Tenure

Tenure is not easy to get. It is not, as one journalist puts it, a smooth rail for the gravy train. It is a long and challenging road ... Evaluation of the candidate for tenure is serious and thorough. Hours and days are spent reading and reviewing research contributions. Teaching is reviewed extensively ... The basic reason tenure is bestowed is to preserve freedom for highly trained and capable people to do their best work, to protect them from inappropriate political pressures ... Evaluation does not cease with tenure. Tenured faculty are reviewed at mandated intervals and also annually to determine what kind of raise, if any, they will receive ... Incontrovertibly, most faculty achieve more recognition after tenure than before - locally and nationally, for research, teaching, and service.

Measurement, Simulation, and Analysis of the Mechanical Response of Railroad Track

Increased railroad traffic volumes, speeds, and axle loads have created a need to better measure track quality. Previous research has indicated that the vertical track deflection provides a meaningful indicator of track integrity. The measured deflection can be related to the bending stresses in the rail as well as characterize the mechanical response of the track. This investigation summarizes the simulation, analysis and development of a measurement system at the University of Nebraska (UNL) to measure vertical track deflection in real-time from a car moving at revenue speeds. The UNL system operates continuously over long distances and in revenue service. Using a camera and two line lasers, the system establishes three points of the rail shape beneath the loaded wheels and over a distance of 10 ft. The resulting rail shape can then be related to the actual bending stress in the rail and estimate the track support through beam theory. Finite element simulations are used to characterize the track response as related to the UNL measurement system. The results of field tests using bondable resistance strain gages illustrate the system’s capability of approximating the actual rail bending stresses under load.