Kristina Fields, PhD Associate Professor Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering University of Wisconsin – Platteville with Windesheim University, Zwolle, Netherlands Cycling Infrastructure in the Netherlands Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015
Introduction My one semester sabbatical leave as a guest faculty member at Windesheim University (WU) in Zwolle, Netherlands during the fall 2015 semester was an amazing opportunity. While there I accomplished four main goals: Goal 1: Taught in the civil engineering, traffic engineering, mobility programs at WU Goal 2: Developed faculty/student collaborations between UW-Platteville and Windesheim University civil engineering programs Goal 3: Analyzed the best practices used in Zwolle transportation infrastructure and policy Goal 4: Use the best practices to develop a Short Term Study Abroad Course and additional curriculum related to transportation infrastructure for both our current and future courses This final report will introduce the Board of Regents Priority Areas and provide details on how each of those priority areas were addressed, define infrastructure, and explain the outcomes of the sabbatical. Additionally, it will identify the benefits it provided, and conclude with future work and expressions of thanks. Board of Regents Priority Areas The Board of Regents requested that sabbaticals for 2015 include specific Regents priority areas. This sabbatical work met the following three Board of Regents priority areas in the following ways: International Education and Collaborative Program Activities - I developed a new international short term study abroad course (and additional collaborations) between UW-Platteville and Windesheim University. Windesheim University is an existing international university partner with the College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science at UW-Platteville. This course would also be available to other UW-System and out of state students, as this is allowed by the UW-Platteville International Education office. In fact there are at least ten other civil engineering programs in the U.S. who are collaborating with the UW-Platteville Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering Department on teaching an infrastructure focused engineering course. Therefore, there is an additional pool of students who would be able to take the proposed Short Term Study Abroad Course. Application of Technology to Instruction and Distance Education – The proposed curriculum and collaboration requires the use of technology – for collaborative projects, students and faculty share documents and communicate via Online Rooms using the Desire to Learn technology tools. Additional examples of how these Regents Priority Areas were addressed in the sabbatical are included later in this report. Infrastructure Definition For the purposes of this report, the term infrastructure, a common term used in civil and environmental engineering, is defined as the facilities that civil and environmental engineers build(i.e.: roadways, intersections, bridges, clean drinking water distribution, etc.). As a civil and environmental engineering faculty member, I strive to guide students to design and understand the importance of infrastructure to society.
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015
Description Why Zwolle/Windesheim University Was a Great Fit.
Zwolle, Netherlands was rated as the #1 Best Bicycling City in the Netherlands in 2014 by the Dutch Cyclists Association. The award committee president stated that Zwolle earned the award for ‘being a city where the cyclist feels welcome and where this feeling is borne out by the figures’.1 What are the figures? Zwolle’s percentage of all (transportation mode) trips made by bicycle is 32.6%2 compared to Portland, Oregon, the city in the U.S. with the highest percent of bicycle trips, with 5.5%3. This difference is staggering and is apparent when one sees the high volume of cyclists riding in Zwolle. Zwolle infrastructure and policy have been purposely laid out to create this high percentage of bicycling. Thus, exploring this infrastructure and policy in more detail in the location of Zwolle made sense to accomplish my goals for this sabbatical. Also located in Zwolle is Windesheim University of Applied Science, a campus of over 20,000 students with degrees including civil engineering, traffic engineering, and mobility. These programs offer hands on curriculum and infrastructure focused projects, as we at UW-Platteville. Having the opportunity to teach in these programs and interact with their faculty and students allowed me to develop collaborations between our two universities and add curricula/pedagogies to our civil engineering program curriculum. In addition, Windesheim University is an existing international partner university with UW-Platteville College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science4. Ms. Donna Anderson, director of UW-Platteville International Education, has visited Windesheim University in Zwolle and has a working relationship with three of their international coordinators. Two of those international coordinators visited UW-Platteville in the spring of 2014. In fact, in fall of 2014 there were two WU students at UW-Platteville College of EMS. One studied civil engineering (and was a student in two of my courses) and one in industrial engineering. I was able to continue working with the WU mobility (civil engineering) student on a project during the sabbatical. Therefore, teaching, exploring non-motorized transportation infrastructure to include in our current curricula, and developing a short term study abroad course with Windesheim University in Zwolle, Netherlands was a perfect setting to allow me to accomplish my goals for this sabbatical. Goals Explained: Goal 1: Taught in the civil engineering, traffic engineering, mobility programs at WU: Being a guest faculty member and teaching in the WU civil engineering programs allowed me to achieve the following outcomes: i.
Experience their engineering course curriculum, standards, and policies first hand: 1. WU offers civil engineering, traffic, and mobility courses that UW-Platteville does not offer. This provided me with new material for our UW-Platteville civil engineering curriculum, in the areas of
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http://www.fietsberaad.nl/index.cfm?lang=nl&repository=Zwolle:+Dutch+Cylce+City+of+the+Year+2014 Based on Dutch travel behavior data: Mobiliteits Onderzoek Nederland 2006 3 http://portlandafoot.org/documents/mode%20share%20by%20city.pdf , 2007-2009 ACS (3 year average) 4 http://www.uwplatt.edu/education-abroad/education-abroad-engineering 2
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015 transportation and infrastructure. All of their courses and materials are in Dutch – therefore attending class was not an option, but written documents were valuable by using Google Translate. Faculty also spoke English so personal interaction with colleagues was easier. 2. I learned the standards Netherlands use in transportation civil engineering infrastructure design called the CROW Ontwerpwijzer Fietserkeer or Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic. This is an extensive manual which provides recommendations for how to best design bicycle infrastructure. I had a hard copy of the Dutch current version which I used with the help of Google Translate. I learned that a new version of the manual is due out in fall of 2015 and it is hoped that this important document will be translated into English soon after. 3. I identified the policies Zwolle and other Netherlands cities have in places which allow their nonmotorized transportation infrastructure to be strong. These policies are different and more bicycle focused than US policies. Many countries are looking at Netherlands bicycle design and policy in order to learn the policies in place which allow governments to create user friendly safe cycling networks. ii.
Exposure on how WU faculty teach their mobility and civil engineering curriculum 1.
Regarding engineering education pedagogies, WU faculty use hands on projects, in class online quizzes, and social media to enhance their students’ learning.
2.
I brought my engineering and teaching experiences to WU, which offered their university new ideas in instruction. For example, during one presentation, I assigned students different roles and asking them to focus on infrastructure choices specific to their role. The following discussion helped illuminate how some design decisions are made in the US.
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Additionally, I had WU students do independent mobility projects which incorporated the pedagogy of Disassemble, Assemble, and Analyze (DAA). This was a new pedagogy to me and I felt like it was an effective way for students to learn about the details of intersection design.
4.
I learned that WU civil engineering, traffic engineering, and mobility faculty include an additional variety of expertise imbedded into their particular department, which is very different than how UWPlatteville is organized. For example specific mathematics, English, psychology, and communications faculty are permanently part of the engineering and mobility department – their offices are within the department, they teach the same students that the program specific faculty teach, and their discipline focused examples are developed by working with engineering faculty. This works for WU, as their students are in a cohort and they come to WU with their general education courses fulfilled from graduation from high school. The benefits of this include faculty development due to the team approach of curriculum development and students immediately focus on their selected area of study from the first week of class in their first year.
iii.
Developed collaborations with WU transportation faculty members and civil engineering students and explore the potential for future class/course projects that our two universities can jointly work on – explained in more detail in Goal 2
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Expanded on the curriculum for our program – allowing our program to offer additional infrastructure focused courses/material to our students – this, too will be explained in more detail in Goal 4.
This goal directly mapped to the UW System Shared Learning Goals of: i.
Effective Communication Skills, as I taught mobility students and interacting with engineers and colleagues that are non-native English speakers. I am happy to share tips on how I best communicated with other faculty and students working on international collaborations. Most people at Windesheim (and in the Netherlands, in general) spoke fairly good English. At times gestures, Google Translate, and re-phrasing allowed us to communicate well together. I have certainly learned to appreciate the value
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015 of speaking English, yet I am impressed with the variety of languages Dutch (and European) people can speak and feel that this provides advantages in education, business, and travel. In fact, I assisted in the assessment of the first, second, and fourth year mobility and civil engineering students’ English presentations and meetings. Each WU mobility student is required to take English courses. Mobility students take English during their first two years and civil engineering students all four years – including oral and written English work. I aided in the assessment of their presentations and meetings. It was exciting to see the assignments that the instructors used, yet it is more exciting to learn that the English, mathematics, and communication faculty are imbedded into the civil engineering and mobility faculty teams. This allows them to work together as a team, creating effective degree specific examples and problems. I highly recommend this model. At UW-Platteville, English is taught outside of our department and little time is dedicated to civil engineering specific technical writing and presenting skills. Because of this, civil engineering faculty spend valuable time doing this, lessening the time spent on civil engineering skills. ii.
Intercultural Knowledge and Competence, I learned engineering standards and policies used in the Netherlands, which are different from the U.S. standards. This new intercultural knowledge improved my competence as an engineer and provides me with new curriculum to share with our students and to incorporate into the short term study abroad course. Sharing these different design ideas and policies can help change the way communities are planned and designed in our country – in hopes of increasing the percentage of people bicycling and walking for transportation purposes, as it has in Zwolle and throughout the Netherlands. Additionally, living in Holland certainly enhanced my intercultural knowledge and competence. The Netherlands certainly is an innovative and developed nation, yet people spoke Dutch and I did not. All of the signs, documents, groceries, ingredients, etc. were in a foreign language. This took patience and I quickly decided that taking a Dutch course would be valuable and it certainly helped. I took two Dutch courses – Dutch 1 and Dutch 2. There were three main benefits from taking these courses. First, I learned basic Dutch, which helped me communicate with the public and especially my colleagues. Showing my interest in their language was an important connector for building our relationship. Second, my Dutch class was international – it included students from Austria, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Gambia, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland, all whom I interacted with in Dutch. This was fun, often comical experience, as we all brought our native accents into the Dutch language. Additionally interesting, was that the common language was English. It impressed me how many languages the other students spoke – three or more languages each. The third reason taking Dutch was an interesting experience was that I was a student again, with students of similar ages to my students at UW-Platteville. This was humbling and difficult. To help with the challenge, I started using an online tool called Quizlet which helped me learn my Dutch vocabulary words. This resource is one that I will consider using for my students in my own courses when I return, as well as share with other faculty. Once I knew basic Dutch, my daily life in Zwolle became easier – I could read and use Dutch words, and communicate a little with residents and colleagues. I certainly have learned the importance of learning, at least a little bit, the native language of the country one is living in.
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015 Goal 2: Developed faculty/student collaborations between UW-Platteville and Windesheim University civil engineering programs UW-Platteville and WU both have degree granting programs in civil engineering. Infrastructure is the focus of these programs, as we train civil engineering students how to design this infrastructure, as well as, provide example projects that show how that infrastructure impacts society. UW-Platteville has had WU study abroad students in recent years. It is always difficult to know enough about student course backgrounds to place them correctly into the host institution’s curriculum. While at WU, I had discussions with Jeffrey de Graaff, director of the WU mobility program, who clarified the courses content within the mobility curriculum, in English. This improved understanding helps identify the Expand on curriculum explanation by Jeffrey, how this will help place students in exchange, and efficiency of joint student work for course and other courses. My goal here was to expand on the faculty and student collaborations between our two civil engineering programs. I foresee that our faculty and students will continue to work together to explore the differences between our infrastructure in order to ultimately achieve improved designs. Certainly the collaboration is in place with the development of our short term study abroad course. Being able to meet in person and develop the trust and relationships between us, has been very beneficial. Besides the short term study abroad course development a previous collaboration started in fall of 2014, with an international collaboration project in my civil engineering Highway Engineering course, CEE 4500. Students in my course were matched with students at Windesheim University to come up with a conceptual design for a bicycle and pedestrian improvement to a roadway. There are four project site locations, two in Platteville, Wisconsin and two in Groningen, Netherlands, a city north of Zwolle. A total of 69 students (29 from UW-Platteville civil engineering 40 from Windesheim University) worked jointly on this project. Jeffery de Graaff and I were the two collaborating faculty. Our hope was that our students would improve their design skills by working on a real design project and learning infrastructure design solutions from other countries, and learn how to communicate with international teammates. During my sabbatical, Jeffrey and I met, in person, and together we assessed this project and learned that both sets of students valued learning about cycling design, practicing their English oral and written communication skills, and increasing their design experience. Thus, we are interested in continuing the project. Windesheim mobility faculty and I plan on expanding this project in fall of 2016, through a WU initiative called ‘Global Classroom’. An additional option for collaboration exists with another WU program called Glocality. Glocality was developed at Windesheim University and is an open access Undergraduate Academic Journal, which offers a platform to college students around the world to publish their work and original research, exploring the relationship between local and global. We admit articles in the fields of Social Entrepreneurship, Civil Society, Urban Dynamics, and Health.5 Undergraduate students at UW-Platteville and Windesheim University could collaborate on publishing their research findings and case studies via this platform. Additionally, ‘Healthy Cities’ is another initiative out of Windesheim and is a group of professors in the areas of public health, education, and mobility. I met with two faculty members within this group and they are interested in joining in with the study abroad course, which is a great fit. This goal directly maps to the UW System Shared Learning Goals: i.
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Effective Communication Skills – students will continue working at a distance (or in person) with international students, whose native language is Dutch (they also speak English). This will require clearer oral and written communication both in person and using technology.
http://www.glocality.eu/
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015 Critical and Creative Thinking Skills, as students will be exploring infrastructure in both countries and critically analyzing the differences in order to determine improvements to conventional design.
ii. iii.
Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Natural World, as students will become aware of how the international infrastructure impacts that society, which is especially true when seeing how the bicycle is used as main mode of transport in Zwolle and the impact that has on community design and public health. Personally, I learned to fit into the Dutch culture.
Goal 3: Analyzed Zwolle transportation infrastructure and policy and bring these best practices to UW-Platteville students in both our current courses and future courses. The transportation infrastructure and policy in Zwolle is very different compared to what one would find in the U.S. The high percentage of bicycle transportation trips in the Netherlands and Zwolle, make Zwolle a perfect city to study transportation infrastructure. Via a variety of infrastructure site visits I have identified and document the best practices in the categories of: -
signalized intersections roundabouts off-street paths on-street bicycle boulevards bicycle highways bicycle parking multi-city bicycle networks connectivity to rail/transit connectivity to different land uses tunnels and bridges policies related to implementing this infrastructure
This goal directly maps to the UW System Shared Learning Goals:
i.
Critical and Creative Thinking Skills I have analyzed Zwolle transportation infrastructure and community design to specifically identify the best practices in each of the categories listed above. I have also identified the unique city policies related to implementing this infrastructure. While analyzing these best practices, I planned to critically look at the safety, functionality, and usage of the facilities in order to determine how they could be incorporated into U.S. infrastructure and policy. Once I read into the details associated in their design methods, I learned that in the late 1990s the Netherlands put forth a safe roadway design vision for all users called Sustainable Safety. This vision is laid out using five fundamental principles. Municipalities are responsible for applying these principles to their roadway design and as a result have created bicycle focused, safe, and sustainable roadway infrastructure. Their fundamental principles are not auto centered, as the Dutch realized how un-sustainable and un-healthy this focus would be. There are stark differences between US design fundamentals and those of the Netherlands that are certainly worth discussion in our transportation engineering design courses.
ii.
Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Natural World as I certainly experienced how another culture’s community leaders use multi-disciplinary policy to proactively provide safe and efficient infrastructure for non-motorized transport. 34 percent of all trips 7.5 km and lower were made by bicycle in the Netherlands in 2007, according to the Netherlands Mobility Study. This high rate of cycling would not occur if leaders did not put bicycle focused policies in place.
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015 Goal 4: Use the analyzed best practices to develop a Short Term Study Abroad Course and additional course curriculum and university collaborations. The biggest outcome of this sabbatical is the development of a Short Term Study Abroad Course focused on bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands. This course, to be offered in May of 2017, will expose UW-Platteville students to a European city (Zwolle and surrounding cities) whose main transportation focus is non-motorized infrastructure and show students how their transportation policy supports this focus and how it impact their society. I am hopeful that this new exposure will open the eyes of our UW-Platteville students, positively impact them, our future sustainable community designers.
The short term study abroad course is encouraged by WU, as well as by the International Education office and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UW-Platteville. It is proposed as a three credit civil engineering specific international education course where UW-Platteville transportation engineering students will work with WU mobility students, in the Netherlands, investigating the application of Sustainable Safety on Netherlands cycling infrastructure and explore the social aspects, policy statements, and economics that allow it to be constructed. As part of the course we will incorporate a community engagement project into the short course and curriculum, in which both university’s students would work together on a small project for a real client. This educational pedagogy has been shown to be a best practice in undergraduate education6. UW-Platteville has a program titled Platteville Center for Community Engagement (PACCE) that we will work with in order to accomplish the student/community engagement. Goal 4 directly maps to the UW System Shared Learning Goals of: i.
Individual, Social, and Environmental Responsibility. Zwolle, Netherlands was rated as the #1 Best Bicycling City in the Netherlands in 2014. Students will take the new design/policy skills and apply them to our state and community to learn how to improve our community design to focus on people, which results in a healthier community – both its people’s health and the health of the environment.
ii.
Intercultural Knowledge and Competence, as students will be learning engineering standards and policies used in the Netherlands and they can apply them to US design projects. Additionally, they will experience the social aspect of bicycle friendly designed community and see how daily life is impacted by the focused use of the bicycle for transportation.
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Effective Communication Skills, as UW-Platteville students will be interacting with Netherlands engineers, engineering faculty, and WU students that are non-native English speakers. Being effective global communicators will increase their confidence and marketability to employers.
The short term study abroad course has received Civil & Environmental Engineering Department and College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science approval for its May 2017 pre-summer offering. This course will be called UWP 3030 Cycling Infrastructure in the Netherlands and will be a three credit course providing students with 3 credits of international education and civil and environmental engineering technical elective credits.
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High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter by George D. Kuh published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2008
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015
Benefits This sabbatical provided benefits to the following individuals/organizations: To me, Kristina Fields -
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This was an opportunity for my own engineering and teaching professional development as I expanded my own infrastructure exposure My personal communication skills improved, after teaching and working with non-native English speakers. Additionally, I took a Dutch class, which expanded my communication skills with native Dutch speakers. Increased personal self-efficacy with new challenges of teaching and collaborating internationally and developing a new course. According to the Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System, one in six scientist and engineers in the U.S. reported working with individuals in other countries. They reported that international collaborations are more likely to occur among persons working in for-profit sector, men, and those with higher levels of education. Of the nearly 19,000,000 scientists and engineers surveyed, only 1.4 percent occurred in civil engineering and only 10.5 percent of women reported having international collaborations. 7 I believe that it would be in country’s best interest to expand our infrastructure knowledge from our international counterparts. This sabbatical international collaboration and exposure showed me new designs and policies that could improve our country’s infrastructure. I will use these examples in my infrastructure, transportation, and senior design courses. I learned a new online learning tool, Quizlet that I can incorporate into my courses. I have also shared this tool with other faculty on our campus.
To UW-Platteville Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering -
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This sabbatical allowed our department to expand our existing infrastructure focused curriculum in both the technical areas of designing infrastructure and also the non-technical components including social impacts, policy, economics, and planning. There are at least ten other civil engineering programs in the U.S. who are collaborating with the UW-Platteville Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering Department on teaching an infrastructure focused engineering course. Therefore, there is an additional pool of students who would be able to take the proposed Short Term Study Abroad Course, exposing them to this curriculum, as well. I developed collaborations with WU for faculty and students – in both directions. WU students, in their third year of school, have the opportunity to attend a university in another country, in order to expand their exposure. Having a UW-Platteville faculty member present at WU allowed additional interactions with WU students and may encourage WU students to study civil engineering UW-Platteville. Additionally, WU students showed interest in working in the US during their internship or after graduation. My connections with them, may allow this interest to be a reality for them. Our faculty/students become more global citizens as we interact with one another. I learned department organization options were very different than at WU. It would be interesting to pilot an indepartment English/communications faculty member within our department. This may help improve the writing and interpersonal skills of our students within the context of civil and environmental engineering.
To College of Engineering, Mathematics (EMS), and Science at UW-Platteville -
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I developed collaborations between WU and the College of EMS. Knowing that students and faculty members have successfully worked at both institutions, helps provide an additional network and resources for other students and faculty interested in working at either institution. I am in the process of developing an international PACCE project - allowing student/community engagement.
National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT), 2006
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015
UW-Platteville/Community -
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This opportunity provided me with examples of how to improve our infrastructure. Best practices could be put into reality as infrastructure in our campus community, which could lead to increased mode share in bicycle transport, thus fewer cars needing to be parked in and around campus. Adding infrastructure may improve the safety here as well. In other words, we could become a more bicycle friendly campus community. The short term study abroad course will take this to another level in that many other students will be able to gain similar knowledge which will benefit them as future designers of our community infrastructure. Exposure for UW-Platteville was increased as we got our university name out into the world. My interaction with students/faculty at WU may encourage them to take/teach a course on our campus. By offering a study abroad course, we are adding a “high impact best practice” which educational research suggests increases rates of student retention and student engagement8. The best practices curriculum is a potential educational/financial opportunity as we could offer professional development hours for practicing engineers in the area of non-motorized transportation, certainly a growing type of infrastructure in the state/nation.
To US Infrastructure and Society My sabbatical and development of the short term study abroad course is important to US Infrastructure and society as we are at a crossroads with our transportation infrastructure. Our current focus for community design is designing for the automobile, not people, which is negatively impacting the quality of people’s lives. The wellknown downfalls to auto-focused design include: -
high expense of building and maintaining wide amounts of public rights of way for roadways inability to meet the traffic demand because you are focusing on adding more and more car traffic to the system delays, as people wait in long traffic queues resulting in wasted time and concentrated tailpipe emissions inactivity due to fewer active transportation options (sitting in automobiles is inactive, whereas walking and bicycling are active) resulting in poor public health unfair resources allocations spent on infrastructure that does not meet the needs of everyone (many cannot drive due to economics, mental/physical challenges, their age (children, elderly))
This sabbatical and short term study abroad course aims at breaking this trend by exposing our students first hand to a different way of community design – designing for people and specifically designing a community to be easily accessible by bicycle, as it is done in Zwolle. By exposing students to this atmosphere and experience they will individually be able to see how well it works, how easy it is to bicycle, yet most importantly identify the infrastructure and policy that allows a community to be bicycle friendly. With this experience I would hope they would become better planners, designers, policy makers, and community citizens who speak up for their desire to propel themselves in a cleaner more healthy way.
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High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter by George D. Kuh published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2008
Kristina Fields, Final Report – Sabbatical Fall 2015
Future Work Working in person with WU faculty certainly enhanced the feasibility of future collaborations. I now have an improved understanding of WU curriculum, have experienced and studied the Netherlands bicycle policies, plans, and designs, and these certainly assist in the development of the short term study abroad course. The course has been submitted and approved in February and March of 2016 and has received approval from the required Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the College of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science.
Expression of Thanks This sabbatical experience has been a dream come true and I am blessed to have had this opportunity. My sincere thanks go to Dr. Mittie Nimocks Den Herder, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, the Sabbatical Review Committee for selecting me for this opportunity, Donna Anderson , Director of Education Abroad for connecting me with Windesheim University, and Department Chair Christina Curras and my colleagues for covering my courses and assisting my advisees while I was gone. I am also thankful to Lukas Xu, Windesheim University Department Chair of Civil Engineering, Infrastructure, Traffic Engineering, and Mobility for inviting me to be a part of his team and for his welcoming hospitality and friendship. Thank you also to Jeffrey de Graaff, Mobility Director, and Dr. Marcus Popkema, Mobility faculty, for developing the short term study abroad course and other course collaborations with me and for sharing their mobility insights and cycling infrastructure and policy sources.
