A Trip Down Memory Lane (Part 3B [Concluding]): A Mentor-Colleague-Friend During my UF Days and Thereafter: Prof. Robert G. Dean

This is the concluding part of the recollection of my interaction with Prof. Dean, which I penned at the occasion of his retirement from UF in 2003. It continues from where I let off here, chronicling events that occurred after I returned to Malaysia in 1995. Read on.

Since my return to Malaysia upon my graduation with a Ph.D. degree in early 1995, I’ve maintained an e-mail link with Prof. Dean. One of these culminated into the very first visit of Prof. Dean to Malaysia in Oct 1999 during which he delivered a keynote address in the Conference on Coastal Environment, despite his tight schedule. In fact, his visit was concluded in very short notice, much to my surprise and noting then that I was just trying my luck.

During his 3-day stay in Malaysia, I had a lot of one-on-one opportunity with him, especially on the field trip in my car to look at some of the beaches and shore development taking place along the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. We talked about the old times at UF, the shape of coastal engineering to come in the future, and UC Berkeley from where Prof. Dean obtained his first degree, in 1954, the very year I was born. I just realize this is another link between us, in addition to the UF and Association of Coastal Engineers (ACE) connections, me having graduated from UC Berkeley with a Master’s degree in 1987, more than three decades later.

One of the spots we visited was a coastal resort development fronting the open sea
(Straits of Malacca) with two breakwater arms extending into the sea and enclose a yacht marina. I remembered showing to him a desk-top model of the proposed future development that displayed proposed houses built on the two breakwater arms and was making comments to the effect that it was sheer folly trying to build on breakwaters that bear the full brunt of the wave attack. To my totally unprepared mind, Prof. Dean, with his vast experience in coastal development, especially his 3-year stint as the Director of Shores with the State Government of Florida, started to expound on a different philosophy to coastal development, one that provides added values to coastal protection and blends it into coastal tourism. In this paradigm change from one of separating the coastal protection function from economic activity to one on integrated development, all uses of the coast are merged to facilitate a systematic development of the coastal resources.

I met Prof. Dean again in Cardiff last year [2002] at the occasion of the 28th International Coastal Engineering Conference during which he gave a touching thank-you speech to Prof. Billy Edge. More exchanges of coastal engineering matter took place during the conference.

Till this day I still have a guilty feeling when his name crops up, be it during a conversation or more likely during a technical discussion. It is then I remember that I’ve yet to send him the profile data that I promised when Prof. Dean posted an e-mail in the Coastal_List requesting for profile data for his continuing work in the analyses of beach profiles, to which I readily e-mailed back my commitment but have yet to send in the Malaysian profile data to him [To my embarrassment, this remains outstanding]..

Not too long ago, I e-mailed him again to act as a reference for my US job application and in his usual helpful manner, he replied back, “I enjoyed hearing from you. I would be pleased to provide a reference for you.” Concise and warm as usual.

As Bob Buford said in his book, Half Time: Changing Your Game Plan from Success to Significance, “One characteristic of a person who is nearing the end of the first half is that unquenchable desire to move from success to significance.” Here I note that Prof. Dean has already marched into three-quarter time, perhaps taking comfort in knowing that he has achieved both success and significance. To my mortal mind, I really cannot visualize what further legacy Prof. Dean will leave us with. But knowing Prof. Dean, I won’t be surprised that he already has something cooking.

I would always remember Prof. Dean, a mentor, a colleague, and a friend. And I would like to take this opportunity to wish him a happy retirement from UF, and a happy beginning to whatever he chooses to do in his post-retirement life.

(Penned in Malaysia, April 2003 to commemorate the retirement of Prof. Dean from University of Florida.)

Post Script: I met Prof. Dean once more, soon after I moved to US at a conference organized by the Florida Shore and Beach Preservation Association held in Orlando in 2004. He remained his smiling self, always eager to impart his vast store of coastal engineering knowledge and to interact with the next generation of coastal engineers, yours truly included.

A Trip Down Memory Lane (Part 3A): A Mentor-Colleague-Friend During my UF Days and Thereafter: Prof. Robert G. Dean

Continuing along my trip down memory lane (here and here), I have two outstanding academicians to thank for my successful journey along the Ph.D. route at the end of which I could proudly declare, I’m Phinally Done, yet without the trauma often associated with Permanent head Damage, both being plays on the word, Ph.D.

The first is Prof. Ashish J. Mehta, who served as the Chairman of my Ph.D. supervisory committee. And the other is Prof. Robert G. Dean, then the Chair of the Coastal and Oceanographic Department at University of Florida (UF). In a way, I had the best of both worlds in the continuum of coastal sediment dynamics. While Prof. Mehta is renowned in fine-grained and cohesive sediment research, Prof. Dean’s expertise in coarse-grained and cohesionless sediment transport as applied to sandy beach processes is legendary.

Today’s segment will be devoted to Prof. Dean, as a mentor, a colleague, and a friend. And there is a very simple reason for that choice of order. Back in 2003, I became aware of the Coastal Engineering Today meeting organized to honor Prof. Dean on the occasion of his retirement from UF. I also noted that a commemorative collection of letters and photos would be prepared for the meeting. The image, taken during the Waves 2001 conference, shows Prof. Dean to the extreme right with Prof. Tony Dalrymple, the organizer of the Coastal Engineering Today meeting and now with Johns Hopkins University and from whose personal web page this image is taken with thanks, to his left.

I realized then that I do not have any memorabilia concerning Prof. Dean in my possession, except a cherished memory of interaction with him in a variety of ways. Therefore I decided to pen this memory in the form of a written recollection of our interaction in appreciation of his kind assistance along my chosen path of becoming a competent coastal engineer and researcher.

Along with others, Prof. Dean has been invaluable and instrumental in imparting to me a firm grounding on the fundamentals of coastal engineering in particular as well as living the life of a decent human being in general, and the recollection is my way of expressing my gratitude.

I have contacted the organizer recently and was informed that the commemorative collection has been handed to Prof. Dean but is not part of the proceedings of the meeting, which comprised technical presentations on coastal engineering advances inspired by the works of Prof. Dean. Since this recollection is my thoughts on my learning process, both professionally and personally, I have decided to blog it here, both as a life impacting experience to be shared, and perhaps as a benchmark to gage the progress of my writing skills, seeing that what follows represents my way of writing circa 2003, verbatim.

It is noteworthy that were it not for the Internet and an online mail account that I’m still keeping today, I would not have been able to locate the following article, which has stayed stored in virtual space all these years.

Since it is a lengthy piece, my recollection will appear in two parts, conveniently separated by the time I left UF. Here, then, is Part A.

Prof. Robert G. Dean, Professor Emeritus, University of Florida (A Mentor, A Colleague, And A Friend) [Part A of 2]

I first came across the name of Prof. Dean in the beginning of a counterpart attachment to the consortium of international consultants commissioned by the Government of Malaysia to undertake the National Coastal Erosion Study in late 1984. That 15-month attachment under the tutelage of the late Mr. Neill E. Parker, the project manager of the study, opened my vista to the fascinating field of coastal engineering, and the pioneering work of Prof. Dean.

At the end of that study period in mid-1985, and as a preparation of the Government of
Malaysia to staff the proposed Coastal Engineering Technical Center, I was offered a
Federal Government Scholarship to pursue a graduate degree in Coastal Engineering. Mr. Parker was then kind enough to write three letters of recommendation on my behalf to three US universities well-known for their coastal engineering education: one to Prof.
Robert L. Wiegel of University of California, Berkeley, CA, the second to Prof. Bernard
LeMehaute of University of Miami, Coral Gables, and the third to none other than Prof. Dean of University of Florida, Gainesville. Unfortunately, I could not locate my copy of the letter of recommendation to Prof. Dean; otherwise it would have made a nice memorabilia. That was my first “brush” with the legendary Prof. Dean, but I doubt he remembered the brief encounter as it was done through a letter, albeit from an old friend of his.

As it turned out, I never made it to University of Florida then. Instead, I’ve had the good fortune of landing in UC Berkeley where I studied under Prof. Wiegel, Prof. Joe Johnson, and others. It was during this sojourn that I suspected I first met Prof. Dean in person. That was the occasion of the symposium held at UC Berkeley to honor Prof. Morrough O’Brien in March 1987. I’ve no recollection of this personal encounter, but a check of the proceedings of the symposium (Shore and Beach, July-October 1987) confirmed his attendance as a speaker, and hence my presumption.

During my 18-month academic journey into the more theoretical aspects that underpin much of the practice of coastal engineering, Prof. Dean’s name popped up more often, much like a beaming beacon guiding the uninitiated like me in deep forays into the complex realm of coastal engineering. His much celebrated textbook that he coauthored with Prof. Robert Dalrymple, Wave Mechanics for Engineers and Scientists (a.k.a Dean & Dalrymple to the initiated), was a constant companion as a supplement to the comprehensive lecture notes of Prof. Rodney Sobey in the Wave Mechanics course.

I had to wait until the spring of 1991 before I could meet Prof. Dean in person when I enrolled into the graduate degree program of the Coastal and Oceanographic Engineering Department at University of Florida. His gentle smile behind black-rimmed glasses, his affable disposition, his firm handshake, and his never-failing words of fatherly concern left a lasting impression on me.

Through my four years at UF, I took every course offered by Prof. Dean, three in all
(Littoral Processes, Non-Linear Ocean waves, and Numerical Modeling of Beach System). The assigned text during the course on Littoral Processes was the draft copy of the now published Coastal Processes with Engineering Applications (Cambridge University Press, 2002), which he co-authored with Prof. Robert A. Dalrymple. Those days some of the texts were still hand-written, including most of the questions, and I would like to think that I had a small part in beta-testing some of the questions. And thanks to Prof. Dean, I’m now a proud owner of the “zero” edition of the soon-to-be-known-as Dean & Dalrymple II, as distinct from the Dean & Dalrymple referred to earlier.

Despite having spent more than three decades on the subject, Prof. Dean still managed to maintain his curiosity in the field. That was, to me, best exemplified on one field expedition that the class (Littoral Transport) made to the Atlantic coast. There he frolicked in the surf, coming in and out of the white waters, like a teenage boy going after his priced collection (to feel the undertow tugging perhaps), leaving me, about two scores in years younger, eyes dazed, agog, and on the shore, safe from the turbulent churning. While the surf image below is not along the Atlantic seaboard where our field lesson took place but rather the Clearwater Beach facing the Gulf of Mexico at the location of the St. Pete Municipal Pier, it suffices to demonstrate the peril of a high surf condition.


Prof. Dean also sat on my Ph.D. supervisory committee as my research topic of interaction of mud profiles with waves has some analogy with his well-known work on sandy profiles. I too derived a close-form profile equation for an alongshore-uniform mud shoreline with additional consideration of wave dissipation due to wave-soft bed interaction. This consideration leads to a different profile modality, one which is able to migrate from a concave upward to a convex upward form, depending on the wave dissipation characteristics of the substrate, as opposed to a monotonically concave upward form of the Dean’s profile.

I used a similar approach to evaluate the cross-shore sediment transport, and hence, the temporal profile evolution, it being a function of the degree of deviation from a target profile based on the equilibrium beach profile concept.

One other activity that has etched into not only my own memory, but my wife’s too (I guess my kids were still too young to cherish the memory, but not too young to relish the moments though), is the annual Christmas get-together in his house, which we attended without fail. I especially enjoyed the occasion as it fostered an atmosphere of “letting one’s hair down” that facilitated “getting to know you”, especially for new graduate students who may have left the comforts of their home countries and were thrust into this strange and unfamiliar, both physically and culturally, land for the very first time.

(Please stay tuned for Part B.)

A Trip Down Memory Lane (Part 2): In Memoriam of Ir. Dr. Hiew Kim Loi

I started earning my keep in March, 1978, about two months before I received my "license" to work, a Bachelor of Engineering degree from University of Malaya (UM), in May. Actually come to think of it, that was the result certifying that I’ve satisfied all requirements for the award but I would receive the scroll during the commencement ceremony about another month (June) later. But that was enough to put me on the official roster of the Public Services Department as a Drainage and Irrigation Engineer (or Pupil Engineer as stated on my service record).

After the mandatory interview at the headquarters of Drainage and Irrigation Department (DID) conducted by Ir. Cheong Chup Lim and Ir. Khoo Soo Hock, I was dispatched to Muar, Johor. A vivid scene that I still recall from that interview was my response to Ir. Cheong’s inquiry as to the nature of my graduating thesis when I said, kind of smugly, “It’s complicated.” [Judge for yourself. It’s entitled The effect of a lignin-based additive on the shrinkage characteristics and strength development of cement mortar, or something to that effect. And that’s the best I could come out with from my recollection effort, the thesis copy probably misplaced in some dark corners of my house back in Malaysia.]

And so I thought, until I was challenged by Ir. Cheong’s curt reply, probably accompanied by some raised eye-brows that may have escaped my then rattled state of mind, “Try me.” Fortunately, I really did put in an honest amount of work into the thesis, albeit sharing duty with my co-author, Ir. Kan See Yam, except for the writing part, from casting the cylindrical specimens in the lab, curing them, stowing them away in a temperature-controlled glass-walled cabinet, and measuring their daily “growth”, and testing for concrete strength to failure.

At the end of my rather lengthy explanation interspersed with concrete (as in the material) jargons, I was smart enough to suppress the urge to issue another wise crack when Ir. Cheong commented, “That wasn’t too tough, right?” So there goes my first less than confidence-instilling interaction with a senior member of the engineering community.

I reported to work at DID Muar on my old faithful, a 125-cc Honda motorcycle that I had acquired while doing my 3rd year industrial training at Johor Bahru, from a Public Works Department (PWD) junior technician, as one of the Assistant District Engineers. The District Engineer then was Ir. Ferng Meow Chong, a meticulous, by-the-book engineer in the traditional Chinese mold with a somewhat philosophical outlook on life in general, perhaps a consequence of more than ten years of having his square edges rubbed off by the reality of the engineering world, whatever that may mean [I found out later that Ir. Ferng was 13 years my senior in UM]. But that he had a lot of old tales to tell is not an exaggeration. Ir. Ferng had definitely opened my eyes to a lot of stuff that one does not learn in a university setting, e.g., contract management, for which I’m thankful.

I first met the late Ir. Dr. Hiew Kim Loi in DID Muar, in 1979 [He had not been minted a Ph.D. yet then]. As a Senior Planning Engineer, he had stopped by the Muar office to discuss the technical requirements for a proposed pumping scheme the construction of which I would later supervise. A man of relatively tall stature, he exuded technical proficiency in his apparent mastery of the pump characteristics (e.g., negative/suction pressure, lift head which I later had to read up). Not knowing any better, I was suitably impressed.

The subsequent interaction with Ir. Dr. Hiew would have to wait another five years when I was transferred from Raub, Pahang to the Headquarters. To work under him directly. And my desk (yes, those day the office layout was like an open office where even Senior Planning Engineers like me were only allotted a desk), was just outside his room, with glass partition. The first impression I got of his room was this guy must be overworked: reams of reports cluttered the space, and computer printouts strewn all over the floor. Hey, this guy actually did Fortran programming.

From that moment on, I knew that him being known as the technically smart one in DID was no fluke. And some of the things that filtered through the grapevine such as being a result-oriented man that he was, he liked to hand-pick engineers who could exercise technical rigor to work with him, did have a ring of truth to it. Some would and did call it a discrimination bordering on elitism but it did make one feel good to be recognized.

Ir. Dr. Hiew was not one to heap praises openly, but preferred to give the guy a pat at the back for a job well done. He chose his words carefully, and seemed serious most of the time. But he did occasionally let down his guard, so to speak, though to even imagine him letting down his hair, metaphorically of course, would be quite, well, unthinkable.

I found that I could always interact with him on technical matters, often ending up as the beneficiary in the exchange. He was always meticulous, questioning and revisiting assumptions and procedures of analysis, and yet not one who shirked making decisions when called for. He might have appeared to be pushy to some, evincing impatience if the work was not up to the mark or speed. He was quick-witted, thinking fast on his feet, and that in itself could be “intimidating” to those who were not well-prepared.

I would like to think that my “fetish” for thoroughness and details, often opting for lengthy account rather than concise summarizing, and prompt turnaround time, especially in the preparation of technical minutes, had impressed him to certain degree.

After more than a year under his mentoring, he left on study leave to do his doctoral graduate work at Colorado State University (CSU) at Fort Collins. And I followed more than a year later, but to UC Berkeley to do my Masters. While there, we talked to each other over the phone a couple of times.

Just before I returned to Malaysia after my Masters in July 1987, I and my family visited him and his family at Fort Collins while on a 2-week tour of the western one third of US by car. His daughter was just born then and I remember him showing us around the CSU campus.

He finished his Ph.D. work in three years. That in engineering is quite a feat (I got mine in over four years from University of Florida about 8 years later). Upon his return to DID in 1987, I worked briefly under him. Otherwise our contact was sporadic, except during the Annual series of Senior DID Engineers Conference, a 2-3 day retreat during which senior engineers meet to discuss matters of strategic importance to DID.

Even when I was on secondment to the National Hydraulic Research Institute (NAHRIM), a sister department under the same Ministry but at a different locale, at the completion of my Ph.D study in early 1995, I had always made it a point to drop by his office to chat on a variety of topics (DID works, NAHRIM works, Institution of Engineers, Malaysia (IEM) matters, etc.).

It was in early 2002 that I learned that he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. I visited him once at the KL General Hospital. He was sitting on the bed, in what seemed like a work dress, and chatting with us in a normal tone, albeit seemingly on the emaciated side. That was the last time I saw him, but I continued to get updates on his treatment status from colleagues. And the prognosis did not look good.

Then the news broke when I was attending a conference at Cardiff in July 2002, Wales via a brief email from a DID colleague. Ir. Dr. Hiew had passed away. Just like that, DID has lost a great engineer, and I have lost a great personal friend.

I have always valued the mentoring period that I had undergone under Ir. Dr. Hiew’s guidance and would always cherish the interactions that I was fortunate to have with him. In a way, I can understand Welton’s admiration for Richard Feynman (read here), seeing a semblance of the parallel in my case. Likewise I would consider my knowing the late Ir. Dr. Hiew as a privilege. May him rest in peace.