engineering

Sue Evison

Sue Evison is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sue Evison rather than just read about it. In short: Sue Elizabeth Evison is a geotechnical engineer from New Zealand, who spent most of her career working in Canada. She was also the first woman to be president of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta.

Key takeaways

Sue Evison belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sue Evison to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sue Evison from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sue Elizabeth Evison is a geotechnical engineer from New Zealand, who spent most of her career working in Canada. She was also the first woman to be president of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta.

Early life and education Evison is the eldest of four siblings and was born in New Zealand where grew up in the small town of Alexandra on the South Island. Her grandmother was one of the first women in New Zealand to become a Physician, her uncle was a mountaineering engineer, father was a doctor and her mother a teacher. Evison studied mathematics at the University of Otago and graduated in 1975. She then got a teaching certificate and briefly taught maths and physical education at a girls school. Despite the social attitudes towards women in engineering, and her earlier scepticism, however meeting engineers whilst skiing, and encouragement from her uncle, made her reconsider a career in engineering. Evison then studied Civil Engineering at the University of Canterbury in 1978 where she was only one of three women in the cohort and she is one of the first five women to civil engineers in New Zealand. She later studied for a MSc in Geotechnical Engineering from the University of Alberta, graduating in 1988. She completed this degree whilst working as a researcher for Professor James Gordon MacGregor and raising a family.

Career Evison's first role was at Halliday, O’Laughlin and Taylor which she left to move to Canada, where she joined a precast concrete fabrication company in Edmonton called Batoni Structures. Over the course of her career she has also worked for consulting firms such as Thurber Engineering, AGRAEarth and Environmental, Jacques Whitford Associates, and Klohn Crippen Berger. She returned to New Zealand in 2003 and joined Beca Ltd. Evison has been engaged in a number of different professional bodies in the field of geotechnical engineering. Such as the Canadian Geotechnical Society, the Calgary Geotechnical Society, the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta, the Consulting Engineers of Alberta, the Tunnelling Association of Canada, the Canadian Dam Association, the North American Society of Trenchless Technology, and the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. As a geotechnical engineering consultant, Evison has had a varied career, she has been part of the development of trenchless technology innovations, complex numerical analysis in a variety of applications, finite element simulation for soil-pipe interaction and marine foundations. In 1982 Evison joined the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta and after many years as a member, she became the first woman to become president of the association in 2000. In 2009 Evison became a Fellow of Engineers Canada and in 2013 she became an Honorary Fellows of Geoscience Canada.

Family & personal life Evison has two daughters, Tisha and Rhiannon. Evison, an avid skier was a mountain tour guide at the Lake Louise Ski Resort and an assistant patrol leader for the Canadian Ski Patrol. Evison was also a member of the New Zealand junior golf team and a junior women's titleholder and continued to be a keen golfer.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sue Evison

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sue Evison claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sue Evison before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sue Evison ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sue Evison

In research: Sue Evison appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sue Evison in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sue Evison is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century Canadian engineers, 21st-century Canadian women engineers, 21st-century New Zealand engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sue Evison outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Sue Evison in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sue Evison means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sue Evison out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sue Evison in simple terms?

Why does Sue Evison matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sue Evison?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sue Evison.