(L-R) Dr. Lisa Green (Mentor), Christopher Garcia (Student), Mitchell P. Fisher, II (Student), Ms. Melisa Finley (Mentor), and Dr. H. Gene Hawkins (Program Director)
The SWUTC sponsored Undergraduate Transportation Scholars Program (UTSP) at Texas A&M University concluded it’s twenty-sixth successful year in August. This annual summer program, directed by Dr. Gene Hawkins, recruits upper-level undergraduate students from diverse academic backgrounds into a 10-week program designed to provide each student with a research/work experience that will help them get a head start on their careers. The individual students are paired with a mentor while in the program, who assist the student in developing a research proposal, conducting a small transportation engineering research project, presenting findings to peers, and preparing a paper in journal format. While in the program, students make field trips to various transportation agencies and attend professional meetings such as the summer meeting of TexITE. At the end of the term, students make presentations on their research and produce a paper for publication.
On July 29th, the two students sponsored this summer by the UTSP made their final research presentations to a room of transportation professionals at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s State Headquarters and Research Building on the TAMU campus. Mitchell P. Fisher, II from Auburn University (Ms. Melisa Finley, mentor) presented his research on Generalized Trends in Wrong-Way Driving. And Christopher Garcia from Brigham Young University (Dr. Lisa Green, mentor) presented his research on Travel Rates of an Aging Population: A Texas Analysis.
These papers are published in the Compendium of Student Papers and available in the publications section of this website.