TRB and Ph.D. Program Exciting for Students
Of the 9,000-plus from around the world who attended the 80th annual Transportation Research Board meeting in Washington, D.C., in January, five were especially intrigued by the information and opportunity to make contacts.
The five - Alan Dybing, Heather Gibb, Weijun Huang, Sang Moon and Napoleon Tiapo, are the premiere students in a new interdisciplinary doctoral degree in Transportation and Logistics at North Dakota State University. The students are funded through Mountain-Plains Consortium stipends.
They all have an agricultural economics background. This fits well with the degree program, which is a joint effort of the College of Agriculture, Business Administration, and Engineering and Architecture, and the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute. The program has a 25-credit core curriculum, an area of concentration and a dissertation.
Students may enroll in one of three areas of concentration: Logistics and Supply Chain Systems, Transportation Economics and Regulation, or Transportation Infrastructure and Capacity Planning.
Dybing found the international aspect of the TRB conference rewarding. Visiting with people from Panama, Norway and Canada gave him a broader perspective on transportation issues. Tiapo, originally from Cameroon, echoes those thoughts, and with Gibb, the conference centered on how the Ph.D. program underscores their professional goals.
Transportation logistics expertise is needed everywhere in the world. They see the new Ph.D. program multiplying their opportunities exponentially. The multidisciplinary offerings at the TRB conference paralleled much of their program.
With Denver Tolliver as the lead for the Ph.D. program the students say they are in good hands. They cite his openness to suggestions and the opportunities he provides as reasons they stayed at NDSU. They all had job opportunities but wanted to be part of this inaugural venture. Their esteem for Tolliver was the clincher for most of them in deciding to pursue further education. The six of them are "designing the program" together, incorporating new ideas as needed. Together, they are building a core of camaraderie.
The core curriculum includes two courses in Transportation Systems and one course each in Logistics and Distribution Management, Intermodal Freight Transportation, Spatial Analysis of Transportation Systems (which includes a GIS-transportation lab), Quantitative Modeling, Probabilistic and Deterministic Methods, and Transportation and Logistics Research. The program also includes new courses in Economics of Transportation Systems, Transportation Corridor Planning, Public Transportation, Public Infrastructure Management and Facilities Location.
The program and the TRB conference are already paying off for three of the students. Dybing, Gibb and Weijun will present at the Canadian Transportation Research Forum in Ottawa based on contacts at the conference. Dybing's paper is "Estimation of the Demand for Grain Transportation in North Dakota;" Gibb's is "New Technology Adoption and the Implementation of E-Commerce in the Mid-Continent International Trade Corridor Region;" and Weijun's is "Shuttle Train Adoption Strategy." Sang will attend the conference.
Brief Biographies of the 'Core of Camaraderie'
Alan Dybing earned a bachelor of science in agricultural education with a minor in agricultural economics and a master of science in agricultural economics with a transportation logistics emphasis, both from North Dakota State University.
Heather Gibb holds a bachelor of science in agricultural economics from the University of Manitoba, Canada, and a master of science in agribusiness and applied economics from North Dakota State University.
Weijun Huang has an engineering bachelor of grain machinery from Zhengzhou Grain University, China; master of business administration from Oklahoma City University and a master of science degree in agricultural economics with the logistics option from North Dakota State University.
Sang Young Moon earned a bachelor of science in food and resource economics from Korea University, Seoul, South Korea, and a master of science in agribusiness and applied economics from North Dakota State University.
Napoleon Mbiziwo Tiapo earned an ingenieur agronome with a concentration in agricultural economics and extension from the University of Dschang, Cameroon, and a master of science degree in agribusiness and applied economics from North Dakota State University.
