-ingful
real- world problems; and the program ( other students and faculty alike) benefits from the
real- world feedback brought back by the student and from forging stronger ties to external organiza-tions.
In each case a fresh perspective is brought, fostering a creative cross- fertilization.
Domestic organizations that have committed to hosting ITS- Davis graduate student interns in-clude:
Arco, the California Environmental Protection Agency ( Cal/ EPA), Calstart, California
Energy Commission, Edison EV ( Electric Vehicle), Exxon, EV Global Motors, New Mexico
State Highway and Transportation Department, Nissan North America, Inc., Saft America, Edi-son
Southern California, California Air Resources Board, California Fuel Cell Partnership, Volpe
National Transportation Systems Center, International Energy Agency, Ford Motor Co., Hydro-gen
Research Institute in Canada, Yellowstone National Park, and Surface Transportation Policy
Project. We involve other organizations as opportunities arise.
In response to NSF’s call, we obtained a supplemental grant for international internships, which
were used to fund travel and cost of living expenses for working with an international host ( see
Section 2.3). In addition to the advantages of internships in general, international internships in
particular offered some extraordinary benefits to IGERT fellows. These opportunities enabled
students to partner with the best researchers in their specialty, anywhere in the world.
Challenges that transcend national boundaries can be addressed creatively by multinational
teams with a common purpose, potentially accelerating the solution to societal and scientific
problems. And important insight can be obtained through cross- national comparisons of political
and social issues and responses. Participants in this component of the program became better
prepared for the global character of current and future scientific endeavor, and gained valuable
exposure to the particular culture of their host institution.
Five industry, non- profit, and academic partners were initially identified as prospective host in-stitutions:
The French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research ( INRETS), Lyon
France; Daimler Chrysler AG, Berlin and Stuttgart, Germany; University College, London,
United Kingdom; Technical University of Munich, Germany; and Tsinghua University, Beijing,
China. Only two IGERT fellows, both women, have been funded by this fellowship. One
worked for the International Energy Agency in Paris, France, during Fall 2000; the other worked
for DaimlerChrysler in Germany during 2002- 2003. In the latter case, the internship formed the
basis for the recipient's dissertation research. In addition, however, several other IGERT fellows
have had significant international experiences during their studies at UCD, in the United Kingdom,
Belgium, China, Japan, Bangladesh, Africa, Guatemala, and Canada ( see Appendix D).
In retrospect, it is perhaps not surprising that the international internship option would not be
heavily exercised. The typical internship lasts at least three months, and the program was set up to
allow periods of two months to a year. For many students, an absence of even two months ( espe-cially
in a foreign country) could be difficult to manage, particularly for those with families ( young
children, working spouses, etc.). In addition, the barriers of distance, language, and culture do make
it more difficult to lay the initial groundwork for the connection between student and host. Thus,
our recommendation with respect to such programs in the future is to support “ mini- internships” of
much shorter durations – e. g. a week to a month. In this way, a student can travel abroad, often in
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connection with an international conference that will be an invaluable experience in its own right,
and then stay behind ( or come early) to work with an international host for a few days or weeks.
Making one or two such visits a year for the several- year duration of one’s PhD program could be
extremely effective, especially partnered with modern communication technologies that enable the
continuation of any collaborations from a distance.
Following are some of the internships ( domestic and international) that have taken place during
the IGERT grant period, with IGERT recipients noted in bold:
• CJ Brodrick, Engine Fuel & Emissions Engineering, 1997- 1999
• Jesse Herbert, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 2000; French National Institute for
Transport and Safety Research, 1998; Exxon Research and Engineering, 1998
• Deborah Salon, International Energy Agency ( Paris), Fall 2000
• Brian Abbanat, California Energy Commission in the light- duty vehicles department,
2000- 2001
• Joshua Cunningham, California Air Resources Board in the Zero- Emission Vehicle
Implementation Section, 1999- 2000
• Richard Counts, California Fuel Cell Partnership, 2000- 2001; Arthur D. Little, 2001
• David Friedman, California Energy Commission, 1998
• Patricia Hendren, US Dept. of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, 1999;
Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, Summer and Fall 2001
• Ethan Abeles, Fort Clatsop National Memorial, Oregon, 2001
• Thomas Barron, Yellowstone National Park, 2002
• Monterey Gardiner, Hydrogen Research Institute, Canada, 2003
• Tara Goddard, Exec. Fellowship Program, Office of the Governor and CSU Sacramento,
2003
• Kurt Kornbluth, DEKA, New Hampshire, 2004
• Nicholas Lutsey, California Air Resources Board, 2003- 2004
• Meena Sundaresan, DaimlerChrysler Fuel Cell and Alternative Powertrain Vehicles,
Germany, 2002- 2003
• John Wallace, DaimlerChrysler, 2003
• Jonathan Weinert, Ford Motor Co. at California Fuel Cell Partnership, South Coast Air
Quality Management District, 2003
• Brett Williams, Ford Motor Co. at California Fuel Cell Partnership, 2003
2.9 Recruitment
A variety of recruitment activities was undertaken within the auspices of the IGERT grant.
Samples of recruitment materials generated during the grant period are provided in Appendix E.
2.9.1 Brochures
IGERT funding supported the development of a brochure ( referred to as the “ umbrella bro-chure”)
and poster, advertising all transportation programs at UCD. This was the first time such
materials were developed here and they have been valuable for informing interested parties about
the breadth of transportation education and research available at UCD. The brochure was later
changed to a flyer format which lowered the cost of both printing and mailing. The flyer and
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poster are still distributed at conferences, recruitment seminars, and to UCD colleagues and
departments. In addition, the materials are distributed to potential students after their initial
contact with either transportation faculty or staff. Even though international students were not
eligible for fellowship support, IGERT played a role in attracting the best students from
anywhere in the world to the program.
2.9.2 Other Recruitment Activities
In an effort to reach out to groups that might have an interest in the transportation program, bro-chures
and posters were distributed to historically underrepresented and minority colleges and
universities. Success has been limited! Organizations that have been contacted include the
Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation, GEM ( Graduate Degrees for Minorities in
Engineering and Science, Inc.), McNair, American Indian AISES, Gates Millennium Scholars
Program, and CALESS ( Chicano and Latino Engineers & Scientists). When names of individual
student participants in these programs were provided, we sent materials to those students who
had indicated interests relevant to transportation. No applications resulted from those contacts.
One issue particularly salient to our program is that students never state “ transportation” as their
interest ( if categories are provided, that is never one of the categories), but many interest areas
could potentially involve transportation as an application area. That is, students could conceiv-ably
be interested in transportation through a great many traditional subject areas, such as econ-omics,
psychology, sociology, anthropology, mathematics, statistics, geography, physics, chem-istry,
and of course engineering. One of our best IGERT fellows was an English major; we have
also had several history majors. Thus, it is difficult to target students very accurately based on
their subject- area expression of interest.
In November 2000, PI Prof. Patricia Mokhtarian presented a recruitment seminar at South Texas
Community College, which was attended by 40- 50 people, mostly of Hispanic background. The
seminar was very well received and produced some possible leads and/ or potential transfers to
UCD. In addition, she was able to speak with an engineering professor from University of Texas
Pan American who expressed interest in informing potential transfer students about the possibili-ties
available at UCD, including the IGERT program. We provided him with flyers advertising
our program and IGERT funding, but ultimately received no applications through that channel.
We recognize that to have much chance of being effective, such efforts require an ongoing com-mitment
of time and energy. We also recognize that it is quite difficult to find that time on a
sustained basis, especially with a small prospect of payoff.
In general, the number and quality of our domestic applicants appears to be most closely tied to
the condition of the economy, with an inverse correlation. For example, applications for the
2001- 02 and 2002- 03 years were quite strong, coinciding with the weaker economy in place at
that time.
2.10 Ethics
IGERT has been instrumental in raising awareness of the need to incorporate ethics issues more
extensively into the program. We felt it was important not just to sequester ethics into a single
course, but also to embed it holistically into other courses in which such issues naturally arose.
As a result, several of the core courses in our curriculum have now incorporated units on ethics
into them, so that the typical student will be exposed to various aspects of the subject multiple
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times during her/ his studies here. For example, TTP 200 ( Transportation Survey Methods) in-cludes
two hours of lecture time on ethics in survey research, and ECI 254 ( Discrete Choice
Modeling) includes at least an hour on ethics in modeling and forecasting. During the faculty
interviews ( see Section 2.10.4), four other faculty members indicated teaching ethics in their
classes. In Spring 2002, renowned transportation professor Martin Wachs of UC Berkeley,
author of the book Ethics in Planning, spoke on ethics to a joint session of ECI 254 and ECI 251
( Regional Travel Demand Forecasting). The talk was advertised in regular campus media, and
attracted a dozen or more visitors as well.
We also include several alternative courses on professional development in our approved curri-culum
and encourage students to take one by ensuring that the course counts toward the degree
unit requirements. Finally, the newly- developed spring seminar on Leadership, Professionalism,
and Ethics exposes students to ethical issues from the perspective of government, industry, and
non- profit leaders. This seminar is required of students in the Transportation Technology and
Policy degree program and strongly encouraged for transportation students in the Civil and En-vironmental
Engineering program, and can be taken multiple times for credit.
2.11 Evaluation
2.11.1 Data Base Development
A number of variables were monitored for purposes of evaluating the program on an on- going
basis. To assist with gathering and compiling this information, a database was created for ITS-Davis
in the summer of 1999, using MS Access. It contains 14 tables and 9 customized reports.
Currently there are more than 1000 contact records. The contact types are as follows: potential
transportation students; transportation students who have applied, either through TTP or CEE;
current transportation students; transportation students who have either graduated or left UCD;
seminar speakers, both past and future; ITS faculty members; and IGERT recipients. The data-base
is an integral part of the successful administration of the graduate program, and has been
considered by another department for possible inclusion into administration of their program.
Appendix F to this report contains several samples of the database screens, as well as reports
generated from the database.
Following are the tables, along with a few of the more important fields within those tables:
Contacts – Name, address, e- mail, birthdate, sex, ID number, quarter entering UCD, advisor,
department, status ( i. e. current or graduated), objective ( i. e. MS or PhD), degree status, track ( if a
TTP student), and specialization.
Residency and Application Type – Residency status ( i. e. international, domestic, or permanent
resident), application type ( international or domestic), green card number ( if applicable), county
of citizenship, and ethnicity.
Student Status Dates – Applicant status ( i. e. current, denied, declined), Course Work Only ( an
initial admission status acting as a probation period), filing fee date, PELP date ( the latter two
referring to options for temporarily suspending studies or for continuation of thesis work after
completion of course work), graduated date, thesis or dissertation committee members, title of
thesis, advancement to candidacy date, and completed thesis date.
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Undergraduate Colleges – Name of college, major, date graduated or pending date of gradu-ation,
degree, GPA, rank, and whether the transcript has been received.
Graduate Colleges – Same fields as Undergraduate Colleges.
Scores – TOEFL and GRE exam dates and corresponding scores, where applicable.
Letters of Recommendation – Name and institution, date of receipt.
Honors – Any noteworthy awards that a student may have received.
Funding – Aid that the student has applied for and whether it was awarded.
Notes – Documents needed from the student, or any other notes.
IGERT – Amount and date awarded ( more specific information is kept on a spreadsheet separate
from the database).
Faculty – This tracks the faculty members affiliated with the TTP program, listing their home
department, area of interest, academic status, and the various options for their contribution to the
graduate group.
Seminar – Name of presenter ( or possible presenter), whether they are an IGERT Distinguished
Speaker, date of presentation ( or future date), title of the presentation, and any relevant notes.
2.11.2 Alumni Surveys
We developed and pretested an alumni survey, and in the summer of 2001, we began sending out
surveys to all graduated students. The plan was to survey all graduate students once immediately
after completing their degree, and again about one year later, to ascertain how perceptions might
have modulated with time. The two surveys were similar but not identical, and are included as
Appendix G. They include questions about the students’ overall impression of the UCD
graduate program, other graduate schools considered, what attracted them to UCD, the single
most important factor in their decision to attend UCD, participation in internships, evaluation of
internship( s), what they liked most about their graduate experience at UCD, what they liked
least, how well the program met their expectations, suggestions for enhancing the experience
here, further comments about UCD’s graduate transportation programs, information relating to
current employment and job searches, and general questions relating to their degrees ( type of
degree, when obtained, which program attended, and funding).
The plan to survey students twice proved difficult to achieve in practice, with a number of res-pondents
not completing even the first survey until ( or not even after) several reminders, and the
second survey being even more elusive. For that reason, and because the sample size is small at
best, our analysis is based on a single survey per respondent, which will have been completed up
to a year or so after graduation.
We reviewed each completed survey as it came in for ongoing feedback about the program.
Doing so, for example, alerted us to some degree of dissatisfaction with the relevance of the
seminar series, and we took steps to address that concern. In Chapter 3, we statistically analyze
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the surveys, comparing key descriptive statistics for IGERT fellows and associates ( NSF’s term
for students who were not directly funded by IGERT but who were associated with the program
and may have benefited from some of its aspects; we will use “ associates” and “ non- IGERT
students” interchangeably). That analysis is based on 25 completed surveys: 11 from IGERT
fellows ( an additional 17 IGERT fellows are still pursuing their degrees; 7 more left before com-pleting
their degrees) and 14 from non- IGERT students.
2.11.3 Mid- course Corrections
We informally monitored the program on a continuous basis, inviting comments from students
and faculty at any time, as well as reviewing the alumni surveys in real time as described above.
Such feedback led us, for example, to restructure the core requirements of the TTP program
shortly after receiving the IGERT grant. We replaced a set of specific core courses with a set of
core areas, and offered several ways of fulfilling the requirement for knowledge in each of the
core areas.
In other cases we introduced refinements to IGERT- related policies over time. The change to
offering full- ride research fellowships, noted earlier, is one such refinement. Another one is that
around 2001, we began to mandate attendance at the ITS- Davis seminar series as a requirement
for all IGERT recipients. While the seminar series has always been required for TTP and CEE
students, who comprise the vast majority of transportation graduate students at UC Davis, we
realized that an IGERT fellow in chemistry or mechanical engineering, for example, doing trans-portation-
related research on vehicle propulsion technologies, could complete a degree in their
disciplinary area while receiving very little exposure to the broader interdisciplinary context of
their work. Requiring attendance at the seminars exposed all transportation students over time to
a variety of different perspectives with respect to the study of transportation.
2.11.4 Faculty Interviews
At the conclusion of the program, we interviewed as many faculty advisors of IGERT students as
were willing. After repeated contacts, we succeeded in interviewing nine of the 16 faculty advis-ors
still active at UCD ( two others had left UCD, and one had retired). These nine faculty collec-tively
advised 23 of the 43 recipients of IGERT funding, and comprise the core faculty, advising
the core students, of the program ( many of the remaining students only participated for a short
time). The insights obtained from these interviews are incorporated into the discussion of the
evaluation results in Chapter 3.
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CHAPTER 3: EVALUATION RESULTS
There are a number of dimensions along which it is desirable to evaluate the IGERT program.
With respect to students, it is natural to ask:
• Has IGERT helped UCD attract better and/ or more diverse students to transportation?
• Has IGERT helped improve the training experience for transportation students at UCD?
• Has IGERT facilitated better career outcomes for transportation students at UCD?
With respect to research, we would like to know:
• Has IGERT funding led to important new knowledge?
• Has IGERT stimulated new discoveries that would not have occurred otherwise?
With respect to the transportation program at UCD, we ask:
• Has IGERT stimulated new, especially interdisciplinary, collaborations that would not
have occurred otherwise, or accelerated such collaborations?
• Have IGERT resources been synergistically leveraged to contribute to other
accomplishments of the program, and conversely?
• Has IGERT contributed to the internal and external visibility of the program?
And with respect to the UC Davis campus:
• Has the IGERT philosophy become institutionalized at the campus level?
• If so, what steps has the campus taken to support IGERT programs in particular and the
interdisciplinary integration of training and research in general?
Obtaining rigorous statistical answers to these questions is impossible, for a number of reasons.
Many of the questions are inherently subjective ( what constitutes “ better”, or “ important”?), and
many metrics are not quantifiable. “ What would have happened otherwise” is obviously uncer-tain.
The number of student participants is small; the number completing degrees during the
term of the grant is even smaller. Many effects of IGERT may take several years to emerge.
Comparing IGERT and non- IGERT students to ascertain whether IGERT “ made a difference” is
problematic, for two reasons: first because of the small sample sizes; and second because it is
not only reasonable to expect that IGERT would benefit associates as well as fellows in many
ways, but desirable that it do so – inevitably contaminating ( in a good way!) the associates so
that they are not a true control group. Thus, our evaluation is necessarily more qualitative than
quantitative, although we do discuss some quantitative results where possible ( keeping these
caveats in mind). Below, we address each of the above questions in turn.
3.1 Student- Related Effects
3.1.1 Has IGERT helped UCD attract better and/ or more diverse students to transpor-tation?
Our IGERT students are extremely accomplished. The table in Appendix D lists some of their
important awards and activities. Collectively, they have earned 13 prestigious and competitive
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national scholarships; participated in 15 internships with industry, government, and think- tanks,
including four international ones; received three national awards for best dissertation, best pre-sentation,
and outstanding student, respectively; received two regional best student awards; and
four ENO Transportation Foundation awards.
Are they better, and/ or more diverse (“ than what?” will be addressed below)? As noted in the
introduction to this chapter, adjectives such as “ better” are highly subjective, and even “ diverse”
has a formal meaning in the context of affirmative- action- type policies, but can also be inter-preted
more broadly in terms of variation in backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Accor-dingly,
we address this question in several different ways. First, we comment on the nature of
the TTP degree program. Next we compare the gender distribution of IGERT and non- IGERT
students. Then, we examine recent trends in the average GRE scores of enrolled graduate stu-dents
in transportation in our two largest programs: the TTP and CEE degree programs. Finally,
we statistically compare IGERT and non- IGERT students in terms of Graduate Record Examina-tion
( GRE) scores and entering and final grade- point averages ( GPAs).
From the beginning, an important part of the philosophy behind the TTP degree program has
been to increase the diversity – in the broad sense – of students receiving training in transpor-tation.
Before the formation of the TTP program, the only way to get a graduate degree in trans-portation
at UCD ( as is true for the vast majority of other transportation programs in the country)
was through the Civil and Environmental Engineering ( CEE) department. The CEE department
understandably feels that if students are to receive a degree with a CEE label on it, they should
share some level of core knowledge with other civil engineers. This means that any CEE trans-portation
graduate student entering without a civil engineering undergraduate degree must take
up to nine basic civil engineering classes – requiring a full year or more – in addition to their
transportation curriculum, even though they will never use such classes in the typical transpor-tation
career.
Needless to say, this requirement constituted ( and still does, for CEE- based programs at univer-sities
having similar policies and no alternatives) a formidable “ barrier to entry” into the trans-portation
field – a barrier that we believe disproportionally affects women. The TTP degree
program, by contrast, welcomes students from any conceivable background, subject only to
taking five prerequisite classes ( two courses in calculus, one in linear algebra, and calculus- level
probability/ statistics and microeconomics). We have been pleased to see the resulting variety in
undergraduate majors held by our TTP students, including city/ regional planning, sociology,
economics, business, history/ American culture, physics, botany/ biology, philosophy, computer
science, mathematics, and English as well as various engineering areas.
Although this inclusive philosophy of the TTP degree program predated the TTP IGERT award,
IGERT synergistically supported that philosophy, and enabled us to support a larger number of
these diverse students than would otherwise have been possible. For example, one of the English
majors was a female IGERT fellow who became an advanced mathematical modeler, creatively
applied several multivariate statistical techniques in her dissertation, and is now working for a
consulting firm that is known for its cutting- edge transportation model development.
With respect to gender, IGERT did appear to enrich the transportation graduate student body at
UCD. Table 3.1 shows that 23% of IGERT fellows were female, compared to only 19% of non-
IGERT students enrolled during the same period. Interestingly, however, at 26% women during
the same period, the “ traditional” CEE degree program actually shows greater gender diversity
3- 3
than either the IGERT program ( though the difference may not be significant) or the TTP degree
program ( at 18% women). At UCD, the college of engineering in general and CEE in particular
are relatively unusual in the proportion of women faculty and students. Among universities
granting 20 or more PhDs in engineering in 2003, UCD ranks sixth in the nation both in terms of
percent of women obtaining PhDs in engineering ( 29.1%) and percent of full- time women on the
engineering faculty ( 15% in 2005, compared to less than 8% nationwide in 2001, according to
http:// www. nsf. gov/ sbe/ srs/ seind04/ append/ c5/ at05- 23. pdf, accessed August 29, 2005). The
CEE department at UCD is even more gender- diverse, with five ( 19%) full- time ladder- rank
female faculty members out of 26 in 2005. Three of those five women are in the transportation
group of CEE and are also members of the TTP faculty. TTP has four more full- time women
faculty members with home appointments in other departments, for a total of 7 ( 17.5%) out of 40
( see listing in Appendix A). Eleven ( 20.4%) out of the 54 ITS- Davis affiliated faculty are
women. We believe that gender diversity among the faculty plays an important role in attracting
women students to transportation – evidently especially in CEE.
Table 3.1: Gender Distribution of Students by IGERT Status and Program, 1998- 2005
Female Male TOTAL
IGERT 10 ( 23%) 33 ( 77%) 43 ( 100%)
non- IGERT 18 ( 19%) 75 ( 81%) 93 ( 100%)
TTP degree program 11 ( 18%) 49 ( 82%) 60 ( 100%)
CEE degree program 12 ( 26%) 35 ( 74%) 47 ( 100%)
Our transportation students ( especially in the TTP program) vary not only in terms of discipli-nary
background and gender, but also in terms of life experiences. Many have come to us from
the workforce rather than straight from a bachelor’s degree. Several have worked in the auto-motive
industry; others for environmental non- profits, and others have done extensive volunteer
work related to the environment and other causes. Many of the domestic students have lived for
extended periods in other countries, and/ or speak a second language. There is only only one
disadvantaged minority ( Hispanic male) among our students, and he was an IGERT fellow who
is nearing the completion of his dissertation. However, many different ethnic backgrounds exist
among the student body as a whole, including non- IGERT international students ( at some point
during the IGERT grant period) from China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, Israel, Turkey, Bel-gium,
Germany, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and Canada.
Collectively, this variety among our students provides a tremendously dynamic learning envir-onment.
The sharing of different perspectives and experiences facilitates a cross- fertilization of
ideas that we believe to be unique among transportation programs in the US. It is certainly far
more heterogeneous than the typical civil engineering transportation program.
Having argued that our students are diverse, it is fair to ask, “ are they better?” At this point we
restrict ourselves to considering their qualifications when they enter the program; the next two
subsections treat their training during the program, and their career outcomes immediately after
finishing the program. Even with this restriction, the question “ are they better” raises two ques-tions
of its own: ( 1) better on what dimension( s), and ( 2) better than what? With respect to the
first question, a number of quality dimensions are arguably of interest. Ideally, we want our
incoming students to be better scholars, with all the varied meanings that term can have: more
intelligent, more creative, more insightful and critical, more persistent and careful, more produc-
3- 4
tive in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. But we could also mean better citizens ( in the
broad sense of the word), better leaders, better entrepreneurs, more well- rounded people. With
respect to the second question, we could answer, “ better than our students were in years past”,
“ IGERT students better than contemporaneous non- IGERT students”, or “ better than students in
similar programs without IGERT”.
As discussed earlier, it is not possible to conduct a rigorous evaluation in all of these respects,
but some analyses are of interest. We will examine Graduate Record Examination ( GRE) scores
and grade- point averages ( GPAs) because they are quantifiable and because they are commonly
thought to have at least some correlation with scholarship potential, while remaining fully aware
that they are very imperfect indicators of student quality. A student with only average or even
below- average GREs may well be “ better” than an above- average- scoring student, on dimen-sions
such as creativity, insight, and even intelligence. Such a student may also have been ad-mitted
due to other unusual qualifications such as a distinctive background or perspective as
discussed above. In fact, a comparison of the GRE scores of completed IGERT fellows with
historical mean scores for all TTP and CEE students indicates that most IGERT recipients were
“ below average” on one or more of the three scores. As Figure 3.1 shows, only two out of 13
completed IGERT students were above the TTP average on all three GRE scores, and one of
those two only completed an MS. Along the same lines, the correlation of IGERT fellows’ un-dergraduate
GPAs with their final graduate GPAs is a statistically insignificant 0.14. Thus, in
point of fact, GRE scores and incoming GPAs ( at least, given some minimum threshold) seem to
have little bearing on the ability of a student to successfully complete the PhD.
Figure 3.1
GRE Scores of Completed IGERT Fellows
450
500
550
600
650
700
750
800
V Q A
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
TTP AVE
CEE AVE
Nevertheless, it is of interest to examine recent trends in the average GRE scores of enrolled
graduate students in transportation in our two largest programs: the TTP and CEE degree pro-grams.
Figure 3.2 shows those trends ( additional statistics for those two programs from 1999 to
2004, with respect to inquiries, applications, admissions, enrollments, and funding status, as well
as breakdowns by gender and domestic/ international status, can be found in Appendix H).
Inspection of the figures, together with a regression of scores against time, shows a significant
positive trend for the verbal TTP scores. The quantitative CEE scores show a significant, though
3- 5
modest, negative trend ( of about three percentile points a year). No other trends are significant
for either program, suggesting that IGERT has had little effect on the overall quality of students
entering the two main transportation programs, as captured by this imperfect metric.
Figure 3.2a
Average GRE Percentiles of Newly- Enrolled TTP Students
( 1999- 2004)
60
65
70
75
80
85
90
1999 ( 8) 2000 ( 4) 2001 ( 8) 2002 ( 14) 2003 ( 8) 2004 ( 10)
Year ( number of entering students)
Percentile
V % ile
Q % ile
A % ile
Figure 3.2b
Average GRE Percentiles of Newly- Enrolled CEE Students
( 1999- 2004)
0
20
40
60
80
100
1999 ( 4) 2000 ( 1) 2001 ( 8) 2002 ( 10) 2003 ( 7) 2004 ( 8)
Year ( number of entering students)
Percentile
V % ile
Q % ile
A % ile
Similarly, Table 3.2 statistically compares IGERT and non- IGERT students in terms of GRE
scores and entering and final GPAs. The means for IGERT students on all of these quantitative
indicators are equal to or ( most often) higher than those for non- IGERT students. However none
of the differences are statistically significant except for the percentile of verbal GRE scores
( p= 0.08). Thus, IGERT students may be marginally better than non- IGERT ones in terms of
classical indicators of academic preparation, but the differences are relatively minor.
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Table 3.2: Comparison of GPAs and GREs for Completed IGERT and non- IGERT
Students
IGERT ave.
( N= 13)
non- IGERT ave.
( N= 35)
p- value of t- test
on difference
Pre- UCD GPA 3.391 3.372 0.85
Final UCD GPA 3.78 3.72 0.28
GRE V 569 5333 0.15
GRE Q 697 6903 0.83
GRE A 692 6474 0.17
GRE V (% ile) 76 665 0.08
GRE Q (% ile) 75 755 1.00
GRE A (% ile) 82 735 0.18
1N= 12, 2N= 24, 3N= 32, 4N= 31, 5N= 30. Shaded row indicates measure that differs significantly between
IGERT and non- IGERT students.
3.1.2 Has IGERT helped improve the training experience for transportation students at
UCD?
Similar to the issue of the number of dimensions along which a student can be “ better”, the
graduate transportation “ training experience” at UCD is multifaceted. Although measurement of
those various facets is necessarily subjective, it is not altogether qualitative. In particular, the
alumni survey ( see Section 2.10.2) asked recent graduates about a variety of aspects of their
UCD program, and we statistically compare the perceptions of IGERT and non- IGERT students
below. Following that, we discuss some qualitative indicators of the training experience.
Interpretation of all data from the alumni surveys should be prefaced with the following caveats.
By construction of the program at NSF, IGERT fellows were all domestic, and almost all were
PhD students ( as mentioned earlier, we were authorized to offer IGERT fellowships to a small
number of MS students who were good prospects to continue for the PhD, so three of our IGERT
fellows only completed an MS). Therefore, the most appropriate comparison of IGERT fellows
would be to domestic PhD non- IGERT students. There were almost no such students, however:
because our program is relatively small, and our commitment to student fellowships under
IGERT was large, virtually every domestic PhD student in transportation during the grant term
received IGERT funding. Perhaps the next most appropriate comparison would be to any PhD
non- IGERT student, whether domestic or international. There still were not enough of those in
our survey database, however ( only 5 of the 14 associates completing surveys were PhD
students). To have any quantitatively meaningful comparison whatsoever, it was necessary to
pool all non- IGERT students together. This means, however, that the IGERT/ non- IGERT status
indicator is strongly correlated with the PhD/ MS status indicator, and also correlated with the
domestic/ international indicator. Both of the latter, then, are factors confounding any differences
observed between the IGERT and non- IGERT groups.
The degree program is yet one more issue, both within and across groups. Within group, the fact
that students were in different programs may increase the variance in the responses. Across
group, the distribution by program varied, with many more non- IGERT than IGERT students in
the CEE program, and less diversity of program among non- IGERT students collectively ( see
Table 3.3). The latter, therefore, is one more confounding factor for IGERT/ non- IGERT
differences.
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Table 3.3: Degree Program Distribution of Alumni Survey Respondents
IGERT
( N= 11)
non- IGERT
( N= 14)
Transportation Technology and Policy 6 ( 55%) 6 ( 43%)
Civil and Environmental Engineering 1 ( 9%) 7 ( 50%)
Ecology 1 ( 9%) 1 ( 7%)
Agricultural Economics 1 ( 9%) –
Chemistry 1 ( 9%) –
Chemical Engineering 1 ( 9%) –
TOTAL 11 ( 100%) 14 ( 100%)
With those caveats in mind, Table 3.4 compares the mean ratings of IGERT and non- IGERT
students on a number of aspects of their graduate programs. All of the means fall between 2.8
and 4.2, where 3=“ good” and 4=“ very good” on a 5- point scale. Strikingly, the mean perception
significantly differs between IGERT and non- IGERT students for only three traits ( taking 0.10 as
the threshhold level of statistical significance, in view of the small sample size; no differences
were significant at the 0.05 level): “ availability of courses on desired topics”, “ giving me con-structive
teamwork experience”, and “ providing networking opportunities with other profes-sionals”.
In all three cases, the mean perception was more positive for IGERT students, sugges-ting
a higher- quality experience at least on these dimensions, though again the result may be re-lated,
for example, to the higher proportion of PhD students among the IGERT group.
As indicated above, it is unsurprising to find few differences between IGERT and non- IGERT
students: there is reason to expect associates to benefit nearly as much as fellows from many
elements of the IGERT program. Specifically ( see Chapter 2 for further detail), non- IGERT
students benefited by the enhanced facilities, state- of- the- art equipment, improved course offer-ings,
distinguished seminar speakers, the two research conferences hosted by UCD, and the
greater visibility of transportation at UCD. To the extent that IGERT helped attract better stu-dents
( whether as IGERT fellows directly, or as non- IGERT students who were nevertheless
influenced by the presence of the prestigious award), associates also benefited from interacting
with those better students.
When asked how well the program met expectations overall, IGERT students were considerably
( significant at 0.06) more positive than non- IGERT students ( means of 4.6 and 3.7, respectively,
on a 6- point semantic differential scale ranging from “ much worse than expected” = 1, to “ much
better than expected” = 6). Note that non- IGERT students were not particularly disappointed on
the whole ( 3 on the scale corresponds to “ about what I expected”, and 4 to “ in some ways better,
in some ways worse than expected”); rather, IGERT students were simply more pleasantly sur-prised.
In qualitative terms, the program offers a number of distinctive opportunities that, we argue, im-prove
the training experience for IGERT and non- IGERT students alike. Most of these oppor-tunities
are discussed elsewhere in this report, but we summarize them here for convenience:
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Table 3.4: Perceptions of the Graduate Program
How would you rate the following aspects of your UCD graduate program?
1= poor, 2= fair, 3= good, 4= very good, 5= excellent
IGERT ave.
( N= 11)
non- IGERT ave.
( N= 14)
p- value on t- test
of difference
a. overall quality of faculty with respect
to classroom teaching 3.81 3.5 0.270
b. quality of interaction with my faculty
advisor 3.6 4.0 0.391
c. my research experience 3.6 4.0 0.371
d. program advising/ guidance 3.4 3.3 0.861
e. personal nature of the program 3.9 3.62 0.378
f. camaraderie with fellow students 4.1 4.2 0.727
g. availability of courses on desired
topics 3.71 3.0 0.061
h. improving my public speaking skills 4.0 3.42 0.189
i. improving my technical writing skills 3.7 3.9 0.568
j. improving my critical thinking skills 3.8 4.1 0.491
k. giving me constructive teamwork
experience 3.6 3.1 0.080
l. internship opportunities 3.11 2.9 0.734
m. the ITS seminar series 4.0 3.7 0.484
n. providing networking opportunities
with other professionals 4.1 3.4 0.076
o. assistance in finding employment 2.8 2.92 0.794
p. career preparation 3.4 3.3 0.835
q. treatment of ethics issues 3.33 3.31 0.947
How well did the program meet your expectations?
1= much worse than expected; 2= worse than expected; 3= about what I expected; 4= in some ways
better, in some ways worse than expected; 5= better than expected; 6= much better than expected
4.61 3.74 0.058
1N= 10; 2N= 13; 3N= 12; 4N= 11. Differences on shaded aspects are significant at p = 0.1 or better.
3- 9
• New courses: The IGERT program, combined with other funding, helped stimulate the
development of numerous new permanent and ad hoc classes ( see Sections 2.7 and 3.3.2).
• Conferences/ workshops: ITS- Davis, with funding from IGERT and other sources, hosted
an average of four conferences and workshops per year during the grant period. The two
completely IGERT- funded graduate student research conferences are discussed in more
detail in Section 2.6, with programs provided in Appendix B.
• Internships: An average of 2- 3 students a year take advantage of the numerous optional
internship opportunities available ( see Section 2.8), with government, industry, or non-profit
host organizations.
• Business development program; entrepreneurship and research grant competitions: See
Appendices C and D for details regarding the Business Development Program and the
annual Little Bang/ Big Bang Business Plan Competition. In addition, ITS- Davis has
recently inaugurated a semi- annual Competitive Research and Project Grant program,
with funding from the Friends of ITS- Davis. Launched in May 2003, Friends of ITS-Davis
is an alumni contact and support group, whose goals are ( 1) to organize and en-gage
our graduates and other friends of ITS- Davis; and ( 2) to build a culture of individual
giving in support of various student activities. The Friends fund will support up to three
research or special student projects a year, at up to $ 4,500 each. Proposals are solicited
through a semi- annual call. Preparing these proposals and obtaining feedback on how to
make them more competitive provides students invaluable training in problem and
approach identification, literature review, critical thinking, and persuasive communica-tion.
• Conference travel: Section 2.4 describes the travel awards funded through IGERT. In
addition, travel for non- IGERT students was funded ( in lesser amounts) through other
sources, including the University of California Transportation Center, the Friends of ITS-Davis,
and corporate gifts to ITS- Davis.
• Outstanding Thesis/ Dissertation Award: This award is also funded by the Friends of
ITS- Davis, and provides $ 1500 per person to the authors of the transportation- related MS
thesis and PhD dissertation judged most outstanding among those submitted during a
given calendar year at UCD. These awards provide internal and external recognition for
the best research being conducted here, and help motivate students to go that “ extra mile”
for the highest quality outcome.
• Computer Resource Fund: Also through Friends of ITS- Davis giving, about $ 4500 a
year is set aside to support the computing needs of ITS- Davis students. Students can
apply to the fund for group or individual needs. While ITS- Davis maintains computer
labs for ordinary requirements, and faculty research grants cover many out- of- the-ordinary
needs, this fund provides support for needs ( and some “ wants”) that are not
otherwise funded, and would “ fall through the cracks”.
3.1.3 Has IGERT facilitated better career outcomes for transportation students at UCD?
With respect to career outcomes, “ better” truly is in the eye of the beholder. Accordingly, the
main basis we have for inferring career satisfaction is the self- reports from the alumni survey.
Table 3.5 compares IGERT and non- IGERT students on four questions from the survey. With
respect to the type of employer, we see that three- quarters of the ( eight) IGERT respondents
found employment in educational institutions, although in most cases as a postdoctoral scholar or
staff researcher rather than a tenure- track faculty member. ( This, of course, is not atypical of
science and engineering PhDs seeking an academic career – many or most of these respondents
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are likely to eventually find a permanent faculty position). The most recent known positions of
all 43 IGERT fellows are shown in Table 3.6.
Table 3.5: Comparison of Job Characteristics for IGERT and Non- IGERT Respondents
How would your employer be classified?
IGERT
( N= 8)
non- IGERT
( N= 12)
education 6 75.0% 4 33.3%
industry 112.5% 1 8.3%
consulting 1 12.5% 2 16.7%
government 0 0.0% 5 41.7%
non- profit 0 0.0% 0 0.0%
other 0 0.0% 0 0.0%
How would you rate this job with respect to its compatibility with your immediate career goals?
( N= 8) ( N= 13)
It’s exactly the sort of thing I had in mind 4 50.0% 7 53.8%
It’s not perfect, but it fits me in some ways 4 50.0% 4 30.8%
It's not a good fit, but it looked like my best choice for now 0 0.0% 2 15.4%
In what range does your current job- based annual income fall before taxes?
( N= 6) ( N= 12)
$ 30,000 or less 0 0.0% 1 8.3%
$ 30,001- 40,000 1 12.5% 3 25.0%
$ 40,001- 50,000 2 25.0% 2 16.7%
$ 50,001- 60,000 1 12.5% 5 41.7%
$ 60,001- 70,000 1 12.5% 1 8.3%
$ 70,001- 80,000 1 12.5% 0 0.0%
Returning to Table 3.5, by comparison, only a third of the ( 12) non- IGERT students found
academic positions, whereas 42% of them joined a government agency ( compared to no IGERT
students in that category). However, as mentioned earlier, this difference in distribution is
confounded by the difference in degree distribution, with most of the associates pursuing MS
degrees rather than PhDs, and the converse true for the IGERT fellows.
In terms of compatibility with their immediate career goals, the IGERT respondents were split
evenly between feeling that their current job was exactly what they had in mind, versus not per-fect,
but a good fit in some ways. In contrast, a higher proportion of the associates ( 54%) con-sidered
their job to be exactly what they had in mind, but unlike the IGERT group, a few of the
associates also had to “ settle” for a job that wasn’t a good fit but was the best they could do at
the time.
In terms of reported job- based income, that of the IGERT fellows clearly exceeded that of the
associates, on average. Sixty- three percent of the IGERT fellows reported incomes greater than
$ 50,000 a year, compared to 50% of the associates. Again, however, this result could be ex-plained
by the higher proportion of PhDs among the IGERT respondents.
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Table 3.6: Current Employment of All IGERT Fellows
Employment Number
Still pursuing UCD degree 17
Education
UC Davis 3
UC Berkeley 2
Auburn University 1
James Madison University 1
Seattle University 1
University of Hawaii 1
Industry
California Fuel Cell Partnership 1
DaimlerChrysler 1
Solar Turbines, Inc. 1
UTC Fuel Cells 1
Consulting
Cambridge Systematics 1
Government
US Air Force 1
Non- profit
Union of Concerned Scientists 1
Unknown 10
With respect to job satisfaction, however, we might reasonably expect neither the degree distri-bution
nor any of the other confounds discussed above to have much of an effect – there is no a
priori reason to expect an MS graduate to have a less satisfying job than a PhD, and so on. As
shown in Table 3.7, there is in fact no significant difference between IGERT and non- IGERT
respondents in terms of their satisfaction with the content of the work, their supervisor, and their
salary, with most means falling between 4 ( satisfied) and 5 ( very satisfied) on the five- point
scale. There are, however, significant differences with respect to fringe benefits, opportunity for
professional development, and overall. In every case, the means for IGERT students are higher
( still falling between 4 and 5) than those for non- IGERT students ( falling between 3= neutral or
mixed and 4), and in fact this is also true even for the three aspects on which there is no statis-tically
significant difference. Thus, the evidence supports the conclusion that the IGERT pro-gram
contributed to a more positive initial career outcome for the fellows. Although a devil’s
advocate might point out the possibility of a response bias, in which those who are less satisfied
with their career outcomes might be less motivated to respond ( out of embarrassment or apathy),
there is no reason to expect such a bias to be manifested more strongly in one group or the other
( the cover letter to the survey did not mention IGERT, so respondents were not pre- conditioned
to associate any of their responses with the IGERT program). Thus, the differences between the
two groups appear to be genuine.
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Table 3.7: Comparison of Job Satisfaction Ratings for IGERT and Non- IGERT
Respondents
What is your degree of satisfaction with the following aspects of your job?
1= very dissatisfied, 2= dissatisfied, 3= neutral or mixed, 4= satisfied, 5= very satisfied
IGERT
ave.
( N= 8)
non- IGERT
ave. ( N= 12)
p- value on t-test
of
difference
a. Content of the work 4.6 4.3 0.366
b. Supervisor 4.8 4.2 0.126
c. Salary 4.0 3.3 0.120
d. Fringe benefits 4.3 3.3 0.025
e. Opportunity for professional development 4.8 3.8 0.030
f. Overall 4.6 3.9 0.060
3.2 Research- Related Effects
3.2.1 Has IGERT funding led to important new knowledge?
The primary purpose of the IGERT program may be to provide multi/ interdisciplinary training to
a new generation of scientists and engineers, but it is impossible to separate the education func-tion
of IGERT from its research function – as attested by the “ I”, for “ Integrating” “ Education”
and “ Research”, in IGERT. That is, the training is not only to impart a body of knowledge draw-ing
from multiple disciplines, but also to conduct research that crosses disciplinary boundaries
and that makes a difference. If the research conducted by IGERT fellows only constituted so
much busywork, it would not be an effective use of the funding, nor, for that matter, an effective
training experience. Accordingly, one metric of the success of the grant should be the scholarly
productivity of the trainees.
From the late 1998 start of our IGERT grant to the present, a span of about 7 years ( although no
students received funding during the final year, 2004- 05, research begun previously with IGERT
funding may not have been completed or published until then or later), IGERT fellows and their
co- authors have produced at least 40 reprints ( journal articles, conference proceedings, and book
chapters) and 56 research reports. In keeping with the broad themes of our IGERT grant, the
research covers a wide variety of topics, including telecommuting, work status choice, smart
parking, carsharing, regional transportation and land use models, attitudes toward travel, hydro-gen-
fueled and/ or fuel- cell vehicles, light- duty diesel vehicles in Europe, rural vehicles in China,
heavy- duty truck auxiliary power units, low- speed modes, air quality policy and modeling, and
transnational comparisons of transportation modeling and planning among others.
Obviously, space considerations prohibit summarizing all the new discoveries contained therein,
but below we provide brief overviews of studies representing four of the major themes of trans-portation
research at ITS- Davis ( the names of IGERT fellows are bolded). A complete list of
publications produced with IGERT funding is provided in Appendix I, and overviews of selected
additional projects can be found in Appendix J.
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Theme 1: Environmental Impacts of Transportation
What is the past and present contribution of leaded gasoline combustion to the global dioxin
budget? ( Leeman, Chang, Reiner, Kolic, MacPherson, Ouchida) Leaded gasoline sales
accounted for approximately 21% of global gasoline sales as late as 2000, and lead was heavily
utilized world- wide as an anti- knock additive until the late 1990s, although its use in California
was phased out as early as 1981. Burning leaded gasoline is known to have deleterious health
effects, but the extent of the role played by automobiles in generating dioxin emissions has not
been firmly established. Because long- range transport and distribution of fine particles occurs
and some polyhalogenated dibenzodioxins or polyhalogenated dibenzofurans ( PHDD/ F,
referring to mixed chlorinated and brominated dioxins and furans) would have long residence
times in the environment and bioconcentrate, we hypothesized that vehicles burning leaded
gasoline have contributed significantly to the global dioxin budget in the past and possibly
continue to do so in the present. By analyzing archived hi- vol air filters ( 1974- 1980), collected
from an area in California that historically had few or possibly no major stationary dioxin
sources, and performing a study of other known sources, the research provided compelling evi-dence
of a vehicular contribution to ambient polychlorinated dibenzodioxins/ dibenzofurans
( PCDD/ F) in the Riverside urban area during the period 1974 – 1980. A strong correlation ( r2 ≈
0.8 to 0.9) with a dominant motor vehicle emissions, i. e., 24- hr average CO was established.
The results of the research suggest that vehicular sources were important in emitting and
distributing PCDD/ F throughout the environment in the past. Continued leaded gasoline com-bustion
may currently pose health risks in areas where it is still utilized, and may still contribute
significantly to the global PCDD/ F budget, especially if PHDD/ F transformation occurs. This
research was supported by the IGERT, NIEHS and UC Toxic Substances Research and Teaching
programs and would not have been possible without the funding by these multidisciplinary
programs.
Theme 2: Advanced Environmental Vehicles and Propulsion Systems
Development of Advanced Electrochemical Capacitors Using Carbon and Lead Oxide Elec-trodes
for Hybrid Vehicle Applications ( Burke, Kershaw, Miller) This work has led to commer-cialization,
and further work surrounding the hybrid ultra capacitor. The device was built in the
hybrid vehicle research lab, and would not have happened at all without IGERT. This was a
technological advance.
What is the optimal density and siting of hydrogen fuel stations? ( Handy, Nicholas, Sperling)
The lack of hydrogen fuel stations is a major barrier to the introduction of hydrogen vehicles.
Given the high cost of constructing hydrogen stations, it is desirable to build as few stations as
possible while still adequately serving consumers. This project developed a GIS model for siting
a network of hydrogen stations in Sacramento County, California. For a network with 30% as
many retail fuel stations as now, average driving time from home to a station would be just 16
seconds more than it is with the full existing network of stations. With 5% of existing stations
supplying hydrogen, the average driving time to a station could be as little as 4 minutes in Sac-ramento
County. These results suggest that a few strategically sited stations could be sufficient to
satisfy a large number of prospective consumers and provide encouragement that this barrier to
the introduction of hydrogen vehicles can be easily overcome.
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Theme 3: Information/ Communication Technologies and Travel
Does telecommuting prompt residential relocation farther from work? ( Ory, Mokhtarian) Many
studies have shown telecommuting to have short- term benefits in terms of reducing commute
travel. But some researchers have questioned the long- term benefits, suggesting that the ability
to telecommute may motivate people to move even farther from work than they currently do. If
the one- way commute length increases enough, total commute travel may increase even though
telecommuting reduces the frequency with which the commute is made. This study analyzed the
retrospective telecommuting and residential relocation behavior of current and former telecom-muting
employees over a 10- year period, and compared it to that of a non- telecommuting control
group. We found that most often, telecommuting seemed to be an effect rather than a cause of
residential relocation farther away. That is, those who had already moved away for other reasons
adopted telecommuting so as to reduce their commuting. Thus, telecommuting appears to be a
beneficial strategy even in the long term – reducing commute travel from what it would be other-wise,
rather than increasing it due to facilitating further decentralization. In either case, we also
found that the average total commute distance of telecommuters was less than or at most equal to
that of non- telecommuters, indicating that even if telecommuting stimulated more distant
relocations, it more than compensated for any additional travel thereby generated.
Theme 4: Travel Behavior Analysis/ Transportation Demand Modeling
Urban spatial competition models ( Johnston, Rodier, Clay, Gao) Prof. Robert Johnston and his
students have applied urban spatial competition models to the Sacramento region for several
years, partly based on IGERT support. They have shown the usefulness of these models for pol-icy
analysis and have also evaluated the models for accuracy. Johnston and his co- workers in
three nations have also performed a comparison of various urban models, using the same data-sets.
The Sacramento Area Council of Governments ( the regional transportation planning agency
of the region) has recently adopted one of these models for official use in land use and transpor-tation
planning and is making improvements to it.
3.2.2 Has IGERT stimulated new discoveries that would not have occurred otherwise?
As noted above, it is not possible to know definitively what would have happened without
IGERT. Based on the faculty interviews and common sense, however, it is clear that IGERT
funded more students than the program would have been able to support financially otherwise,
and that most students we couldn’t have funded would not have come. Perhaps some of the re-search
conducted by IGERT fellows represented a faculty “ agenda” that would have been ad-dressed
eventually through some other means, but at that point it would have presumably dis-placed
the other research that can now take place because some items on the “ agenda” were com-pleted
sooner rather than later. In other cases, the research conducted by the IGERT fellow was
clearly the student’s “ agenda”, or a joint creation of student and faculty, which the faculty
mentor would never have pursued unilaterally.
Even more subtly and indirectly, we argue that the general environment created by our diverse
student body ( as described in Section 3.1.1) fertilized new ideas and approaches that would not
have been generated in a more homogeneous intellectual milieu. For example, the Hydrogen
Pathways program ( see Section 3.3.3) expanded beyond treatment of engineering issues relating
to the design of vehicles and fuel cells, to include studies of image and prestige in vehicle and
energy choices. The same is true of ITS- Davis’ fledgling China energy/ transportation initiative.
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Several faculty members mentioned the equipment purchased with IGERT funds, and noted that
certain research could not have been conducted without it, and would not have been conducted
had IGERT not funded the equipment.
3.3 Program- Related Effects
3.3.1 Has IGERT stimulated new, especially interdisciplinary, collaborations that would
not have occurred otherwise, or accelerated such collaborations?
Here again, we must rely on qualitative indicators, specifically the assessment of interviewed
faculty members. In response to the question, “ Is there anything that IGERT made possible that
wouldn’t have happened otherwise?”, one interviewee noted faculty research involving eight
faculty members in at least three different departments, saying, “ This research is largely focused
on analysis and modeling of transportation systems, activities, and technologies. ITS- Davis is
now collaborating with faculty in chemistry, chemical engineering, and materials science to form
a center of excellence in fuel cell and hydrogen storage science.” For example, a faculty member
in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering is collaborating with one in Chemical Engineering/
Materials Science and one in Civil and Environmental Engineering / Environmental Science and
Policy, through advising a doctoral student on fuel cell research ( relating to materials and corro-sion).
This continues a prior collaboration among two of the faculty members and a researcher at
ITS- Davis, jointly advising an IGERT fellow on fuel cell research involving knowledge of trans-portation
systems, mechanical engineering, and materials/ processing.
As another example, a faculty member in urban planning ( Environmental Science and Policy)
mentioned her collaboration on a study of hydrogen fuel station siting ( see Section 3.2.1), and
indicated that she would not have had any involvement with the hydrogen fuel cell program at all
if IGERT had not facilitated the project.
While these are new collaborative arrangements, the infrastructure at UCD in general and ITS-Davis
in particular has long fostered multidisciplinary teamwork, and prior arrangements have
been nurtured – through IGERT- funded students among other means – during the IGERT grant
period. These include collaborations of policy analysts with engineers on the impacts of various
alternative- fuel policies; chemical, civil and mechanical engineers on alternative fuel vehicle
modeling and hydrogen storage; civil engineers with geographers and urban planners on studies
of attitudes toward travel and impacts of information/ communication technologies on travel;
economists and engineers on the demand for travel in developing countries; and market research-ers
with engineers on the demand for conventional and alternative- fuel vehicles.
Inter- and multidisciplinary collaboration occurs not only among faculty members, but between
faculty and students. As noted earlier, IGERT did have a direct role in bringing students with a
diverse set of disciplinary backgrounds to the program, students who then often worked with
faculty members having different backgrounds. For example, faculty in civil engineering have
supervised students with undergraduate majors in anthropology, sociology, geography, business,
and so on. In each case the student’s background has enriched the faculty member’s knowledge,
and contributed to research products that are better than they would have been with only the
more narrow and homogeneous perspective of any single faculty member.
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Overall then, interdisciplinary research is thriving at ITS- Davis, and IGERT receives a great deal
of the credit for maintaining existing cooperative relationships and stimulating new ones.
IGERT played a significant role both in fostering a general climate of sharing and collaboration,
and in the practical contribution of funding to support " non- traditional", i. e. interdisciplinary,
students. Many of these students would otherwise have either ( 1) fallen into a traditional
department doing traditional disciplinary work, or ( 2) not come to graduate school at all, not
having found something meeting both their research interests and their financial need.
3.3.2 Has IGERT stimulated new, especially interdisciplinary, course offerings?
One of the challenges facing interdisciplinary graduate groups ( such as TTP) at UCD is that they
receive no guaranteed formula- driven state funds for administration, as conventional departments
do. Nor, by the same token, do they generally have any full- time ladder- rank faculty permanent-ly
assigned to them – most or all of their tenure- track faculty have full permanent appointments
in a traditional department. Since these traditional departments are providing 100% of a faculty
member’s salary, they generally expect her or him to teach a full load in that department. While
this expectation is understandable, it does make it difficult for interdisciplinary programs to
develop new courses that are tailored to the program’s particular needs. This problem can be
ad