Media Contact: Troy Anderson, (858) 822-3075
Editor's Note: To learn more about PEER, visit http://peer.berkeley.edu/.

UC SAN DIEGO TO DIRECT MAJOR EDUCATION
PROGRAM IN EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING

Scott Ashford, assistant professor of geotechnical engineering the UC San
Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering, has been named Assistant
Director for Education for PEER (Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research
Center), a consortium of nine universities including UCSD, UC Berkeley,
UCLA, UC Davis, UC Irvine, Cal-Tech, Stanford, USC, and the University of
Washington.

"The goal of PEER's educational offerings is to expose undergraduates to
earthquake engineering research, with the hope that these top students will
choose to attend graduate school," says Ashford.

PEER's education programs will now be operated out of the Jacobs School's
Structural Engineering Department. With an annual education budget of
$300,000 from the National Science Foundation, PEER provides a number of
undergraduate learning opportunities. For example, engineering students
from UCSD and other universities have access to internships in earthquake
engineering at PEER universities and companies. There is also a
four-weekend "Earthquake Engineering Scholars Course" in which a group of
30 students from PEER universities visit different campuses for a crash
course in earthquake engineering. In addition, there is a component
directed at middle school science teachers that brings them to PEER
universities during the summer to expose them to new developments in
earthquake engineering so they can introduce their classes to the latest
research.

Ashford has been an active member of the PEER Education Committee since its inception in 1998. In addition, he serves on the UCSD MASEM (Minority
Access to Science, Engineering, and Mathematics) Advisory Board, providing
opportunities for under-represented groups at both the graduate level
through Fellowships, and undergraduate level through summer internships.