The Conference Geotechnical Engineering Education 2020 (GEE2020) is organized by the Technical Committee TC306 for Geo-Engineering Education of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), under the auspices of the Hellenic SSMGE and the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens.
The International Conferences on Geotechnical Engineering Education are now well established since TC306 took over their organization under the auspices of ISSMGE. The conference in Athens will be the fifth, after Sinaia, Romania (2000), Constantza, Romania (2008), Galway, Ireland (2012) and Belo Horizonte, Brazil (2016). The proceedings of the 2008, 2012 and 2016 conferences are available through the Online Library of ISSMGE.
The Conference GEE2020 has two priority themes (in addition to more typical education themes such as curricula, coursework and educational material) that include: (A) two-way interaction between industry and academia for co-production of educational material and curriculum development and (B) familiarizing young geotechnical faculty and late-stage PhD candidates with research-based good practices in engineering education. Priority theme (B) will be reinforced by awarding –on a competitive basis– the surplus of the conference to covering the expenses of young geotechnical engineering researchers participating in engineering education conferences.
The organizing committee of GEE2020 plans to set a standard for a “next generation” conference by opening it to remote participants through the internet. Invited presentations and panel discussions will be broadcasted with live streaming. In addition, some key lectures will be videotaped, edited and made available online. The design and the publicity of the conference aim to make it attractive to a critical mass of participants contributing papers and of active attendees. These features, together with publishing the proceedings online immediately after the conference, will maximize its impact.
PS (post Covid-19) The initial plans for opening the conference to remote participants are being used to transform the conference to its online version, eGEE2020. We are excited at the opportunity to run a virtual conference with features that can become in the future staples of regular conferences.