David R. Steward, Walter B. Booth Distinguished Professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, used virtual technology to take his new textbook on a “world tour.”

He said popular meeting venues such as conferences and professional society annual meetings have been put on hold in recent years due to COVID-19, so he decided to promote his textbook, "Analytic Element Method: Complex Interactions across Boundaries and Interfaces," by a different means. The book was published by Oxford University Press.

"We had planned a set of meetings with colleagues and students who are interested in these methods, but those meetings were postponed,” said Steward, noting that opened the door to a set of virtual presentations that included venues across the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. "I learned that I was actually able to share new math and numerical methods to a broader range of collaborators using virtual communications, and we collectively devised new ways to study our world."

One example was recorded at a “Water Talk” at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Steward’s experiences will be used to teach a new course at NDSU this fall, CE 793: Analytic Element Method.

"Everyone had a different set of problems they were trying to solve, and it was exciting to learn how others across the globe are using our methods,” said Steward.

Steward joined the NDSU faculty in 2018. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in civil engineering and a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Minnesota. He previously was a member of the Kansas State University faculty.

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