LDI members share experiences with U of A students
EDMONTON (Feb. 4, 2020) — Senior engineering students at the University of Alberta got a chance to practice their landform design skills this month following a guest lecture by two of the field’s leading experts.
Gord McKenna, chair of the Landform Design Institute, and June Pollard, an engineering geologist who sits on the Institute’s Board of Directors, presented an introduction to landform design on Feb. 4 to 25 students in Jeff Boisvert’s fourth-year Environmental Impact of Mining Activities class. The lecture was part of a series that McKenna and Pollard offer at various universities across Canada. It includes an overview of landform design, why it’s needed, how it works, the steps involved, and a collection of case histories.
The students then worked in groups through a major landform design exercise to produce six different solutions for a soft tailings deposit.
The lecture complements students’ term projects and gives them an understanding of the latest developments in what is a rapidly evolving field. In a typical class, one or two students will take on landform design assignments early in their career. Most of this year’s class at the U of A had previous experience working at mines, often on reclamation activities.
“It’s heartening to see students who’ve graduated over the past dozen years move on to engineering consulting offices and mines,” said McKenna. “We’re reaching out to a significant percentage of the mining and geo-environmental students entering the workforce every year in Western Canada. And the Landform Design Institute is going to reach out to many more.”
McKenna is scheduled to include the practical “how to” aspects of the lecture in a lunch-hour presentation to members of the Geotechnical Society of Edmonton on March 5. The talk will focus on designing and building landforms that are easy to reclaim and can reliably meet stakeholder goals and objectives. Making landform design routine in the mining industry worldwide by 2030 is the mission of the Landform Design Institute.