It is at times hard for professors to carve out time to take a step back and think about the broader picture. Following Bill Gates' example with his "Think Weeks," I've scheduled monthly meetings with myself for deep thinking about…
Last year, I was invited to try for election as Vice President of IABSE, the Internationla Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering. In total, we were five candidates for three positions (the organization has 11 Vice Presidents, each with their…
I'm coming down from a particularly heavy semester, in which I have had a few weeks of 70+ hours, while still having to make the 4pm pickup at school. Things have been particularly rough, in other words, and I was…
As I've been writing about teaching and active learning in previous posts, I thought that for today special attention to graduate-level courses is due. At times, it may seem harder to put elements of active learning into upper-level courses, as…
This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those…
As always, I'm here with a brief post outlining my goals for the upcoming semester. Here's what I will be focusing on: Submit 4 papers. Develop a plan for a delayed PhD thesis. Analyze skewed slab tests. Redesign MSc course…
Here's my template for Spring 2024 (without all the meetings that eventually get added for up to 20 hours per week). What is different? I have changed my research blocks to different days again, and I've added extra time for…
As many of you have seen in the news, peaceful Ecuador was seriously disturbed on January 9th, when armed men took hostages during a live TV show. The same day, various shootings and violent incidents happened, prison guards were taken…
Just like every year, I am here with my list of goals 🙂 For reference, here are my goals for 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021 , 2022 and 2023 (looks like I forgot to blog about my goals for some…
One of my end-of-year practices includes looking back at the past year and seeing the highlights of each month. This is what 2023 looked like for me: January: dealing with the fallout of the cyberattack on our university. February: visit…