Student Profiles

Dennis Jacobson

A pioneer of sorts, Dennis Jacobson joined the first class of the Mountain-Plains Consortium TEL8 Network, studying from his home in Bismarck, N.D. TEL8 is a distance learning and communications system that maximizes technology. He completed all his course work through TEL8 and is nearing completion of his master's degree program in civil engineering.

With the North Dakota Department of Transportation for almost three decades, Jacobson is excited about the positive link between the UGPTI and the NDDOT. The NDDOT is a heavy user of the staff and assets at North Dakota State University, he says, noting the cost effectiveness of the partnership. Jacobson encourages efficient use of technical work forces and increased productivity.

He recently completed an assignment with the NDDOT as east region engineer. He was responsible for overall management of 300-plus employees, and construction and maintenance operations for the eastern half of North Dakota. He is now director of Quality Assurance. One of his dreams would be to establish a student design center at NDSU to work with transportation engineers. This applied research would benefit many entities. Something of a transportation evangelist, Jacobson wants to recruit more people to projects that benefit people through transportation.

A goal he developed through his experience is to find a way to obtain uniform performance for roadways. "Putting what we want where we want it, not wasting paving products and establishing roadways that work effectively, are essentials," Jacobson says. He adds that while engineers design by the inch and pave by the ton, everyone supports effective management of the entire process. This can happen with statistical process analysis such as he advocates.

Combining his TEL8 courses and his experience, Jacobson is interested in highway performance measurement and monitoring. His current project is calibrating a pavement performance model using actual investment and condition data as collected by the department's paving management system. Completion of the study, he notes, will enable the NDDOT to better allocate fiscal resources and measure the impact of different pavement design, and management practices and procedures.

Jacobson, a colonel in the Army National Guard, is also completing a master's degree from the National Defense University in strategic studies. His next educational goal is a doctorate in some area of transportation engineering.

Kiel Ova

Through his graduate work at North Dakota State University at the UGPTI, Kiel Ova became even more convinced of the importance of transportation on the economy and society as a whole. "Working on these projects has given me fire, motivation. It's something I enjoy doing," the master's degree candidate says.

His first project was with Jill Hough, an associate research fellow and transportation economist at NDSU, looking at the consolidation of township roads. Then he moved to the ATAC (Advanced Traffic Analysis Center) with Ayman Smadi, ATAC program director. Both fed his interest in geographical information systems and intelligent transportation systems.

His thesis case study uses the cities of Fargo, N.D., and Moorhead, Minn. Using a transit signal propriety model, they look at ways to provide preferential treatment to buses at traffic signals. This modification is much like, although having less priority as, the emergency vehicle signal interruption process at intersection signals. A priority for favoring buses could have many positive effects for public transportation. This project looks at the effects of non-priority street delay, bus travel time, and person-delay at intersections.

Ova appreciates the opportunities he's had with UGPTI and ATAC. He earned his bachelor of science degree in civil engineering in 1998 and wanted to do more. At the institute, he's had the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art traffic simulation models and software. "This is a great set up for my future," he says.

Transportation systems - with an emphasis on traffic engineering - are what Ova wants to do. He likes the idea of wrestling with urban corridors and signal systems, looking at cost and time benefits, efficiency and especially, safety. "Safety is the overlying objective in design," Ova has learned.

"The institute provides tools to develop as a young professional. They've given me lots of opportunities early on as a student. Being a co-author as an undergraduate is a plus," Ova says. He won two awards for papers from national transportation organizations.

He also founded the NDSU Institute of Transportation Engineers student chapter. UGPTI helped the group get going and continues to support the chapter today. Now with 30 members, they've taken field trips, attended conferences, and plan to expand to include more disciplines at NDSU. The organization's goal: "We want to get more people interested in transportation."