Sustainable Transportation Abroad

Spring Break travelers reflect on disaster recovery, a different approach to transportation, and water quality challenges after week abroad

Students from the International Disaster Reconnaissance Studies course walk through ruined buildings in Old Beichuan, China. The city has been left as a memorial to those killed when it was rocked by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in central China. The site was one of the places students visited in China and Japan over Spring Break as they considered the impact of disasters and how communities rebuilt. (Photo Courtesy: Lynnae Luettich and Katie Popp)

For several dozen School of Civil and Environmental Engineering students, Spring Break was a packed week of mind- and perspective-stretching experiences in South America, Europe and Asia. The students worked and explored alongside professors and graduate students as part of three classes affiliated with Tech’s global engineering leadership minor.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Students offer Dutch-inspired ideas to turn Ted Turner Drive into a resilient gateway to downtown Atlanta

Andrew Pofahl explains to judges some of the design ideas his Delft Blauw Design team proposed for Ted Turner Drive in downtown Atlanta. Two teams of Georgia Tech students offered redesigns of the road for the Ted Turner Drive Resiliency Corridor Challenge. Delft Blauw Designs won second place in the competition. (Photo: Joshua Stewart)

In a few years, Ted Turner Drive in downtown Atlanta may well owe some of its reimagined design to a School of Civil and Environmental Engineering class trip to the Netherlands.

Thursday, May 3, 2018

40 students, 3 continents, 9 days. Experience engineering classes' spring break abroad in the travelers' own words and pictures

Students collect samples along the Choqueyapu River in La Paz, Bolivia, over spring break. They were one of three classes that traveled to three different continents this year. (Photo Courtesy: Joe Brown)

Dozens of CEEatGT students spent their Spring Break traveling to three very different parts of the globe to experience sustainable transportation in the Netherlands, learn about disaster recovery and resilience in China, and understand urban water quality in Bolivia. Share their journey through the pictures and words they sent back from abroad.

Monday, March 26, 2018

Spring Break travel gives students chance to make impact, see their subject come alive

The sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji in Japan in August 2016. Students in the International Disaster Reconnaissance Studies class that semester hiked all night to reach the top of the mountain in time for this view. (Photo: Kieron McCarthy)

The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering will send dozens of students to four continents during Spring Break, giving them a chance to make a difference in the communities they visit and experience the reality of the engineering they have been studying.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

From London to Amsterdam: Summer study abroad takes students to experience what they’re learning about

Students in Kari Watkins' Sustainable Transportation Abroad class ride bicycles in the kind of bike lanes that permeate the Netherlands. The class spent nearly two weeks riding across the country and exploring the Dutch approach to transportation. (Photo: Anna Nord)

There’s really nothing quite like being there. Two groups of students from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering learned that first hand this summer as they traveled to London and the Netherlands to explore in real life the concepts and ideas they studied in the classroom.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Class bikes through the Netherlands to study sustainable transportation

The Sustainable Transportation Abroad class outside the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

A group of Georgia Tech students has just returned from two weeks studying bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands and contrasting the Dutch approach to American standards. The overwhelming consensus: it’s not just bicycles that define the Dutch transportation system. Rather, it's the integration of biking with all forms of public transit and infrastructure planning that makes the Netherlands’ famed bike culture a way of life.

Friday, June 3, 2016
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School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355
Phone: 404-894-2201
Fax: 404-894-2278