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The number of veteran enrollments in American colleges and universities is at a level not seen since the Vietnam War era. Most of these veterans use the Post-9/11 GI Bill, an educational assistance plan for eligible veterans, but many more programs are available to veterans and active duty military members. This paper presents an overview of many of these education assistance programs available to this growing population. With no end date for the Post-9/11 GI Bill and the demand for engineering degrees in an increasingly technical job market, large numbers of veterans will continue to enroll in higher education institutions. Likewise, active duty military members will be part of the engineering education landscape to support the current demand for technical expertise in the military. Every student has different needs and challenges, and all still need information and access to resources that will help them succeed and link them to the campus community, so that they feel more fully part of the learning environment and can meet their educational goals. A continuous stream of student veteran and active duty populations requires higher education faculty, advisers, staff, and administrators to both understand their strengths and challenges and to include their funding pathways for an engineering education. Scholarships and grants provide a pathway and can ease the financial burden for many students. Similarly, the educational benefits earned by the veterans and active duty military members provide great opportunities but have limitations and different applications. This paper attempts to highlight some of the major educational benefit programs available to veterans and active duty military members and inform those who interact and advise with this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been increased attention on producing engineers that are technically proficient while having many professional skills such as organization, time management, communication, and leadership. Across organization types, especially academia, veterans are admired by their peers for their professionalism and communication skills. Student veterans have trained and taken online classes in diverse and remote environments. They are accustomed to learning under ideal and less than ideal circumstances. The combined traits of increased professionalization, prior experience with online learning, and persistence position student veterans to perform as well or better than their traditional college-aged peers during the COVID-19 crisis. In a study of the effectiveness of Hyflex (Hybrid Flexible) learning conducted in the School of Engineering at The Citadel, forced-choice and free text survey responses showed that student veterans match with and differ from traditional college-aged students in important ways. Results from this study can be used to guide best practices in the Hyflex educational model, in order to better serve the student veteran demographic and all students. In particular, student veteran responses coalesce around a focus on effectiveness and time management concerns, as many have families and other external obligations. As a result, student veterans simultaneously want more Hyflex educational options going forward, however they want Hyflex implementation strategies to be refined and executed better in the future with more long-term planning. Active duty and student veterans can serve vital roles in the engineering classroom, modeling appropriate communication strategies for traditional students as well as connecting their global knowledge with the course content, enriching all students' understanding. Faculty and traditional students can benefit from this unique demographic if they are aware of their skills and experiences. This paper presents some of the issues and concerns of active duty and veterans pursuing an engineering degree compared to their traditional student counterparts when institutions pivot to alternative instructional delivery, specifically Hyflex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 accommodation protocols at The Citadel allowed faculty and students affected by the virus to quickly implement video-based instruction. Extending student access to classroom lecture as recordings on the LMS is just another step toward streaming educational content, as YouTube has made possible for years. Video-based lecture technology also lowers the barriers to education, making connection more physically and financially accessible. After nearly three semesters of implemented video-based teaching protocols in place, students are seeing the value in remote learning contexts when in-person learning is not possible. This paper reports student perceptions of selected effective approaches to hybrid/hyflex learning, comparing student and faculty perceptions regarding its value and effectiveness at a largely residential institution. Faculty who taught remotely during the pandemic underwent continuous professional development at The Citadel in order to ensure successful academic experiences for both faculty and students. Faculty reported feeling significantly burdened with learning about this course delivery mode. Additionally, some faculty struggled with institutional compliance and regionally-approved best practices for instructional design. This paper examines some of the best practices and challenges for building and deploying a set of standards for online instruction, noting that while arduous, high fidelity instructional design creates value for students and faculty, both online and offline, with students appreciating readily accessible course materials and recorded lectures. Best practice recommendations are driven by synthesizing qualitative faculty feedback and Likert-scaled student survey data. Faculty and student survey results show that face-to-face learning is still the 'gold standard' for optimal learning opportunities, however, the pandemic has accelerated the build-out of hyflex course deliveries and created sustainable systems and instructional design standards for online learning. Student perceptions show that they identify and value selected unanticipated benefits to hyflex learning, despite faculty misgivings. This report presents this conflict of perceptions as an opportunity to be seized, and is part of a longer series of studies on student perceptions of learning effectiveness. Validation of results is preliminarily supported by similar protocols adopted at other institutions, and recordsetting successes at the Dean, Department Head, and Instructional Design-aid level. Going forward, as the pandemic is brought under control, the authors foresee students' expectations rising: video-recorded lectures and remote connection during live lecture no longer present unsurmountable technological barriers and they aid student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students, early-career engineers, and employers disagree on the relative importance of so-called 'soft skills' and communication in the context of internships and early hiring. This misunderstanding arises because students and companies misidentify each other's value systems. Students seeking internships are hesitant to approach company recruiters, thinking the companies are looking for someone technically proficient in a particular field. Companies understand that students have not completed their undergraduate curriculum and lack technical knowledge. However, companies are seeking students to develop into prospective long-term employees and value students' communication and professional skills over technical knowledge. Many industry partners of The Citadel specialize in proprietary products or support the nation's defense. For this reason, employers have no expectation that students or recent graduates will have technical knowledge in a specific domain. However, employers search for students who can listen, take direction, and deliver results. Comparing a counterbalanced, Likert-scaled survey of engineering students attending career networking events and a survey targeting over 50 employers, we find significant perception gaps in communication and relative student performance and preparedness for networking events. Identifying perception gaps, or blind spots, ensure our engineering graduates matriculate with career-readiness. While students' definitions of what constituted 'professional skills' were narrow, employers grouped nearly all tasking actions as communication-related or dependent on good communication. Similarly, students believed themselves to be well-prepared for networking events, and deemed their performance as adequate. Early-career engineers, too, underestimated the relative importance that employers attributed to communication skills, as well as the impact communication skills have on promotion and hiring decisions. These findings are well supported by employability research, where countries like Malaysia, India, and Japan have instituted educational policy initiatives to formalize industry partnerships as on-campus experiences. Identifying significant response differences with regard to the definition of professional skills, the importance of communication skills, and personal preparedness provides a unique dataset to guide continued curricular improvement throughout the engineering degree path. This report is part of a larger, mixed-methods study that seeks to close communication skill gaps in developing engineering students and create an ABET-informed approach to embedding communication skill scaffolding into a traditional 4-year engineering curriculum. Career Services and support personnel within the School of Engineering at The Citadel coordinated access to the industry partners that were surveyed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employers have long valued veteran employees for a variety of skills and qualities such as their ability to work on a team, mission oriented work ethic, and their technical expertise. Growing regional industries have looked upon The Citadel to meet some of their engineering needs through veteran graduates, but demand for engineers is increasing and outpacing the small veteran student population. Veteran enrollment in colleges and universities has increased in the past decades in part to the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. However, transitioning veterans from a military lifestyle and occupation to an academic lifestyle and civilian occupation can be a significant challenge for some. Connecting veteran students with the support they need is crucial to their continuing success, in the classroom and beyond. Their military experience often develops great skills and persistence, making them effective and well-regarded students. Faculty and traditional students at civilian or military colleges can benefit from these qualities. Once a veteran or active duty student has made contact and then a commitment to attend, there are a number of activities and processes employed both before they arrive and during their time on campus to retain them in engineering and graduate with an engineering degree as quickly as possible. The focus of these efforts are to create a culture of open communication with potential veterans and increase engagement of these students with faculty, engineering professionals, and peers to matriculate them into the engineering profession. The overall goal was met through an effective recruiting program and ensuring the right tools were in place for retention that allowed students to be a part of a dynamic and supportive educational environment inside and outside of the classroom. While each veteran or active duty student has different needs and challenges, all still need information and resources that will help them succeed as well as connect them to the campus community, so that they feel more fully part of the learning environment and can meet their educational goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the clear need for faculty training, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) developed and funded Project ExCEEd (Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) which is celebrating its twentieth year of existence. For the past two decades, 38 ExCEEd Teaching Workshops (ETW) have been held at six different universities. The program has 910 graduates from over 267 different U.S. and international colleges and universities. The ExCEEd effort has transformed from one that relied on the grass roots support of its participants to one that is supported and embraced by department heads and deans. This paper summarizes the history of Project ExCEEd, describes the content of the ETW, assesses its effectiveness, highlights changes in the program as a result of the assessment, and outlines the future direction of the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Citadel has a faculty development and training model (conference or workshop travel grants, research grants, presentation travel grants) that not only provides effective mentoring of new faculty, but reinvigorates senior faculty. The model uses the ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Workshop to mentor and enhance teaching effectiveness while providing faculty development funds to enhance external development opportunities, research, and research presentation by the faculty, staff, and students. The program has been used over the past five years and has dramatically enhanced the quality of education based on student assessment, but also has greatly increased the scholarship production of the faculty at a primarily teaching focused school. The data will be presented and analyzed with the result being best practices that can be used at most schools to improve teaching and scholarship production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every university works extremely hard at recruiting exceptional students. At The Citadel, the honors program has been doing that for over two decades. The honors program does not ensure a scholarship, but provides a curriculum that brings together the best students from programs across the college in honors courses (e.g., Honor 101 - English 101, Honors 103 - History 103, Honors 131 - Mathematics 131 (Calculus I), etc.). The program is supplemented with activities that strengthen a student's connection to the community through diversity, mentorship, and leadership opportunities. A number of these students receive full scholarships. Over the past year, the honors program was expanded to include discipline specific scholars programs and small disciplinary cohorts in order to assist in the recruitment and retention of exceptional students, specifically females and minorities in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). The STEM scholars program will launch in the Fall 2017, but has potential for application at other schools. Current honors and other program data will be presented, analyzed, and best practices summarized. These practices may be modified based on mathematics, science, and engineering departments working together to execute the first year of a STEM scholars program that integrates these program students into a single cohort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gifted Fourth and Fifth Grade students from Richland School District 2 conduct a field study (Active Learning Experiences in Resourceful Thinking, ALERT) at The Citadel every other year. The focus is for their students from 19 elementary schools who are part of a district-wide gifted and talented pullout program to experience STEM disciplines in a college environment to not only inform the future mathematics and science classes they have and will have, but also to begin the discussion on the importance of going to college and follow-on careers, especially in STEM disciplines. The School of Engineering and Science and Mathematics work together to provide four distinct one hour blocks of activities and interaction with discussion of how devices work (theory). The key focus is engineering and each student group of 25 students see two one hour blocks on engineering (civil and electrical). The students complete a reflection on the daylong experience and the teachers incorporate pictures of the activities the students experienced into future mathematics and science lesson plans to complete the learning circle by tying mathematics/science problems to their experiences. Many of these students decide to apply for academic magnet middle schools focused on STEM based on the success of the 4th and 5th grade integrated lesson/field trip curriculum to The Citadel. Assessment of curriculum changes based on the field trip, student reflective essays, and future attendance at middle and high school STEM magnets will demonstrate the importance of collaboration between universities and elementary and middle school programs (especially STEM focused programs) on engagement with STEM disciplines in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the need for civil engineers to develop solutions to society's infrastructure challenges, they must possess a deep understanding of engineering fundamentals so that they can tailor design solutions to meet growingly-complex constraints. Since research suggests that student conceptual development is enhanced through employment of engaging classroom practices, a variety of active pedagogies are being implemented in engineering education. Consequently, there is a need for assessment tools to monitor the learning outcomes of these educational interventions. Concept inventories have emerged as quick tools for examining conceptual understanding in a variety of engineering domains. While a concept inventory has been developed for fluid mechanics, it was designed for application in mechanical engineering classes. Thus, the goal of this project was to complete preliminary steps for creation of a civil engineering fluid mechanics concept inventory. Using an expert panel and student input, concept inventory items were systematically evaluated for applicability in civil engineering courses. The expert panel reviewed items using a modified Delphi-process, while student input and performance on the existing concept inventory were used to validate outcomes from the expert panel. Results generally concurred that topics related to fluid statics, pressure measurement, conservation of mass, Bernoulli's equation, and conservation of momentum were important for civil engineers. In contrast, compressible flow and boundary effects were generally classified as beyond the scope of a civil engineering course. In addition, participants suggested that additional questions related to viscous flow in pipes and open channel flow should be added to a future civil engineering fluid mechanics concept inventory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Citadel School of Engineering was challenged by the College President in 2011 to retain and grow the number of engineering students in respective program. The concept of increasing the number of engineering students thereby increasing the number of graduates was analyzed as part of strategic planning for the School of Engineering. Key indicators found during this study were increased marketing, preparedness of the incoming students, retention of those who arrive, and the addition of new programs. This paper will only focus on the retention of those students who arrive each year as freshman. The School of Engineering used a simple suggestion by one of its faculty concerning a well-known concept such as SI, supplemental instruction, to improve retention of engineering freshman by nearly 20%. This paper will establish the conditions prior to the implementation of SI, the challenges in implementing and sustaining SI, and the retention results that are greatly influenced by SI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A student scholarship and enrichment program was established to help address pervasive problems of underrepresented minority, female and socioeconomically disadvantaged students enrolled in civil engineering degree programs and graduates serving in the civil engineering profession. The program is administered in the civil engineering department at The Citadel (Charleston, SC) and is supported through a grant from the National Science Foundation's Scholarships in Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (NSF, S-STEM) program. The program, Excellence in Civil Engineering Leadership for South Carolina (ExCEL-SC), provides scholarships to qualified students, within target demographic groups, who are pursuing a Bachelors of Science degree in civil engineering. Equally important, the ExCEL-SC program furnishes a variety of specific student support services focused on improving retention, developing principled leaders, and preparing graduates for successful careers. This paper presents an overview of program components being used to provide student enrichment, describes student cohort recruitment and selection criteria, presents initial statewide recruitment plan, tabulates student cohort demographics and freshman retention data, summarizes scholarship awards and on-going enrichment activities, presents initial ExCEL-SC program results, and summarizes corresponding program adjustments. Student performance data is analyzed and discussed with respect to trends and characteristics of successful and unsuccessful students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the case of the Citadel, a four-year Military College located in Charleston, South Carolina, for developing a project management degree housed in a School of Engineering. Particular focus is given on making the project appealing to working professionals. Topics covered include the courses offered like technical project management and applications of quality management, growth of the program, and the Citadel Master of Science in Project Management Advisory Tool.