WE DID IT AGAIN!
The 104th Purdue Road School Transportation Conference and Expo was the largest Road School on record at 3,010 attendees. This year's event included 191 technical sessions involving 375 speakers and moderators. The program had 175 Professional Development Hours (PDHs) available, including 4 hours of Indiana Statutes and Ethics for Professional Engineers.
As many have noticed, the impact of the technical program lasts well beyond the four-day event. Since 2011 we have archived Road School presentations in the Purdue Libraries’ online repository, and in 2015 we added Road School proceedings dating back to 1924. To date these proceedings and presentations have been downloaded more than 262,000 times. This impact would not be possible without the strong participation of colleagues and stakeholders who have shaped the program.
Not only does our program change and improve but so does the Purdue campus. New improvements include the Wilmeth Active Learning Center, located at the site of the old power plant opened this past fall with over 2,200 classroom seats in 27 active classrooms. The Bechtel Innovation Center opened a few weeks later providing students with 3D printing, advance machine shops, and garage space for work on vehicles. The semester concluded with the opening of a complete reconstruction of State Street.
Purdue Road School is a great Indiana tradition that brings together federal, state and local agencies, elected officials, and professionals from industry, consulting and academia to collaborate and reflect on diverse transportation topics. Again, this year we introduced our new mobile app. The app provided a quick access to the schedule, a list of speakers, location of exhibitor booths, maps and allowed attendees to upload pictures.
