Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.
It’s still a pretty fantastic job.
Trish Culligan is Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering at Notre Dame and a professor in the University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences. Before joining the Notre Dame faculty this past August, she was chair and Carleton Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University.
Internationally recognized for her expertise in water resources and environmental engineering, Trish is currently co-directing a research network sponsored by the National Science Foundation that is developing new models for urban infrastructure to make cities cleaner, healthier, and more enjoyable places to live.
She talked with us about that work and the potential of decentralized infrastructure to make a difference in both the developed and developing worlds, albeit for very different reasons. We also covered where the term “civil engineering” comes from, the importance of engineers being able to play a role in informing public policy, and how successful engineering practice isn’t all concrete, steel, and technical detail—no matter how much she may love talking about those things.
We started by asking Trish for her thoughts on a random engineering quote we found on the Internet. Her willingness to engage with our attempt at a creative interview opening let us know right away we were in for a good conversation.
LINK
Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work, and we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we’re recording remotely to maintain physical distancing.
It’s still a pretty fantastic job.
Trish Culligan is Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering at Notre Dame and a professor in the University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences. Before joining the Notre Dame faculty this past August, she was chair and Carleton Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University.
Internationally recognized for her expertise in water resources and environmental engineering, Trish is currently co-directing a research network sponsored by the National Science Foundation that is developing new models for urban infrastructure to make cities cleaner, healthier, and more enjoyable places to live.
She talked with us about that work and the potential of decentralized infrastructure to make a difference in both the developed and developing worlds, albeit for very different reasons. We also covered where the term “civil engineering” comes from, the importance of engineers being able to play a role in informing public policy, and how successful engineering practice isn’t all concrete, steel, and technical detail—no matter how much she may love talking about those things.
We started by asking Trish for her thoughts on a random engineering quote we found on the Internet. Her willingness to engage with our attempt at a creative interview opening let us know right away we were in for a good conversation.
LINK
Ted Fox 0:00
(voiceover) From the University of Notre Dame, this is With a Side of Knowledge. I'm your host, Ted Fox. Before the pandemic, we were the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals out to brunch for informal conversations about their work. And we look forward to being that show again one day. But for now, we're recording remotely to maintain physical distancing. If you like what you hear, you can leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Thanks for stopping by.
Trish Culligan is Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering at Notre Dame and a professor in the University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences. Before joining the Notre Dame faculty this past August, she was chair and Carleton Professor of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University. Internationally recognized for her expertise in water resources and environmental engineering, Trish is currently co-directing a research network sponsored by the National Science Foundation that is developing new models for urban infrastructure to make cities cleaner, healthier, and more enjoyable places to live. She and I talked about that work and the potential of decentralized infrastructure to make a difference in both the developed and developing worlds, albeit for very different reasons. We also covered where the term "civil engineering" comes from, the importance of engineers being able to play a role in informing public policy, and how successful engineering practice isn't all concrete, steel and technical detail--no matter how much she may love talking about those things. I started by asking Trish for her thoughts on a random engineering quote I found on the Internet. Her willingness to engage with my attempt at a creative interview opening let me know right away we were in for a good conversation. (end voiceover)
Trish Culligan, welcome to With a Side of Knowledge.
Trish Culligan 1:59
Ted, thank you for having me.
Ted Fox 2:01
So there's a quote about engineering, unknown in origin, that goes: "To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be." And I'm wondering, in your estimation, how close does that come, if at all, to what engineering actually is and means to the world in the 21st century?
Trish Culligan 2:28
Yeah, that's interesting. Because where my thought goes with that quote relates to factors of safety that engineers put on everything that they design. And you're talking to somebody that was trained as a geotechnical engineer. So geotechnical engineers work with natural systems; in other words, soils and rocks. And because it's really difficult for us to, you know, be very certain about the properties of those natural systems, we put factors of safety of two or three on everything we design.
Ted Fox 3:02
Right.
Trish Culligan 3:03
So I would say, the glass is probably (both laugh) half as big as it needs to be. So I've taken the quote in totally the wrong direction. (both laugh)
Ted Fox 3:17
Well, I mean, I'm glad you brought up, you know, your background there as an engineer. Because I read this great story that when you were in university, you decided to specialize in civil engineering because you wanted to do something that was about people, and civil engineering sounded like engineering for civilization. What is--you know, because we have people from all kinds of different backgrounds who listen to this podcast, and I think we all, we hear the term "civil engineering"--but what does that actually mean? What kind of challenges and projects are civil engineers actually interested in tackling?
Trish Culligan 3:53
Yes, it is a very interesting history to the birth of civil engineering. Well, it's interesting to me as a civil engineer (both laugh), so I'll try and put that in context for everyone else that's listening. But ancient engineers, who were really responsible for enabling society to function, used to get involved not just in projects that we would think about as classical civil engineering projects these days; they got involved in military engineering projects. So they wouldn't just be engaged in trying to ensure that people had safe water supplies, time to ensure that the structures that people, you know, lived in provided the shelter that they needed; they'd be engaged in operations that were to do with protecting society from attack by others. So it was like this interesting mixture. That continued for centuries, until a British engineer John Smeaton declared himself as a "civil engineer," somebody that literally just engaged in engineering that wasn't about military operations. And so that was when the first term "civil engineer" came to be. So civil engineering, which was sort of founded as a follow-on to that was actually one of the first established professional engineering disciplines. And then out of civil engineering grew mechanical engineering, gas engineering--gasworks engineering, so we don't have that many people in that area anymore.
Ted Fox 5:35
Sure.
Trish Culligan 5:36
Electrical engineering. I mean, it's sort of a deliberate bifurcation by somebody that said, No, this is what my engineering is about. You know, it's about engineering for civilian society, it's not necessarily about engineering that has military operations associated with it.
Ted Fox 5:55
You're especially well-known for your work on water resources, and I know that you're currently co-directing a research network sponsored by the National Science Foundation that is developing new models for urban infrastructure. What are some of the bigger challenges around water in urban environments?
Trish Culligan 6:14
Well, in developed nations like the U.S., some of the biggest challenges are to do with the fact that we haven't really put the resources in to maintain our water infrastructure, particularly in urban areas given the amount of urbanization that's happened over the last century. The water supply systems and the systems that take away our wastewater--and I'm sort of more, I'll let you into a secret, I'm more on the wastewater side than the watter supply side (both laugh)--they were built well over a century ago in many of our older urban environments, and they were never built to serve the population that we now see living in urban areas. So the challenges associated with those systems are how to enable them to continue to meet the functional requirements that they have to bring people clean water, take wastewater away. A lot of my work is actually looking at so-called stormwater, which is interesting. Stormwater is rain, which we often think of as a resource that falls in an urban environment where we have a lot of imperviousness, and then that rain, you know, sheets off the impervious surfaces, and it goes into this underground pipe network system, which was never designed for the capacity it has to take. And you know, so it turns rainwater into wastewater. (both laugh)
Ted Fox 7:52
Very counterintuitive, right?
Trish Culligan 7:54
Yeah, it is counterintuitive because we often think of rainwater as something that when it falls from the sky, if we can capture it, and it can undergo just a little bit of treatment, it's something that we can drink. But we sort of turn something we can potentially drink into a wastewater management problem. So a lot of my work in urban environments looks, you know, at how we can deal with that stormwater. But if we think about nations that are still undergoing development, we've seen such rapid urbanization--like, we've seen countries turn to an urban population in less than a generation. With that rapid urbanization and people moving to the cities, we see a lot of informal settlements, which sort of means that migration has, you know, gone faster than planning. And, you know, we do have infrastructure; it's aging, it wasn't designed to meet the capacity it needs to meet these days. But there are communities with no infrastructure.
Ted Fox 8:58
Right.
Trish Culligan 8:59
Like, they have no capacity to deal with wastewater or stormwater, you know, so they find themselves in situations where the environment is extremely unhealthy.
Ted Fox 9:12
And I would imagine, too, that not only are the, you know, the challenges are different and greater in these developing nations where there hasn't been any kind of infrastructure, but I'm sure some of the thought process in terms of how do you maybe update the U.S., you know, an aging infrastructure versus no infrastructure, that maybe you approach things differently in environments where there's nothing to start from. As opposed to--I guess what I'm trying to say, if you're starting from scratch, that maybe there's different approaches you could take that maybe you wouldn't ever take in the U.S. because there is an infrastructure in place that you're trying to work with. Is that accurate? Or am I overthinking that a little bit?
Trish Culligan 9:51
No, I think you're correct. Let me give you a little bit of background to what we've been doing as a group of researchers in the Sustainability Research Network. And it networks nine separate universities; we're engaged with local government, we're engaged with national government, we're engaged with industry. So it's been a really great opportunity for us to think through some of these complex challenges from multiple disciplines. But we've been very interested in an approach that's called--we call it decentralized infrastructure, but you can think of it as neighborhood- and community- level infrastructure. So whereas the power plant would be a centralized way of delivering energy to a city, solar panels are decentralized ways of people getting energy, but it requires a lot of solar panels to replace a giant power plant. But what's interesting in the context of aging infrastructure systems, such as we might have in the U.S., is that maybe these distributed systems can supplement the centralized systems. So we can serve communities by just adding more infrastructure but in these individual components, as opposed to building another power plant and another set of distribution lines.
If you go to communities in developing countries that don't have infrastructure, you're never going to get the centralized systems shoehorned into some of the dense urban environments that exist in informal settlements. You're not going to, like, move everybody out of the way and dig up the street and put in a sewer system.
Ted Fox 11:45
Sure.
Trish Culligan 11:45
So you have to think of another way of doing it. And these decentralized systems are potentially another opportunity there, too. So we might be able to use the same approach, but for quite different reasons--supplement existing centralized systems, provide systems where none exist. What is--from an engineering technical standpoint; I'm sorry, I'm a self-confessed nerd. (both laugh) What's really interesting--
Ted Fox 12:11
Nerds are welcome here, so no worries.
Trish Culligan 12:13
Great, thank you. I've found a home. (laughs) What's great about these decentralized systems--and let's just go back to the solar panel as an example--as technology moves forward, you can integrate it into these systems. You know, once you build a power plant, you're expecting that to work for decades. You know, maybe you built it with technology A, and that was appropriate five decades ago, and you sort of know there's not a lot you can do to rebuild it now. (laughs)
Ted Fox 12:43
Right, right.
Trish Culligan 12:44
Yeah. So the decentralized systems are also allowing us to integrate new technologies. And given the rapid pace of technology alongside the rapid pace of urbanization, I think there's some real opportunities. So our network's been trying to answer these questions--you know, like, what [do] these decentralized systems look like? What's the right mixture of centralized/decentralized? What governance structures, what policy? What are the economics? Do they even make any sense from the economic standpoint? So yeah, we're excited by the potential. But there's a lot of questions.
Ted Fox 13:27
I'm glad that you, right there at the end, you brought up policy and the economics. And one thing that I think is really interesting, and you've had some work recently on, you did a study with some colleagues--again, supported by the NSF--looking at folks' sense of well-being if they had access to green spaces during the pandemic and getting outside. And, you know, I think kind of our classic view of engineers is we think, Oh, well, you know, leave the policy to the policymakers, and let the engineers just focus on, Alright, here's the solution that we need, go ahead and do it. And I'm wondering what your counter to that would be. Why is it important for engineers to be able to, themselves, situate their work in a larger societal context? And maybe when they have to be, to be effective advocates to say, I know we always did it this one way, but we need to think about doing this a different way now.
Trish Culligan 14:22
Yeah, I'm going to share a story that came out of me working with a colleague, Ester Fuchs, who is in the School of International Policy and Affairs at Columbia University, to try and answer that question. Ester and I were engaged in a project with the City of New York, who were very interested in trying to predict where trash ended up on the street. And the reason they were interested in doing that was they were trying to solve the problem of trash getting into the underground pipe network system--we come back to my obsession with wastewater here (Ted laughs)--because in a coastal city like New York, it just ends up going out into the oceans and forming trash patches.
Ted Fox 15:10
Right.
Trish Culligan 15:11
And they tried to come up with all of these interesting ways of, like, before it goes out of the pipe, could they capture it? Could they filter it somehow? And then, you know, they were looking at what I thought was a really smart approach. It was, Okay, let's just stop it getting into the underground pipe network system, let's figure out where the trash is on the streets, and let's find out different ways, including community mobilization, to just stop litter happening. We engaged this as a project, a capstone project, with data sciences, which I was interested in, and policy, which my colleague Ester Fuchs was interested in.
And those of us from the data science perspective came up with this wonderful model for predicting how trash ended up on the street, where it ended up, where it was accumulating; we had all sorts of input parameters. Was it near a transportation hub, like a bus stop? Was it in a commercial district or a residential district? What was the wind speed? What was the wind direction? And Ester looked at the model, and she said, Some of this is actually quite good. I was flattered because she's actually a very influential person. (both laugh) But she's like, Trish, the city is not going to make policy on trash pickup based on wind speed and direction. She said (laughs), Those parameters are totally irrelevant to policy decision-making. And I think that's why engineers need to be involved. Like, we really need to understand what our colleagues in policy think are important so that we can help inform policy. And I think at the same time, this is a two-way street. I think we need more people with engineering training in policy. And not enough engineers in the U.S. go into organizations where they end up really having authority of policy decisions. Even in government, it's interesting to me to look at the backgrounds of many of those who serve our country, for which I'm extremely grateful. I don't see many of them with engineering degrees.
Ted Fox 17:21
A lot of lawyers, I think. Not as many engineers.
Trish Culligan 17:25
I'm glad you said that and not me. (Ted laughs) But yeah. But if you look in France, it's different. You know, look at some of the degrees that those that serve their country in France have. So I think it's a two-way street. I think we need to be, we need to know what information we as engineers can provide policymakers to have the impact we would like to in improving society for everyone. And I think more engineers really need to decide to take on, you know, take on jobs in public service.
Ted Fox 17:58
Right. Well, and I would imagine, too, that that would speak to within engineering communities why diversity is so important. And diversity is so important in an engineering program so that it's not a group of people with homogenous experiences coming together and thinking, Oh, well, this works for a situation that I'm familiar with, therefore it will work in any situation where this is a challenge, but that you actually need people to learn in kind of a diverse environment to understand the breadth of challenges that different communities would face.
Trish Culligan 18:34
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think about this as, Who's at the engineering table? You know, I've said this on multiple occasions: Whether we all like it or not, engineers built the world we live in. And we want that world to be a world where everybody can succeed. And if the only people at the table come from a certain background and have certain experiences, they're gonna build the world that they're used to.
Ted Fox 19:01
Right.
Trish Culligan 19:01
And that will work very well for them. But it won't necessarily work for everybody. So I think that the more people we have sitting around the engineering table, the better off we all are as members of a society that relies on engineers to sort of, you know, provide the foundation for, you know, lives where we can be happy, healthy, reach our potential.
Ted Fox 19:26
Have you in your time when you start out as an undergraduate and you're pursuing civil engineering, all the way, you know, through your career now, dean of engineering at Notre Dame, how have you--and I know, engineering in some ways, I feel like it's a very broad term for a lot of different things, a lot of different disciplines--but I mean, if we're thinking about it as a collection of disciplines, have you seen it become more equitable since those first days when you decided that you were going to pursue your career as a civil engineer? And do you see ways that are especially prominent to you that it still needs to get better?
Trish Culligan 20:05
Well, if we talk about who's sitting at the engineering table, for certain there's been a sea change with respect to--I don't want to say gender equity, that's a complicated term--but more women have definitely gone into engineering. I mean, when I went into engineering, the freshmen class was about 100 students, and, you know, five of us were women. (laughs) And that was considered a large fraction of women in an engineering class at the time.
Ted Fox 20:35
And I was gonna say, I thought that I read that was like, Oh, wow, okay, we have a lot of women in this class this time. (both laugh)
Trish Culligan 20:39
Yeah, no, and you know, so the freshmen class [of engineers] at Notre Dame is 34 percent women. That's a big difference. I don't think we've done so well when it comes to, you know, having more engineers at the table that represent communities of color. We have an awful, awful long way to go, at least in the U.S., with respect to, you know, that type of diversity. What I do think has happened, which is also quite positive, though, is we've begun to realize that engineering is not just a technical skill set, that the idea of, you know, an understanding of how engineering fits in society I think is better integrated into a lot of our undergraduate experiences. You know, universities like Notre Dame, which asks their engineers to follow a core curriculum in addition to just jumping in straight away with the math and the concrete and the steel (Ted laughs)--of course all wonderful subjects--they're sort of saying, No, you need to understand yourself as a person, you need to educate yourself as a person, but you also need to understand history, theology. You know, there's just a lot more to being an engineer. So I think those changes are positive.
Ted Fox 22:08
I'd say you're, you know, a very appropriate spokesperson for that because I haven't met a lot of engineers who have a master's in philosophy or a diploma in language, literature, and civilization; you have both of those things. And I know you're talking there in the context of, you know, how we're educating engineers today; have you felt the influence of that in your own career, that that's maybe pulled you in different directions than maybe you would have been pulled otherwise if you hadn't had those experiences? I mean, the humanities really were kind of, I'm presuming, formative to a degree the same way that your engineering curriculum was formative.
Trish Culligan 22:49
The diploma that I got from the Université d’Aix-Marseille III, and that was after I did my postdoctoral experience in Australia before I took up a faculty position. And there was a very specific reason why I chose to do that I: I'd been interested at one point in spending a couple of years at the equivalent of the National Science Foundation in the European Union, and it was headquartered in Brussels. So it was necessary to be fluent in French. And although I did French as a second language throughout most of my, it would be middle and high school in the U.S., I found out I wasn't fluent in French by a long shot. (both laugh) So I took the opportunity to do this diploma, which meant living in France, and that was such an awakening experience for me, you know, because I went into a situation where I wasn't fluent in the language. You know, I was a person at the dinner party that nobody wanted to sit next to because it was hard to have a conversation with them. (both laugh) But there were some kind people that would help me translate and, you know, you sort of immediately warm to them.
But what it opened my eyes to was how quickly we make judgments about people, depending on, you know, what situations they found themselves in. And so I found myself quite marginalized because I couldn't speak the language, and it opened my eyes to how other people get marginalized, you know, because they don't have the attributes that we think they need to be successful. You know, of course, I was able to learn the language, but there are many people in our societies who are marginalized, you know, in ways that are totally inappropriate, and they're not able to overcome our opinion of them or societal opinions of them. So that was important to me as a person, and I thought I was already attuned, so I'm saying, you know, it took that for me to really internalize some of this.
I also found I was a really, really bad language student--like really, really, really bad. (Ted laughs) And that made me a better teacher, you know, because I realized not everyone has the same learning style. So I'd be in lessons at the university, and I typically put my hand up saying I didn't understand, and they'd just repeat what they said louder, and I was just thinking like, I did not understand this in the first place; coming back with it louder isn't helping me. (laughs) So it made me realize that as a teacher, you have to approach student learning in many different ways, and because somebody doesn't understand what you're teaching, that's on you to help them learn. It's not their fault. You know, so I thought that was another learning experience. And my final one was I have so much admiration for all of our students that come to our campuses and English isn't their first language. I just, you know, to be able to learn in another language, to write in another language, in another culture sometimes--
Ted Fox 26:25
At the university level.
Trish Culligan 26:26
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So anyway, I recommend it, anybody that has the opportunity, and I know I was privileged to have that opportunity, too. So it's not always possible. But, you know, live somewhere where they don't speak the language. It was a real learning opportunity on multiple fronts for me, besides trying to learn the language--which, as I said, I actually found I'm very good at math and very bad at language. (both laugh)
Ted Fox 26:56
So, as we're wrapping up here, I had read that--and I mean, kind of clear based on a lot of what you've said--but I read that when you were a kid, I think it was when you were in Australia, and at your school, you had met Mother Teresa. I think it said you were around eight years old or so. And it sounded like from what I read that that interaction stuck with you beyond just being able to say to someone someday, Hey, fun fact about me, I met Mother Teresa once upon a time. What do you remember about that interaction? And what did you as a child take away from it with you that, you know, you've kind of carried through with you throughout your life?
Trish Culligan 27:39
Yeah, so at one point I was fortunate to go to a convent school that was run by the Loretto sisters. Those of us that know the history of Mother Teresa, she was a Loretto sister herself at one point before she felt a different calling. But when she was traveling, she would stay with Loretto sisters, and she was visiting Melbourne, Australia, where I was at the time, and the sisters had said she's willing to be outside the school gates if anyone would like to meet her. And she was somebody that the sisters talked about a lot. I mean, they were extremely proud of her; you know, she was iconic to us as school children. The amazing courage she had leaving what would have seemed to be quite a comfortable life in India and going out, really trying to make a difference to the poorest of the poor. Anyway, so she was our heroine.
Ted Fox 28:48
Yeah.
Trish Culligan 28:49
So on the day, I remember, we used to go to school on trams--that's probably another story; the tram was late, the tram was always late. (both laugh) I got off the tram, and I was rushing to the gates because, you know, she was leaving for another journey, and I couldn't see her. All I saw were my fellow schoolmates. And I thought I'd missed her. But when I got closer, I found that she was in the middle of a group of girls; we weren't that tall, we were quite young. And you know, there was this very petite woman in her classic white sari with the blue colors on it. And yeah, it was like meeting your heroine, but she's small.
Ted Fox 29:46
Right.
Trish Culligan 29:47
So a couple of things. You don't have to be a big person to do big things, I think. And, you know, if you have a passion and you have a dream, have the courage to go out and make a difference, and also inspire others. I was just really touched by the fact that she took time out of her journey to say hello to schoolgirls, you know, to sort of stop and be there and sort of take the time to just shake our hands and offer us encouragement. She was a heroine, I got to meet her, and she left a lot of things behind with me that I think about a lot.
Ted Fox 30:36
Trish Culligan, welcome to Notre Dame. I know it's been since August now and we're we're into the spring semester, but welcome, and thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. I really enjoyed it.
Trish Culligan 30:48
Oh, Ted, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. I enjoyed our conversation, too.
Ted Fox 30:53
(voiceover) With a Side of Knowledge is a production of the Office of the Provost at the University of Notre Dame. Our website is withasideofpod.nd.edu.