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This paper presents a brief overview of the changes made during our department level reform (DLR) process (Grant Title: A Systems Approach for Civil and Environmental Engineering Education: Integrating Systems Thinking, Inquiry-Based Learning and Catamount Community Service-Learning Projects) and some of the effects of these changes on our students and ourselves. The overall goal of the reform has been to have students learn and apply a systems approach to engineering problem solving such that when they become practicing engineers they will develop more sustainable engineering solutions. We have integrated systems thinking into our programs in the following ways; 1) new material has been included in key courses (e.g., the first-year introductory and senior design courses), 2) a sequence of three related environmental and transportation systems courses have been included within the curricula (i.e., Introduction to Systems, Decision Making, and Modeling), and 3) service-learning (SL) projects have been integrated into key required courses as a way of practicing a systems approach. A variety of assessment methods were implemented as part of the reform including student surveys, student focus groups, faculty interviews, and assessment of student work. Student work in five classes demonstrate that students are learning the systems approach, applying it to engineering problem solving, and that this approach helps meet ABET outcomes. Initial student resistance to changing the curriculum has decreased post implementation (e.g., graduating class 2010), and many students are able to define and apply the concept of sustainability in senior design project. Student self-assessments show support of SL projects and that the program is influencing student understanding of the roles and responsibilities of engineers in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If any engineering courses are unlikely to be transferable between Australasian and overseas universities, one could argue that civil engineering capstone design courses with a strong practical engineering focus would be the least likely. This analysis considers two capstone design courses in the US and New Zealand. The analysis examines the approaches each university has taken to improve design education through simulating professional practice. The two approaches are superficially very different with different course structure and course requirements. In addition the emphasis on site and project, and the consequent dependence on country-specific matters related to regulation and codes, would lead one to expect low transferability. Closer analysis shows that the learning objectives of the courses are relatively similar and that the relationship between site and design are key for both. The challenges faced by the two approaches have much in common, reflecting similar student experiences, and so high transferability. The paper provides details on learning objectives and challenges faced at the two programs to aid others who wish to analyse capstone design experiences across multiple universities. The conclusion is that transferability between these two design experiences is high. The implication is that, through similar forces for educational change in both countries, internationalisation of engineering education is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the field of civil engineering evolves to address twenty-first century challenges, the demand for creative and innovative thinking rises. Engineering institutions around the nation have begun to integrate sustainability into the curriculum. Topics such as innovation and entrepreneurship are highly correlated with sustainability goals; however, many times they are viewed as market or management-driven principles. The Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN) Program was established to transform the U.S. workforce through equipping graduate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset. This program is based on KEEN student outcomes (KSOs), which can be incorporated into department level, as well as course level, curricula. This paper focuses on the integration of KSOs into a senior civil engineering capstone course through two course activities over two years. KEEN rubrics are used to assess student achievement of the KSOs focused on innovative thinking and productive collaboration. The assessment results indicate that there are existing strengths as well as future opportunities to enhance student performance of innovative thinking and open-ended problem solving--skills that are essential to promoting sustainable design and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As demands for research productivity increase, engineering faculty, particularly untenured junior faculty, must efficiently expedite the development of their graduate students' disciplinary writing skills. This paper reports on the outcomes of a semester-long graduate course offered to facilitate engineering students' production of a manuscript ready, or near ready, for submission to a peer-reviewed engineering journal at the end of the semester. Course content addressed the purpose of and information included in each of four sections of a standard engineering research paper. Data generated from course participants and their faculty advisers were used to assess the extent to which course participation resulted in publication submission, textual production in each of four standard article sections, and perceived changes in student writing that was attributable to course participation. Findings suggest implications for policies and practices supporting the development of engineering students as disciplinary writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current civil engineering education should address the need to provide a broad vision, develop the higher-order skills of future civil engineers, enable them to adopt emerging technologies, and formulate innovative solutions to complex problems. This paper introduces relevant nanotechnology developments to convey the new vision and inspire creativity in civil engineering. It also presents a pedagogical framework for integrating nanotechnology education into a civil engineering curriculum and cultivating self-regulated learning and creativity skills for civil engineering students. The pedagogical framework includes the introduction of nanotechnology innovations and other relevant innovative technologies, and explicit instructions on cognitive strategies for facilitating and inspiring self-regulated learning and creativity. It is implemented with problem/project-based learning for a cocurricular project that requires self-regulated learning and creativity. This pedagogical framework provides a model for integrating emerging technology education and higher-order skill development into existing engineering curriculum. The outcomes from the implementation of the pedagogical framework are presented, and their further improvements are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction management has become a vital aspect of the construction process over the years. This paper reviews the Master’s programs in construction engineering and management (CEM) offered by departments of civil engineering in the United States. The findings indicate that only 20% of the American educational institutions, which offer accredited civil engineering programs, offer Master’s programs in CEM. Most of the Master’s programs in CEM constitute an effort to convey information to students on mainly six categories, namely, contract administration, project management, scheduling, equipment management, construction technology, and CEM research. It seems that the Master’s programs in CEM do not differ much from program to program in terms of content. When the trends in course offerings are compared in 1982, 1996, and 2008, there seems to be minimal change except for the number of courses in project management that went up significantly while the number of courses in cost estimating went down. The trends in the remaining courses have been stable. Even though contents and trends in CEM programs appear to be relatively stable, there seems to be some variability in the concentration of the course offerings. Some CEM programs concentrate on some of the categories at the expense of other categories. A close relationship and a sound dialogue between construction educators and the industry are likely to lead to Master’s programs that are in sync with the expectations of the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a module that was introduced into a civil engineering degree program with the help of professional engineers. The aim was to develop a bridge between the world of learning and professional practice by putting students in the role of consulting engineers working with industry to produce a feasible solution to a real inquiry from a client. The module is placed in context by comparing the goals of accredited civil engineering programs in the United Kingdom and America, by describing how it is linked to the degree program and by explaining the matrix developed to identify the skills the students needed to demonstrate their ability to practice as professional engineers. Details of the module are given with examples of student work and feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of a management team is to provide continuous feedback to the instructor on two major issues: instructor performance and course structure and content. Successful student management team projects at the University of Wisconsin, University of Colorado and University of Minnesota have demonstrated that team members working together for the good of the class can accomplish a great deal. In the Michigan State University pilot project, the student management teams operated during a 15-week course on construction materials. This is a 4-credit required junior level course for all Civil Engineering majors and has both a classroom and a laboratory component. The average class size is thirty-five students. The team met every week for about thirty to forty-five minutes over the course of the semester. Their principal assignment was to improve the quality of the course by collecting data through classroom assessment techniques and regular group discussions with the instructor. It was clear from the formative surveys that 85% and 88% of the students were comfortable (level of understanding between 4-5) with the material "uncovered" in the Portland cement concrete (PCC) and hot mix asphalt concrete (HMAC) modules respectively. This paper discusses the concept of management teams along with other details in developing the management teams and results from the pilot study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a civil engineering capstone course which was instituted in 1992 in the Civil Engineering and Construction Department of North Dakota State University. Details of the initial experience with the capstone course; Community based projects and service learning; Example project; Course implementation.

This paper describes how results from the education literature have been put into practice in two projects currently underway in an engineering education center. The projects are both aimed at improving problem solving. The first is being conducted in Statics, and the second in Fluid Mechanics course in Civil Engineering. The Statics project is grounded in a model that integrates literature on problem solving, representational transformations, and prior knowledge. This model was used to analyze students' problem solving in Statics so that key difficulties could he identified. Instructional modules were then designed to address those difficulties. The design of these instructional modules served as the starting point for modules in Fluid Mechanics. The primary literature used in the development of the instructional modules focused on cognitive modeling, self-explanation, and worked examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the need for faculty training, the American Society of Civil Engineers developed and funded the ExCEEd (Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) Teaching Workshop, which was offered for the first time in 1999 and celebrated its tenth year during the summer of 2008. For the past decade, 21 ExCEEd Teaching Workshops (ETW) have been hem at the United States Military Academy, the University of Arkansas, and Northern Arizona University. ETW has realized 497 graduates from 198 different US and international colleges and universities. This paper summarizes the content of ETW, assesses its effectiveness, highlights changes in the program as a result of these assessments, outlines future directions, and assesses the effect this workshop has had on the quality of civil engineering teaching in the US. The assessment data were obtained from multiple survey instruments conducted during each workshop, surveys taken six months to a year after the workshop, and a ten-year longitudinal survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a profile of Henry Rose Carter, the discoverer of the extrinsic incubation period of yellow fever. Carter was born in Caroline County, Virginia, on August 25, 1852. He graduated with a civil engineering degree at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He studied medicine at the University of Maryland. He worked for the Marine Hospital Service (MHS) after graduating from the university and later joined the U.S. Public Health Service. Carter studied the development of yellow fever in rural communities.

Although improving the relevance of engineering education through integrated courses has been discussed extensively, less attention has been given to the differences encountered in managing integrated as opposed to more traditional curriculums. Our planning of a new curriculum provided an opportunity for such an examination. Implementation and management issues of Colorado State University's (CSU) four year undergraduate civil engineering curriculum are identified and discussed. These issues include coordination challenges in a large research department, accommodating transfer students, absorbing higher resource costs, defining small group laboratory experiences, recognizing the lack of resource materials for nontraditional courses, including knowledge not within knowledge domains of faculty, rescheduling existing courses to fit within the new curriculum, and preparing teachers for leading the new courses. The department expects to resolve these issues in the next two to three years, and a follow-up paper will describe the lessons learned for the benefit of departments trying to improve design instruction, while adding new material to an already overcrowded curriculum and retaining flexibility for students to graduate in four years. Meanwhile, the challenges in implementing the integrated curriculum should be of interest to those facing similar issues inside academia as well as to their advisors from government and industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction management has been in existence for many years. This paper reviews the graduate construction management programmes offered by departments of civil engineering in the US. The courses offered in such programmes are categorized and examined in twelve groups. The findings indicate that the most popular subjects are those related to laws, contracts, and specifications: planning and scheduling: and operations research methods. Also, it was found that programmes differed a great deal from each other in terms of the concentration of and emphasis on the subjects treated. It is concluded that a clearer conception of the discipline is necessary both by educators and the industry for higher quality and more uniform graduate programmes in construction management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2007 was a year for visionary change in the field of civil engineering in the United States. This vision did not go unnoticed in the Caribbean. At the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of the West Indies, the M.Sc. programs have been restructured to meet the U.K. Joint Board of Moderators requirements for academic accreditation and to fulfill the mandate of the vice chancellor to develop 12 desired attributes, with leadership being among them. A model was developed in a course, Practical Team Project, to measure the learning outcome of leadership by combining the Project Management Institute body of knowledge areas and the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) development objectives. The course prepares students for professional review at the Incorporated Engineering (I.Eng.) level with the ICE and gives them similar standing in other Washington Accord signatory countries. This new initiative for the university required innovative assessment techniques, such as 360-degree feedback and zero tolerance, to evaluate the demonstrated leadership of the graduate students. Analytical tools such as ANOVA and t-test were used to justify the effectiveness of the chosen model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civil engineering departments in the United States were surveyed to ascertain the range of practices for conducting seminars for graduate students. Two separate internet-based survey instruments were developed and utilized. One survey targeted department heads to determine if the responding program had a seminar for graduate students and, if so, details about the program. In the instance where a program did not have a graduate student seminar, the survey solicited reasons for the program choosing to cancel or not have one. A second survey was disseminated to graduate students. It was intended to gather opinions of students regarding their experience with the graduate student seminar. Forty eight civil engineering department heads and 231 graduate students responded. The consensus among respondents is that a graduate seminar can be a valuable part of the student experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author encourages the renewal of culture in the study of surveying. He considers the attempts of professional associations to downgrade the career academic standards for surveyors. He emphasizes the need for civil engineering departments across the U.S. to reconsider teaching technological innovations under a surveying program. He cites some articles published by the "Journal of Surveying Engineering."