In November 2006, the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering hosted the first-ever Hoover Mentor Workshop in honor of former Iowa State University geotechnical engineering professor James M. Hoover. The workshop, funded by a donation from Iowa State alumnus Craig Denny and his wife Terry, proved to be a success and many of the event's speakers shared their favorite stories of Professor Hoover.

In our Fall 2006 alumni newsletter, CCEEnews, we asked CCEE alumni to share their stories of Professor Hoover. Below is a sampling of the stories you told us.

After completing a beginning soils class with Professor Hoover, he asked me and another student to work for him in his soils laboratory. It was great work for us as we could work a few hours between classes and earn some beer money. We did grunt work, pounding out 2x2 soil samples for some research projects he was working on. We always hoped that he would show up while we were working as our strategy was to get him to start telling stories. He loved to tell stories and we loved to get paid to listen to them!  What a great guy!

Lynne Schluter, PMP (BS ConE 1979)
Manager, Facilities Systems Engineering
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, NM

I don't believe I ever had a class of Professor Hoover's, but I did work for him as a student worker for part of a year. This would have been in the early 60s. I performed Atterberg Limits tests, determined soil moisture content, and did general grunt work for him around the Engineering Experiment Station. One project Professor Hoover assigned to me was to count the number of concrete test cylinders that were scattered all around the large lab room.  At the time there was a large concrete pavement test slab that was elevated a few feet above the floor of the lab room. In search of the concrete cylinders, I looked in all the nooks and crannies of the lab and crawled under the test slab I don't know how many times until I was satisfied with the final count.

My next assignment was to design some sort of a simple wooden structure using the least possible amount of material. It may have been a shelf or cabinet, I don't remember. Not knowing what the outcome of my work would be used for, about a month later Hoover called me into his office and handed me a check for a modest amount, it was other than my usual pay check, and said, "Congratulations,Jim, this is your share of our consulting fee." Was I surprised!

Several years later when I worked for what was then the Iowa Natural Resources Council as a Water Resources Engineer analyzing water resources projects that required State approval, the Council would engage Hoover to help analyze the design of the larger earthen dams and the associated monitoring devices that would measure earth movement and moisture levels within the embankments. We wanted the best counsel possible because of the signifcant hazard most of these earthen structures posed. Hoover provided that. I feel so fortunate to have had Professor "Jim" Hoover as a "boss," teacher, mentor, and later on as a professional associate.  

Jim Cooper (BSCE 1962)
Retired Regional Hydrologist
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Rochester, Minnesota

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If you would like to submit a story about Professor Hoover, please e-mail the CCEEnews editor; mail your story to CCEEnews, 482 Town Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50010; or call (515) 294-8312.