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"This is one of the world's largest earth and rock-fill dams and [it] is located in an earthquake-prone area," says Richard Woods of the Tarbela Dam in Pakistan.

He spent about five months working on the Indian subcontinent. "A bypass tunnel collapsed there in 1975. I was vibrations consultant to the designer on the project. I dealt with analyzing vibrations in the tunnel that collapsed, then evaluating the potential response of the entire dam to earthquake shaking. Finally, I dealt with measuring vibrations in the 'stilling basin' at the end of the outlet tunnels."

Woods is currently the department chairman of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan. He's in charge of 25 faculty members, about 400 students, an administrative budget of $4 million, and a research budget of $10 million.

"It's been very satisfying to deal with students in general and to perform research with PhD students in particular," he says. "This arrangement has also let me participate in consulting work of my choosing, never having to take a job that was not of interest to me."

Eileen Poeter says she became a geological engineer because she was interested in combining geology and water. "Engineering appealed to me because I have a very practical personality and I'm quantitatively based," says Poeter, who teaches at the Colorado School of Mines. "Engineering also appealed to me because I was attracted to doing things that 'boys' normally did. Growing up in the 1950s and '60s, it seemed that guys generally had the better deals in life."

Poeter's interests are varied, but says she enjoys teaching her colleagues. She's co-director of the International Ground-Water Management Center at the college. She's more inclined to teaching than consulting.

The construction of rock walls, tunnels and mining openings are favorite projects for Emery Lajtai. "It gives me the opportunity to marry engineering knowledge with natural processes," says Lajtai, who teaches at a university. "This is somewhat different and more interesting than other engineering professions."

Lajtai uses computers extensively. During the past decade, staff and students at the university have computerized almost all procedures that help a rock mechanic do their job. Currently, Lajtai works with five graduate students, three at the doctoral level and two at the master's level.

Work for an ocean drilling program took Gene Pollard to the Pacific Ocean about 200 miles from the U.S. northwest coast. They drilled through 800 feet of water and encountered copper and zinc deposits in the basalt basement of the East Pacific Rise.

Inland, an oilfield project led Pollard to Oklahoma, where he managed drilling operations at the second deepest natural gas well in the world. It was 25,300 feet deep and produced 70 million cubic feet of gas per day.

"I became interested in the art of drilling while working at a summer job with an oil company," says Pollard. "I was an engineering trainee at the time and later went to work as a petroleum engineer. I diverged into the drilling engineering specialty because I was fascinated by the geological problems and felt that engineering could really improve drilling performance, safety and economics."

Leon Holloway is also with the ocean drilling program at Texas A and M University. As a development engineer, he works on a variety of projects that use his geological training.

Japan was the location of his favorite job -- a full-scale pile load test. "I was able to live in Japan for several months while building the test system and preparing the site for the actual work," Holloway explains. "It allowed me to really see how other cultures think and solve problems. It opened my eyes to new techniques that I had never seen in the U.S."