Announcement
The ISSMGE and the Technical Committee TC306 on Geo-engineering Education have established the John Burland Lecture in recognition of Professor Burland's outstanding impact on Geotechnical Engineering Education. Starting in 1987 with his landmark Nash Lecture at the 9th ECSMFE in Dublin, The teaching of soil mechanics: a personal view, Professor Burland consistently distilled his thoughts on education in papers that influenced many instructors and authors of later papers on geotechnical education. Moreover, he has created quality online educational materials, short videos that present masterfully fundamental geotechnical concepts.
As stated in the letter addressed by TC306 to the ISSMGE President and Board proposing the establishment of an ISSMGE TC306 Honour Lecture:
The John Burland lecturers should have left traces of their contributions to the teaching of geotechnical engineering education, public body of work, either published or publicly available. The producers of educational material with evidence of wide use by others clearly belong in this category, e.g. authors of influential textbooks.
The lecture is to be given at the opening plenary session of the International Conference on Geotechnical Engineering Education (GEE) organized by TC306 every four years and will then be available online as an ISSMGE webinar. The 1st John Burland Lecture was delivered by Professor John Atkinson at the conference Shaping the Future of Geotechnical Education held in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 2016, and the 2nd John Burland Lecture was delivered by Professor Mark Jaksa at the conference Geotechnical Engineering Education 2020, streamed from Athens, Greece. The 3rd Lecture will be given at GEE 2025 (location to be established).
Nominations for the 3rd John Burland Lecture should be made through the TC306 members and/or National Societies to the selection committee (see procedures below) chaired by David Airey. A letter substantiating the nomination and a CV of the nominee (including list of publications) should be sent to Professor David Airey ([email protected]) and to the secretary of TC306 Professor Michele Calvello ([email protected]) by December 17, 2022.
Procedures established by TC306 Meeting (combined E-mail/Online), April 9-15, 2021
All members of TC306 and all national SSMGEs can submit nomination packages, consisting of (i) a letter substantiating the suitability of the nominee as described in the announcement of the call for nomination and (ii) a CV of the nominee. National Societies can nominate one of their members (the more support the better, e.g. not only from the national society but also from its education committee, if it happens to have one). Members of TC306 can nominate any suitable candidate (member of the ISSMGE). A selection committee is formed by the three latest John Burland Lecturers. If one of the three is not available, he/she is replaced by a past chair[1]. The task of the selection committee is to choose three nominations; TC306 members then choose the next John Burland Lecturer by voting among these three nominations.
Excerpt from Guidelines for ISSMGE Technical Committees and ISSMGE Honour Lectures (reviewed October 2022)
The TC recommends the name of the ISSMGE Honour Lecturer. In that process, the TC shall consider at least three alternative candidates. All TC members can propose candidates. The TC members shall then rank the candidates. All nominated TC members shall have the opportunity to vote remotely*, with a minimum 2-week election period. The selected candidate shall have the support of at least 50% of the TC members.
The Lecturer shall be a member of the ISSMGE and be recognised as a national or international expert within the field of the topic. This would normally mean that the Lecturer has published several papers, books, or other publications on the topic. Alternatively, the Lecturer may have made a recent major contribution to the Topic.
The selection criteria shall not include nationality of the Lecturer, i.e., a Lecturer may come from the same country or continent as the previous Lecturer. There are no requirements as to education or position. Practicing engineers and persons from academia are equally eligible.
The TC Chair shall first inform the ISSMGE President and the TOC the name of the selected Lecturer. If there is some disagreement with the proposed Lecturer, one or several alternative candidates should be proposed to the TC Chair. If an agreement cannot be reached, the TC chair should make the final decision in consultation with the Chair of the TOC.
* The ADoodle system (https://adoodle.org/) is recommend. All the TC members with right to vote need to be included in the voting email-list. The TOC chair shall be included as an observer.
[1] Because no past chair was available for the selection committee for the 3rd John Burland Lecturer, the committee consists of the 1st and the 2nd John Burland Lecturers and the vice chair of TC306.
