This week on June 25th 6th summer school „VGTU-CalPoly 2018“ has started. 27 students from California State Polytechnic University (CalPoly) and 8 students from VGTU Faculty of Civil Engineering will study together to learn new interesting subjects.
One of the students, Lilliann Lai, has already made their first impressions about Lithuania „Lithuania is enchanting! Seeing the blend of history, culture, and architecture was memorizing, but I know it's an initial impression and it could change. The rain doesn't bother me too much. People smoke a lot more often here, and it smells a lot more like gasoline on the street. I like how green it is here. The food is interesting, but I'm used to a more… Colorful plate that isn't many shades of beige“.
Prof. Edmond Saliklis, prof. Pamalee Brady and doc. dr. Gediminas Blaževičius will teach students of summer school ARCE 302 – Structural Analysis, ARCE 352 Structural Computing Analysis II and ARCE 371 Structural Systems Laboratory. The goal of the ARCE371 activities is the design of elementary structures in three dimensions. This design accounts for gravity loads and for lateral loads such as wind and earthquake, but these lateral loads are applied statically. The designs that the students generate must take into account the deformation of the building elements, as well as the stress accummulated in each of the elements. The laboratory focus on the configuration of gravity force resisting systems and the placement and type of lateral force resisting elements. In ARCE 302 and 352 students will use traditional hand calculations as well as state of the art computer tools, including MATLAB and SAP2000. The topics of these classes are plastic analysis and plastic design, then the virtual work method and finally the slope deflection method.
The programme of this summer school is unique in its cultural, political and academic standpoints. Considering the fact that a lot of visiting students are in Europe for the first time cultural part of the programme is as important as the academic. VGTU gives them the only opportunity to study abroad, because the programme in CalPoly is very complicated, so it has to be learned continuously. Political element is also importan tas students from USA get the opportunity to get to know Lithuania and then they might even fall in love with this part of the world. And for lithuanian students – they get to learn a lot, for example, the newest construction analysis and computer modelling methods.
For the 6th time already students will not just study in VGTU – they will also participate in very broad cultural programme, they will be able to get to know lithuanian history, culture and heritage. They will all together visit the cold war museum, the Hill of Crosses, city of Druskininkai, Curonian Spit, Klaipėda and Palanga. On their free days students are planning to visit Trakai Castle Island, do some kayaking and visit as many cultural events in Vilnius as possible.
„VGTU-CalPoly2018“ will end on July 27th, this summer school is administered by International Relations Office, VGTU.
