How I Became a Ground-Water Hydrologist

by Stavros. S. Papadopulos, PhD, PE, Member NAE

I did my undergraduate studies in structural engineering at Robert College, an American school in Istanbul, Turkey. The engineering school at Robert College was a 4-year program leading to a B.S. degree. The Turkish engineering schools, on the other hand, had a 5-year program leading to an M.S. degree. It was, therefore, customary for those graduating with a B.S. from Robert College to go to the U.S. and obtain a M.S. so that, when they returned to Turkey, they would be accepted as being equivalent to engineers educated at the Turkish universities. Hence, at the start of my senior year, I applied to several U.S. universities and by early Spring I had an acceptance from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Two things, that affected my plans to go to Michigan, happened soon after that. First, the Turkish lira was devaluated; this almost quadrupled the cost of a year of study in the U.S. My father, who was prepared to send me to the U.S. for a year before the devaluation, made it clear that he could not afford to do it anymore. Second, Robert College established a graduate school for awarding M.S. degrees. I had, therefore, to decide whether I should continue my studies at Robert College or whether I should go to work for a few years, save some money, and then go to the U.S. for graduate school.

One evening, as I was leaving the campus for home, I ran into the Civil Engineering Department Chairman; he asked me about my plans for next year and when I explained my situation, he suggested that I stop by his office next day. He said he had received a pamphlet from a college in New Mexico which was offering assistantships in a Ground-Water Hydrology program. When I asked what Ground Water Hydrology was, his reply was “it has to do something with hydraulic engineering.” I stopped by his office the next day to pick up the pamphlet and spent that weekend writing a letter to Professor Mahdi Hantush at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMIMT), in Socorro, NM. In my letter, I stated that I was very much interested in Hydraulic Engineering and that I wanted to apply for acceptance and financial assistance at their institution. He replied in a few weeks pointing out that this was a program in Ground-Water Hydrology, not in Hydraulic Engineering; the needed applications were enclosed.

My goal was to get to graduate school in the U.S., so I filled the applications and sent them, thinking that once I get there, I could easily switch to structural engineering.¹

Since I had not heard from NMIMT by late Spring, I accepted a job with the U.S. Corps of Engineers, which was building military bases at several locations in Turkey; I was assigned to a project in the town of Sinop on the Black Sea coast of Turkey and moved there in mid-June 1959. By Turkish standards, the pay for the job was very good and I decided to stay with the Corps, at least until this construction project was over. Then, in late July my father called to inform me that I had received a letter from NMIMT with an acceptance and an assistantship of $1,800 per academic year. I handed in my resignation the next day and returned to Istanbul within a week to prepare for my departure to the U.S.

My arrival to Socorro, NM in September 1959 was a disappointment as I found out that NMIMT did not have a civil engineering department. My immediate thoughts were to find some way of transferring to another school where I can pursue my goal of becoming a structural engineer. The opportunity to do so arose within a few months. In October (or possibly November) of 1959 a water-related conference was being held at the New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces. Prof. Hantush had a few of his graduate students, including me, attend the conference. While in Las Cruces, I visited the Civil Engineering Department and, much to my surprise, I found out that one of my former professors at Robert College was now on the faculty of that department. I explained my situation to him and solicited his help in transferring to NMSU. He promised to help and gave me all the application forms that I needed to submit for transferring to NMSU.

The courses I was taking during that first semester at NMIMT included two graduate courses, one on Applied Mathematics and one on Ground-Water Hydrology, that were taught by Prof. Hantush. He was an excellent teacher and did a wonderful job in teaching his back-to-back math and ground-water courses. He would lecture on a mathematical approach for solving partial differential equations during the first hour and then demonstrate the application of that approach in solving a specific ground-water flow problem during the next hour. Besides being an excellent teacher, Prof. Hantush was also a very nice person that cared a lot for his students. He would help us with any personal problems that we might have, co-sign loans for those of us that had decided to buy a car, and invite us often to his house for an excellent Middle-Eastern meal prepared by his wife Iqbal. For me, who was not yet used to the Mexican fare that was served at the school cafeteria 2-3 times a week, dinner at the Hantush’s was a real treat. By the end of the first semester, I started finding ground-water hydrology very interesting, appreciated having a good teacher like Prof. Hantush, and made so many good friends that any thought of transferring from NMIMT completely disappeared. I decided to stay at Socorro and continue my studies in ground-water hydrology. In retrospect, that was one of the best decisions of my life.²”

And that is the start of the story!

Notes

¹ I had not received a catalog of the school, and I assumed that an Institute of Technology surely would have a Civil Engineering Department with other options than ground water.
² My original statement here was: “that was the best decision of my life.” My wife Annie reminded me, however, that I made other decisions in my life that also qualified as “best.”

Company Achievements and Milestones since 1979