Motorcycle enthusiast becomes civil engineering head

Photo Courtesy of Fred Mannering ZOOM: Fred Mannering, new head of the civil engineering department, rides his motorcycle around a track. He crashed the motorcycle the next day.

By Ian Clift
Summer Reporter

Fred Mannering once played guitar for a grunge band in Seattle.

Mannering, who became the new head of the civil engineering

department last week, said that when recording their album, his band, Vulgaris, used the same studio equipment that the band Soundgarden had used the day before.

Mannering grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa., but attended school at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada where he received his bachelor's degree in civil engineering.

"It was almost like throwing darts at a black board in picking civil engineering," said Mannering. "Mathematics and science were what I was interested in."

He received his master's degree from Purdue in 1979, specializing in transportation engineering. Kumares Sinha, professor of electrical engineering, was his adviser while he attended Purdue.

"He did very interesting work," said Sinha. "He developed a model for transportation policy options," which was useful in predicting energy impacts on revenue. This simulation model was important in the '70s and is important now with current fuel considerations.

After Purdue, Mannering moved on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received his Ph.D.

After a few years at Penn State University as an assistant professor, Mannering moved to Seattle where he was a professor at the University of Washington until 1997 and then chair of the department of civil and environmental engineering.

In Washington, one of his accomplishments was to change the name of the department that he chaired from "civil" to "civil and environmental engineering."

Mannering said that he is considering a name change at Purdue as well.

"Almost everything civil engineers do has an environmental impact," said Mannering. Those that argue against the name change say that environmental engineering is simply a sub-category of civil engineering, said Mannering.

The curriculum in civil engineering has been in place for 30 years, he said. "We have a review coming up where we're going to defend the curriculum."

The department also has a large-scale high performance lab that they are trying to have built near the airport in order to test large scale specimens.

Mannering said the facility could be used to test concrete columns in earthquake simulations.

"We've raised $2 and a half to $3 million," he said, with a $9 million estimated cost.

Mannering said that this last week has been used to move in and settle down. He lives with his wife and two small children. When he's not working he enjoys driving his two motor bikes.

"I have a race bike and a street bike," said Mannering. "My wife is leery of me driving in the street. She doesn't mind the track as much."

Maybe because they keep two ambulances on standby, he said.

"There we're some really good riders in the Seattle area," said Mannering, who said he's never won a race, "As you get older you've seen too many things."

"As soon as you start to think, you start slowing down," he said. "There's no time for thinking in motor bike racing."

But Mannering does a lot of thinking, Sinha said, "(Mannering) is a young man with a lot of ideas and visions. He's a brilliant scholar and all around good guy."

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