Field visits offer URI juniors real-world perspectives.

D’Ambra plant tour is latest in annual CIRI tradition.

For students engaged in Civil Engineering (CVE), the opportunity to see working operations firsthand is a valuable addition to the curriculum. On April 30, University of Rhode Island students had the opportunity to learn about asphalt production and QC/QA from the industry professionals at D’Ambra Construction.

“These annual visits are an outstanding supplement to our classroom and lab work,” says K. Wayne Lee, P.E., URI Professor III of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who also serves as Director of the Rhode Island Transportation Research Center (RITRC). “The students get to see how the principles they’re learning are applied every day in the real world.”

The wide range of topics covered in the CVE 347 classroom and CVE 348 lab courses at URI include transportation planning, economic and highway capacity analyses, Superpave asphalt mix design, pavement performance prediction and pavement management.