On April 18, 2008 the Purdue Geotechnical Group hosted the 6th Leonards Lecture, offered this year by  Dr. Jean-Lou Chameau, President of the California Institute of Technology. The topic of the lecture: "Role of the University in Education for Sustainability".

The lecture honors the memory of one of the giants of the geotechnical engineering profession, Professor Gerald Leonards, a Purdue graduate (MS 1948; PhD 1952) and Purdue faculty member for over 45 years. Professor Leonards, a Terzaghi lecturer and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, left an indelible mark on the profession through his research and publications, his text books, his work on high visibility projects such as the stabilization of the tower of Pisa, and, to no lesser degree through the impact he had on his students and colleagues.  Amongst his colleagues was Dr. Chameau who spent 11 years on the geotechnical faculty at Purdue before joining the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was first School Head, then Dean of Engineering, and finally Provost. In September 2006 Dr. Chameau became Caltech's eighth President.

The Leonards lecture was preceded by the 6th Purdue Geotechnical Society Workshop. This year's workshop, built around the theme of "Innovation and Sustainability in Geotechnics", included two key-note lectures by Dr. David Frost, Professor of Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech, and Dr. David Radcliffe, Epistemology Professor of Engineering Education at Purdue University, as well as 11 other shorter presentations.

For complete information on the program, see: https://engineering.purdue.edu/PGS