About Road School

The 99th Purdue Road School will be held on March 5-7, 2013. The Purdue Road School is a great Indiana tradition that brings together federal, state and local agency personnel, elected officials and professionals from throughout the field including industry, consulting and academia. It builds upon a rich tradition established by our predecessors dating to Professor W.K. Hatt’s efforts to organize a Civil Engineering conference in 1913.

Details regarding the technical program will be posted in mid December 2012 and registration will open on January 15.

Road School History

School, Prof. W.K. Hatt, initiated the Civil Engineering Conference to support county surveyors and city engineers in their development and maintenance of Indiana’s system of roads and streets. At a subsequent Civil Engineering Conference in 1914, a resolution was passed calling for a state statute requiring a yearly School of Good Roads to be “the official school of instruction and meeting of County Road Superintendents”. That resolution became law in 1921. In 1915 the Civil Engineering Conference was renamed the Purdue Road School. (Adapted from remarks prepared by Harold Michael in 1987. The full manuscript is available at http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/jtrpdocs/2/)