The real-world lessons and opportunities afforded by the competition, however, remained the same.

“It was pretty much like my senior capstone design project condensed into one weekend,” said Erin Bereyso, S.M.ASCE, a second-time Student Days attendee. “It was a lot of work but a lot of fun too.”

CI Student Days is a summer staple of the ASCE calendar, typically happening over the course of a long weekend as an in-person gathering of some of ASCE’s best and brightest civil engineering students for a series of presentations, networking events, and the team competition.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, last year’s event focused on webinars and did not include a team challenge. But this summer, with more planning time and a year’s experience of organizing virtual events, the program committee – chaired by Gabrielle Grompone, EIT, MSCE, A.M. ASCE – was able to develop a Student Days schedule that included a fully online heavy civil challenge and special features that took advantage of the virtual platform.

“Last year was like the beginning of being online,” said Jose Wu, S.M.ASCE, another second-time Student Days attendee. “I can say with certainty, nobody was used to the new normal yet. But probably because we have a little more experience now, this year was easier to work in the virtual setting.”

The 2021 Student Days featured three weeks of webinars (three per week complete with assignments for the student attendees) on topics including proposals, scheduling, construction management and value engineering, and estimating, among others.

The competition split the attendees into teams, requiring them over the course of about 72 hours to develop a written and oral real-world construction project proposal that considers local laws and regulations, surrounding residential and commercial areas, and traffic effects.

There were even planned curveballs thrown at the teams midway through the weekend.

“You have to build a proposal, but they keep giving you new information and circumstances. What if this happened? Or what would you do if this changed?” Wu said.

“That was definitely challenging. But it can happen in real life – suddenly the client wants to change something. It was very interesting, but I’m glad they did it that way.”

Bereyso, a 2021 ASCE New Face of Civil Engineering college honoree, starts graduate school next week at Virginia Tech, studying environmental engineering. She served as one of the team captains at Student Days and won the award for overall best speaker during the presentation portion of the competition.

“I was the only person in the Student Days competition who didn’t have any specifically construction background,” Bereyso said. “So that was intimidating going into it. But there were definitely things that I was able to take away from it that apply not only to construction but to project management in general.

“Developing those kinds of skills – like communication, especially in today’s virtual society – it was really good experience.”

And Wu, also a team captain, navigated the challenges of managing his group online over different time zones. His team, dubbed “Lancer,” earned the 2021 Student Days team challenge championship.

“I think whether we won or not, the team was still be proud of the work because we gave our best,” Wu said. “It was more about having the experience; that was the rewarding thing.”

He added, laughing a little, though, “It was still a nice feeling, winning the competition.”

Learn more about CI Student Days.

The post Annual Construction Institute Student Days presents real-world challenges, opportunities appeared first on Civil Engineering Source.

Maybe it was a suggested approach toward a certain homework assignment. Or even just a short comment left on an essay.

Civil engineers have been sharing on ASCE Collaborate the best advice they’ve ever received from a teacher or professor. With the new school year starting, it’s a great time to look at some of the highlights from the conversation (and be sure to log in and contribute your own memories):

Horacio Galicia-Gaona Ing., S.E., M.ASCE

Project manager, ARGA Constructora SA de CV, Morelia, Mexico

“Just seeing this topic … returns me to the first grade of civil engineering studies at my alma mater Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, in the class ‘Civil Engineering in Mexico,’ taught by the then-Faculty Director Ing. José Muñoz Chávez, who, with his singular style, in his class told us: ‘Mathematics and physics are a science but … engineering is an art,’ to refer to the fact that engineers must be like artists to make our work something that helps the welfare of society.

“I remember that in those moments I felt inspired by that class to take advantage of my time at the university. Now I always try to keep in mind that my role as a civil engineer is to make my work contribute (to people’s) well-being.”

James Williams, P.E., M.ASCE

Principal, owner, POA&M Structural Engineering PLC, Yorktown, Virginia

“To paraphrase: ‘Attention to detail on the simple aspects (project reports, etc.) provides the promise that the same attention to detail was applied to the more difficult aspects.’

“I pass this along to clients following some visual inspections of structures, structural assemblies, and structural elements, particularly where some general contractors are involved. If they are not going to utilize professional standards of care (and follow the design plans or minimum code requirements) for the structural items that one can actually see, the promise that the highest standards of care are utilized in those structural elements that one cannot see are in question.”

Luis R. Vásquez-Varela, Aff.M.ASCE

Head of the Civil Engineering Department, Universidad Nacional de Colombia – Manizales Branch

“When studying different pavement design methods, my teacher used to say, ‘There are no good or bad design methods; there must be good information about traffic, subgrade, and materials. That makes the difference.’”

Dennis Wilson, P.E., M.ASCE

Associate project manager, Transportation Engineering, Folsom, Pennsylvania

“The best piece of advice, or rather mindset, that was taught to me by a professor came during the preparation of my senior design project, and more specifically, our final presentation.

“The advice was to always refer to ourselves during the presentation as ‘we’ rather than ‘I.’ For example, ‘We designed this portion of the project to solve this problem,’ rather than ‘I designed.’ It’s a simple concept, but one that can be very impactful.

“The point was to instill that sense of team and community into our engineering work. Though we all may work on individual pieces of the puzzle for (sometimes very long) periods of time, it’s important to remember the big picture and that we won’t get there without the help of everybody involved.

“I have carried this with me into my career, and always try to keep in mind that when working on an engineering solution, we are all on the same team working toward the same goal, even if we all may have different roles or specialties in how we get to that end goal. Even when working for a client, although the relationship can sometimes become more adversarial depending on things going well or poorly, we are still working toward the same goal, and we are on the same team, and I find it to be important to convey it as such when discussing the project with those outside of the team.

“I thank Dr. Oyler at the University of Pittsburgh for that advice.”

Join the conversation on ASCE Collaborate.

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The two organizations plan to run regional competitions at ASCE student symposia throughout North America with a national championship scheduled for May. The groups previously worked together on the competition but separated three years ago. The new partnership runs for an initial term of five years.

“With both AISC and ASCE committed to promoting safe, sustainable, and innovative practices and technologies, we are pleased to renew this partnership and join forces in developing, educating, and motivating the next generation of design and construction professionals,” said ASCE Executive Director Tom Smith.

“Our vision for all ASCE student symposia includes a portfolio of competitions and professional development opportunities that provide exceptional value to our student members. The steel bridge competition is a popular event, and our students will be thrilled to see it added to the symposia program.”

“This new agreement also provides a foundation for ASCE to build upon the successful North American competition through steel bridge competitions in other global regions,” Smith continued. “More than ever, civil engineering is a global practice. What better way to advance our profession than to promote global exchange at the collegiate level?” 

The organizations severed their longtime steel bridge partnership in 2018, meaning that the steel bridge competition was not an official ASCE student activity during the past three school years. During that time, ASCE created new Society-wide student competitions and built a new conference structure to better connect students with Society leaders and professional development opportunities.

The upcoming school year marks the launch of ASCE’s student symposia, which will now include the steel bridge competition in addition to the recently created events and competitions.

“Personally, I am very excited that our two organizations renewed their partnership,” said Scott Schiff, Ph.D., M.ASCE, a professor and undergraduate program director in the civil engineering department at Kansas State University and chair of the ASCE Committee on Student Conferences and Competitions.

“The Committee on Student Conferences and Competitions, with the support of the Committee on Student Members and the Board of Direction, has been actively engaged in reimagining student symposia to create flagship events that appeal to and provide exceptional value to ASCE student members.

“Having this renewed partnership allows the student steel bridge competition to be offered along with other established Society-wide competitions that span across multiple civil engineering disciplines. All these competitions provide opportunities for students to showcase their civil engineering knowledge, creativity, and ingenuity, as well as demonstrate teamwork, leadership, and communication skills.”

The student steel bridge competition began in 1987, challenging student teams to develop a scale-model steel bridge to fit a given hypothetical environment. Each team must determine how to design and fabricate a bridge and then plan for an efficient assembly under timed construction at the competition. Bridges are then load-tested and weighed.

The competition has long been a hallmark of the ASCE student experience and a formative learning experience for generations of civil engineers.

Tom Miller, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, associate professor of civil and construction engineering at Oregon State University and the school’s steel bridge team advisor for decades, remembers how the educational value of steel bridge showed up during his team’s very first competition nearly 30 years ago.

The Oregon State students were concerned that their bridge was too heavy and would take too long to construct, so they plotted drastic action.

“The judges that year had removed the lateral load test from the contest,” Miller said. “So, our team unanimously decided to remove the bracing of the top chord, seeing that as its main purpose.”

It seemed like a good fix until …

“As the bridge was loaded with the 2,500 pounds, the top chords of the arched truss buckled under the compression forces, and the bridge collapsed,” Miller said.

“As one student, Karl Birky, said, ‘I learned more in that few seconds when the bridge collapsed than in any of Dr. Miller’s classes!’”

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Researchers at Ohio State collected views from a balanced panel of experts from academia, the private sector, and the public sector, in order to address three questions specific to transportation engineers in next 5-10 years. Firstly, how will employment opportunities evolve? Secondly, how will the work evolve? And lastly, what topics should be covered in graduate-level curricula to help students develop correct skillset?

The authors, Meg E. West; Andre L. Carrel; and Rachel L. Kajfez, used qualitative techniques to gain a clear understanding of each interviewee’s views on the future of transportation engineering. Their paper, “Future Skill Requirements in Transportation Engineering and Implications for Graduate Curriculum Design”, published in the Journal of Civil Engineering Education, will assist faculty in transportation engineering master’s programs to prepare transportation engineering students for their future careers.

Read more about this study, and the recommendations for academia in the abstract below, or by reading the full paper in the ASCE Library.

Abstract

The transportation engineering field is currently experiencing a profound transformation driven by technological evolution, which highlights the importance of preparing students for the types of careers that will be available to them in the future. Although transportation engineering programs in the United States are typically at the graduate level, the majority of existing research has focused on undergraduate courses. This study focuses on master’s-level transportation engineering curricula, with the goal of investigating how changes in employment opportunities and day-to-day work responsibilities of transportation engineers over the coming 5–10 years will inform the topics that graduate-level curricula should include to set students up for future success. The study consists of in-depth interviews with a range of academics and practitioners and subsequent analyses of interview transcripts using thematic analysis methods. Seven themes were derived, pertaining to three categories: future opportunities, identified skills, and program structure observations. The three thematic categories are not independent, and their interactions with one another hold information that can lead to recommendations for the design of transportation engineering master’s programs.

Read the full paper in the ASCE Library: https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)EI.2643-9115.0000042

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This article first appeared in the July/August 2021 issue of Civil Engineering.

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Taught for the past six years by Allen C. Estes, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, professor and head of the Department of Architectural Engineering at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California, and John W. Lawson, P.E., S.E., M.ASCE, a professor in the same department, the course helps students develop a sense of community with those in their major and sets the tone for what comes next academically.

As with most institutions, learning at Cal Poly transitioned from in person to remote to a hybrid form of the two in the last year. This past fall, the course had to make a rapid transition to a hybrid format, taking hands-on exercises and reworking them to accommodate those who were in person and those who were remote. Estes and Lawson answered questions for Civil Engineering about the course and the transition:

Briefly describe ARCE 106. What are the learning objectives for this course? 
AE: By the end of the course, students will know the various systems that a building comprises and be able to explain how these systems are integrated. They will also be able to describe the roles and responsibilities of the various professions involved in creating a building. 

JL: Because our architectural engineering major has a primary emphasis on structural engineering concepts, the course also includes lectures on concrete, masonry, steel, and timber materials. This provides real-world context prior to their coursework in the theory-based statics and mechanics of materials courses. 

What are some of the topics you cover in ARCE 106? 
JL: Making an analogy between a building and the human body, the course is divided into the skeleton (building structure), skin (cladding and architectural features), respiratory/cardiovascular/neurological (mechanical/electrical/plumbing), and feet (foundations, soil, site civil). Each week is devoted to some aspect of these building systems. 

The associated hands-on activities complement the lectures and include construction of arches and catenaries, installation and testing of concrete anchor bolts, nailing timber connections, welding and testing steel, creating and testing trusses in the digital fabrication lab, measuring drainage patterns, researching failure case studies, wiring electrical circuits, and a K’nexercise design-bid-build competition using K’nex toys. 

Why is this course an important element in the ARCE curriculum? 
AE: All freshmen at Cal Poly are accepted into a specific major with the expectation that focused coursework commences early. Freshmen are scheduled into architecture, calculus, and physics courses, and without ARCE 106, they would likely not feel any connection to their home department and its faculty. Many would lack a basic understanding of their chosen major and its focus on the structural engineering profession. This course occurs during their first quarter in college, provides an initial impression, and helps set the tone for what lies ahead. 

During the pandemic, each week there was a Zoom lecture and a hands-on activity. What were some challenges you encountered and how did you overcome them? 
AE: The Zoom lecture was an adequate substitute for the weekly in-person lecture, during which the 80-100 ARCE freshmen were together in a large lecture hall. The ARCE program rarely has class sizes this large, but one of the course objectives is for the ARCE freshmen to develop a sense of community with their cohort, and putting them all together in one room had some advantages. The small-group exercises were replaced by poll questions, which forced some active participation and allowed us to take attendance for this 8 a.m. class. 

The challenges came with the hands-on activities. The class was divided into four activity sections not to exceed 24 students each. We conducted the activities in person and provided virtual accommodation for those students who could not attend. Each activity was very different, so each week required a novel solution. And each activity required a different social distancing protocol. The freshmen all live in the dorms, and if a student on a floor tested positive, the entire floor was placed on quarantine. So we did not know from week to week who was coming to class. This made the assignment of activity teams more difficult, especially if we wanted the teams to prepare something in advance. We overcame the challenges by creating a new solution each week that best accommodated the activity, learning and using the technologies available and conducting rehearsals. 

How was learning conducted for those who didn’t attend the activities in person? 
AE: It varied. For the arches and catenaries activity, we used a smartphone as a camera and tracked one in-person team as they went through the various stations. Those students participating synchronously became part of the team being tracked on the camera. Those who could not attend synchronously viewed the recorded Zoom session in an asynchronous manner.

For the welding activity, we made a video of one team welding, one team breaking the samples, and the instructor posing the questions on the American Institute of Steel Construction steel structure connections. The video was edited on Screencast-O-Matic, and the virtual students completed the exercise asynchronously using the data obtained by the group in the video.

Two of the activities — an introductory presentation and a failure case study report — were conducted synchronously for each activity section, with students sharing their screens for their presentations. For the K’nexercise, the students at home were able to bid the projects synchronously and used the average of the data from the groups who were able to construct the structure in class. 

JL: For the site drainage activity, I tried to get the virtual students to engage with their immediate environment. Students who attended in person identified watershed areas, flow directions, and relevant catch basins on campus. And in order to engage those attending virtually, their assignment involved a similar exercise on the property where they reside. It was quite apparent that many had fun exploring their home’s unique landform in a manner not previously considered. 

What worked? What will you change for the fall? 
JL: We are scheduled to return to in-person classes in the fall, so we hope that these measures will not be needed. One course modification that worked was using the vacant digital fabrication laboratory (known as the DFAB) to create trusses from fiberboard using the laser cutter. Typically, students compete with others on campus to individually access the laser cutters to create their truss pieces prior to class. Under COVID restrictions, DFAB was open only by prior special arrangements, and in response, we took the entire lab section to the DFAB during class hours to cut the truss pieces and modified the exercise accordingly. 

AE: The culminating event for the course is a three-week role-playing exercise that illustrates the role of the architect, project manager, and contractor in the design-bid-build project delivery method. Restricted use of facilities and after-hours access to the K’nex pieces caused us to reduce the exercise to a single class period. The learning objectives of the exercise were not fully met, and if we do this again in the fall, we would try some additional modifications. 

What were the biggest lessons learned in switching to a hybrid format? 
AE: The virtual experience can work seamlessly for large enrollment lecture courses where the students are already largely passive and there is little interaction with the instructors. In fact, the virtual experience can be better because it is recorded and can be viewed later by students who did not absorb all the material during class either because they got distracted, the pace was too fast, or they were not able to attend. The virtual experience is a less acceptable substitute when the class sizes are small, student-faculty interaction is a key part of the course, or the students are engaged in hands-on activities that require supplies, equipment, or close supervision. 

JL: Converting lectures and demonstrations was very time-consuming, as was learning the logistics of Zoom videoconferencing with document cameras, online submissions, exams, and office hours. I can honestly say I worked twice as hard this last year than previous years trying to deliver high-quality teaching. Keeping the virtual students engaged was key but challenging. You have a captive audience in the classroom but not when they are home. I learned that creative ideas must be used to reach out to virtual students so that they look forward to each class. 

What was the most fun/successful activity despite the restrictions? 
JL: We have surveyed the students on their favorite activities over the six years the course has been in effect and used the results to make changes to the least favorite activities. Last fall, the drainage pattern activity got the highest rating from those students taking the course virtually because they were able to participate fully from home and explore in a context they are most familiar with — literally their own backyard. For those participating in person, they felt the wiring of the electrical circuits was the most fun despite the need for mandatory face masks and face shields due to their work in close proximity. Although face shields often fogged up and the additional masks made communication difficult, they were thrilled to enjoy a brief return to close collaboration with their fellow students.

This is a freshmen-level course. Do you have any data on how many students continued in the engineering/architecture track? 
AE: Yes. Our data revealed an average loss of around 20% of our students to other majors, which was another reason for developing this course. After six years of running this course, that attrition rate has unfortunately not decreased, but at least a student changing majors is making a more informed decision. 

How is ethics tied into the course? 
JL: The fall schedule has changed repeatedly over the years, but it usually results in a partial week with an extra lecture. We use that opportunity to introduce the freshmen to a profession, some aspects of professional responsibility, and the canons of the ASCE Code of Ethics. We introduce the principle of safeguarding the public during the anchor bolt activity when the prescribed strengths in the manufacturer’s literature are shown to be significantly less than our test results, indicating an implied factor of safety. The study of building system failures and the behavior of those involved allows the instructor to connect the discussion back to professional ethics. 

Is there anything you would like to say to instructors who may be struggling with the challenges of online content delivery? 
JL: It was obvious to me that the online delivery format is inferior to the student’s in-person classroom experience. Universities may now attempt to leverage this virtual format experiment into a road map for increasing faculty efficiencies in the future with larger course enrollments. Those of us who have now taught both ways can objectively provide input to this possible trend. In the meantime, devise creative ways to engage students who find themselves in their room most of the day. Create assignments that draw upon their room, the attic, the garage, the kitchen, the road out front, or materials they might find in a drawer or pantry. If the amount of course content has to suffer a bit but the engagement is increased, that might be a fair trade-off. 

What do you want your teaching legacy to be? 
AE: I think my legacy will be determined by the effect I have had on the students I’ve had the privilege of teaching. Henry Adams famously stated, ‘A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.’ The problem is that you often can’t identify which students you have influenced the most. So, the only solution is to love them all! 

JL: We can all remember our most inspiring teachers, and they usually had one thing in common: They found unique ways to awaken our curiosity and keep us engaged. Robert Frost said, ‘I am not a teacher, but an awakener,’ and I try to let this guide me too. I strive to awaken my students, and this pandemic has challenged my approaches in a virtual environment. 

An abridged version of this article first appeared in the July/August 2021 issue of Civil Engineering.

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This weekend when the team competes in the 2021 Society-wide Concrete Canoe Competition, Youngstown State will field the competition’s first all-female concrete canoe team.

“This experience can show young girls that they are capable of doing anything they want,” said Youngstown State team member Emma Minamyer, already aware of her team’s potential status as role models to K-12 students. “It also teaches young girls who are not traditionally exposed to the field of engineering what it is all about.”

In 2020, several ASCE events were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition. But this year, things are a little bit different. The competition has gone virtual and is being hosted by ASCE and the University of Wisconsin–Platteville as part of the ASCE 2021 Virtual Concrete Canoe Competition+, June 25-27.

While the circumstances behind this decision were not ideal, it gave way to new opportunities for the teams competing. Prime example – the Youngstown State University all-female team.

“In a normal year, we would need males for some of the races. However, the virtual format presented this opportunity without penalty,” Minamyer said.

The virtual format means there won’t be any races at all. Instead, teams will be judged on their oral presentations, technical proposals, and enhanced focus-area reports.

All these changes didn’t keep the YSU concrete canoe team from competing. In fact, recruitment at the beginning of the year was pretty typical. Specifically creating an all-female concrete canoe team wasn’t a priority. It was simply about students coming together to create something that could represent their own strength and endurance through an uncertain year. Once the team was formed, things just fell into place and by chance, all the members were female.

“An all-girls team created a more comfortable environment for team members to gain experience while voicing their opinions and ideas for the project,” Minamyer said.

The virtual format also helped the team improve their communication skills and learn how to better adapt to unique situations – two critical skills needed to succeed in the competition and the profession.

But the path to victory would not be an easy one. Most team members were new to the competition. And even more challenging was the virtual format itself. Not having the opportunity to build a physical canoe lowered the team’s motivation.

“We thought we would go to another university for the regional event, and the students would enjoy the networking opportunities with other students. But that didn’t happen,” said Anwarul Islam, faculty advisor and professor at Youngstown State University.

“We could not go to the lake and compete. The students like to go out, see their canoes, and compare them to what the others [teams] created.”

Despite these challenges, the team forged on and prevailed at regionals. To make things even more memorable, their canoe – named “Malice Striker” and inspired by Viking lore and Norse mythology – secured the win at the last-ever Ohio Valley Student Conference. In 2022, the competition tides will shift following ASCE’s decision to realign student conferences to better fit with the Society’s geographic region boundaries.

With their regional win, the team joins their predecessors in YSU’s own version of Valhalla. And as a part of a small school, this is a huge triumph for the entire YSU village.

The university’s long line of competition wins has garnered a lot of interest and pride in the local community, from widespread media coverage to YSU’s use of winning canoes as a recruiting tool for high school students.

Back in 2015, several civil engineering companies created Civil Engineering Night at YSU, an event providing students with the opportunity to network and fundraise for the concrete canoe competition. Since then, the event has spotlighted the students and their achievements before civil engineering professionals, notable university officials, and even the Youngstown mayor.

And now that they’ve left their mark at YSU, there’s only a couple of things left for the 2021 team. First, make a splash at the national competition, just not in the literal sense. Second, dive into the profession and do the same.

“My advice to them is to get involved – with students, professionals, the community – and make an impact,” said Islam. “This is the biggest opportunity to make some impact. You cannot grow alone. If you want to grow, you have to grow with other people around you.”

The ASCE Foundation supports the ASCE 2021 Virtual Concrete Canoe Competition+, along with the Workshop for Student Chapter Leaders and Student Conferences, providing civil engineering students with hands-on learning experience and leadership opportunities. To support programs like these, visit https://www.ascefoundation.org/education-fund.

The post First all-female concrete canoe team ready for Society-level competition appeared first on Civil Engineering Source.

ASCE is seeking comments on the latest draft version of the ABET Civil Engineering Program Criteria – a checklist that every university and college civil engineering program must follow to be accredited.

In short, these criteria determine how and what civil engineering students learn.

“These students are our future colleagues. This is about their preparation,” said Wayne Bergstrom, Ph.D., P.E., D.GE, F.ASCE, a principal engineer for Bechtel in Reston, Virginia, former ABET president, and chair of ASCE’s Civil Engineering Program Criteria Task Committee.

“The criteria represent the expectation of what future civil engineering students will be exposed to and what they should be prepared to address as they enter the profession.”

ASCE members can view the draft program criteria as a series of 19 discussions in ASCE Collaborate and comment on specific elements of the criteria or provide more general feedback.

The Civil Engineering Program Criteria Task Committee – including practitioners and academics – met over several months to review the current ABET criteria, work to better align it with the third edition of ASCE’s Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge, and propose this new draft.

Members have until Aug. 15 to submit their comments on the proposed program criteria.

“We are seeking as broad a perspective and as large a range of input as we can from a wide cross-section of our profession,” Bergstrom said. “It’s so we can see that these students are appropriately prepared for not only working with us in the future but also for their own benefit as they develop into the leaders of the future.”

Learn more and comment at ASCE Collaborate.

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She graduated this month from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and was starting to make plans for her life’s next phase – work and graduate school.

Then the message came in. The UH Mānoa concrete canoe team had qualified as a wildcard for the ASCE Society-wide competition next month. And just like that, Takahashi and her fellow teammates are happily back together.

“I think we were shock because receiving the wildcard was up in the air,” Takahashi, S.M.ASCE, said. “But after we got over the shock, we were really excited, and we are looking forward to representing our college and all of the hard work that our team and past captains have put into this project.”

UH Mānoa is one of 23 schools that qualified to compete in the 2021 Society-wide concrete canoe competition, hosted online by ASCE and the University of Wisconsin–Platteville as part of the ASCE 2021 Virtual Concrete Canoe Competition+, a weekend of student activities and competitions June 25-27.

Eighteen schools qualified automatically this spring by winning the concrete canoe competitions at their respective student conferences. The five wildcard teams were selected randomly among schools that met certain benchmarks for student chapter excellence.

The UH Mānoa students were thrilled to have finished second in the concrete canoe competition at the Pacific Southwest Conference. The wildcard draw is a bonus.

“”It’s exciting to see how far we can go, how far we can push ourselves, and what we can learn from the other teams,” Takahashi said. “I think what really helped us this year was stepping outside of the box and reevaluating how to run this project during these unprecedented times.”

The ASCE 2020 Concrete Canoe Competition was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s will be the first in a virtual format. While this means canoes won’t race, teams will be judged on their oral presentations, technical proposals, and enhanced focus area reports that allow them to add an inventive element that adds value to the overall project.

The UH Mānoa concrete canoe boasts a name and theme befitting the challenging year all the students have persevered through.

“We named it ‘Hōkūpaʻa,’ which is North Star,” said Takahashi, who also thanked both the chapter’s current faculty advisor Oceana Francis, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, and former longtime adviser Roger Babcock, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE.

“We thought it was really fitting for this year, because there were many rough waters through the pandemic. But what’s important is keeping the integrity of the project and the momentum for future years. So we were always looking for that North Star to keep us grounded and keep ourselves on track despite everything that happened around us.”

The qualifying teams for the Society-wide Concrete Canoe Competition are:

• Clemson University (Carolinas Conference)
• Arkansas State University (Deep South Conference)
• Rashtreeya Vidyalaya College of Engineering (India Conference)
• New York University Tandon School of Engineering (Metropolitan Conference)
• Drexel University (Mid-Atlantic Conference)
• Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Mid-Continent Conference)
• Tongji University (Mid-Pacific Conference)
• University of Iowa (Midwest Conference)
• University of Connecticut (New England Conference)
• University of Michigan (North Central Conference)
• Youngstown State University (Ohio Valley Conference)
• University of Washington (Pacific Northwest Conference)
• University of California, Los Angeles (Pacific Southwest Conference)
• Colorado School of Mines (Rocky Mountain Conference)
• University of Florida (Southeast Conference)
• Tecnológico de Monterrey (Texas-Mexico Conference)
• University at Buffalo, SUNY (Upstate New York Conference)
• Virginia Tech (Virginias Conference)
• Georgia Institute of Technology (Wildcard, Carolinas Conference)
• Western Kentucky University (Wildcard, Ohio Valley Conference)
• University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (Wildcard, Pacific Southwest Conference)
• University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (Wildcard, Southeast Conference)
• Texas A&M University (Wildcard, Texas-Mexico Conference)

The ASCE 2021 Virtual Concrete Canoe Competition+ also features the ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition and the ASCE Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute Surveying Competition.

The qualifying teams for the Sustainable Solutions Competition are:

• Louisiana Tech University (Deep South Conference)
• Bradley University (Great Lakes Conference)
• Bannari Amman Institute of Technology (India Conference)
• Hohai University (Mid-Pacific Conference)
• University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (Southeast Conference)
• University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (Texas-Mexico Conference)

The qualifying teams for the UESI Surveying Competition are:

• University of Georgia (Carolinas Conference)
• Christian Brothers University (Deep South Conference)
• Bradley University (Great Lakes Conference)
• Rashtreeya Vidyalaya College of Engineering (India Conference)
• Cincinnati State Technical and Community College (Ohio Valley Conference)
• California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Pacific Southwest Conference)
• Colorado School of Mines (Rocky Mountain Conference)
• University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (Southeast Conference)
• University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (Texas-Mexico Conference)
• Fairmont State University (Virginias Conference)

The post ASCE 2021 Virtual Concrete Canoe Competition+ fields of qualifying schools set, ready for June appeared first on Civil Engineering Source.

If that’s the case, then civil engineers are the artists. They are responsible for creating the built environment around us. Therefore, engineers must expand their vision of the world to discover innovative solutions and build structures that will advance society.

But how can civil engineers integrate more creativity into their work?

Oliver Broadbent takes a rigorous approach to enhancing creativity in civil engineering. He believes that creative thinking is just as critical to the profession’s success as analytical and technical thinking.

Broadbent, director at Constructivist Ltd, is determined to help engineers and architects build creativity and develop innovative approaches to engineering education. He will serve as the keynote speaker at the Structures Virtual 2021 Conference, held June 2-4.

He spoke recently with the Civil Engineering Source about his work:

Civil Engineering Source: What role does innovation and creativity play in civil engineering?

Broadbent: I think creativity is the overlooked part of the civil engineering process. Quite a lot of our time in training is dedicated to thinking about how to deliver ideas. Things like analysis, construction and logistics, material properties and how to reach the performance requirement, and how to do things safely, are what I would call “convergent areas of thinking,” or “convergent activities.”

But what I think is important is before you can build something, you need to know what to build. And there is a whole series of thought processes that go into that first divergent part – the bit where we try to work out what the brief could and should be. That is the creative thinking that’s important in whatever it is we’re building. And it’s often that part which is missed in our education and missed in the processes of a lot of civil engineering projects.

Now just because our work might not always be the most glamorous, doesn’t mean the work doesn’t need creativity. Creativity is about developing solutions in response to a particular stimulus.

Every project is a stimulus. We could just deliver each project in the way we’ve done it before. But if we want to tackle new problems, such as climate crisis and the ecological crisis, we need to think of new ways to do things. Each problem we’re going to face gives us an opportunity to think about it differently, and that’s where we need creative thought. We know that we can’t use the old solutions to provide the civil engineering infrastructure that we had before. We need new thinking, and it’s going to be creative tools that enable us to get to those.

So, creativity and innovation have an absolutely important part to play in civil engineering. But I should also say that it’s not just at the blank canvas end of the project. It could be any time there’s a new aspect of the project to deliver. We could be looking at it and thinking, “How could we do this differently? How could we do this in a way that meets the deliverables but maybe meets them in a better way?”

Source: Why should engineers prioritize creative thinking as much as technical and analytical thinking?

Broadbent: I should start by saying technical thinking is, remains, and will always be a very important part of what civil engineers do. It’s important that what we build is robust and safe. It’s important that what we build is resilient, and it’s well built and is an efficient use of our resources. All those things are important to the analytical processes, technical processes, and technical considerations.

But I go back to this point – before we think about how to build something, we need to decide what to build. We are entering a time of unprecedented change in our built environment. 

The construction and built environment sector is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases, and the use of resources has a huge impact on our ecological footprint. We need to think creatively about how we meet our needs as humans and how we meet our obligation to help nature regenerate after we’ve done so much to deplete it. We need to raise that challenge by developing new ideas and to think creatively about how we could use old ideas.

The formulation I use is that an idea is really a connection between two existing elements that we already understand. So, creative thinking could be as much about taking something from one context and applying it in another, as it is about coming up with something that is completely new.

But there are a lot of factors limiting our thinking as humans. We have biases that get us to prioritize and prefer the thing we understand rather than the things that we don’t know. There is the phenom of cognitive ease, as described by Daniel Kahneman in the book Thinking Fast and Slow, where the brain prefers to think about things it already understands.

If we imagine the transformation of infrastructure or cities, it’s quite hard for us to think about a better world, even though a better world would be possible. Even though healthier streets, healthier neighborhoods, more resilient communities should be possible, because we are so used to seeing what’s around us, it’s quite hard to imagine what a difference could be. That is why we need creative tools to lift us out of that space, lift us out of that familiar, and enable us to start experimenting. 

Source: Why do you think integrating creative practices in civil engineering can be a challenge?

Broadbent: I think there are three reasons: our training, the culture of project management, and the idea of creative surplus and our lack of it. 

First, we’re not formally trained as engineers to think creatively. We spend a lot of time doing analysis, but we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how to develop an idea and what might be the rationale for what makes it a good or bad idea.

This contrasts from architects, who spend a lot of time being trained in how to formulate an idea, how to justify their thinking, how to make a case for it out of a vast array of possibilities, and why their particular idea is the right one. They’re trained in how to develop a philosophy around the idea and how to convince others of it. We don’t have that in engineering so that’s one of the barriers. 

Second is the culture of project management, which is very good for the delivery of projects because we’re focused on external motivators, like time and budgets. But research shows that is not conducive to creative thinking. Creative thinking needs more intrinsic motivation and interest in the problem. We need to create time in the project space that is not managed on project management terms but on creative thinking terms.

The third is the concept of creative surplus. Like financial surplus, creative surplus is the kind of excess energy that we can invest in thinking creatively. For me, there are two components of creative surplus: attention and time.

I think not just in civil engineering, but across many professions, we have a deficit of attention because of all the distractions – meetings, popups on our phones, constant news, constant inputs. These distract us, and we don’t have as much opportunity to focus on a problem.

As for time, we are not a very profitable sector. In the U.K., a 2% to 3% profit on annual turnover is what the engineering companies or construction industry can expect to make.

When we hear about industries, for example, Google and its famous 10% – when Google engineers are given 10% time to develop their own projects – we don’t have that level of surplus in our industry. So, it’s quite difficult for people to make time to think creatively.

Source: What inspires your focus on fostering creativity within the profession?

Broadbent: The potential for civil engineering to continue to transform and improve the quality of life of humans across the world at the same time as supporting and regenerating our ecosystems has never been greater. And I think there’s a huge amount in our profession that we could achieve, but we need to be able to break free from our existing thinking and start to imagine what could be done.

How could we create a town’s infrastructure, transport, and buildings that would work within our ecological parameters? How can we work with the materials that we know, the materials we haven’t discovered yet, and the materials we’ve forgotten about, to imagine new structures, new buildings, new ways of living? How can we conceive towns that are healthy and improve our quality of life when we live in them?

All that requires creative thinking because it’s new. It’s not what we have already. We must imagine something different. There’s never been a more important time for engineers to have those creative thinking tools. And there’s never been a more important time for us to actually think about how to build our capacity to think creatively in our profession. That’s what keeps me coming back to it day in, day out.

I’d also like to add that creative thinking is fun. It’s a “yes” space where we say, “what if” or “what could we do.” We, as engineers, spend a lot of time thinking about whether something is achievable or not. But when you’re in that creative space, you’re opening up possibilities, you allow new things in, and see what could be done. And that’s an exciting space. It’s an inspiration. It’s an uplifting space to be in and work in.

Learn more about the Structures Virtual 2021 Conference and register today.

The post Taking a rigorous approach to creativity in civil engineering appeared first on Civil Engineering Source.

Their goal is to build a solid foundation in sustainability and infrastructure that will carry students through the rest of their education as well as equip them with the knowledge and skills to fully understand the environmental, economic, and social implications of the work they will be doing as practicing engineers.

Briefly describe CE 250 — Introduction to Sustainable Infrastructure. What are the learning objectives for this course? 
Introduction to Sustainable Infrastructure is a core, 200-level course required for all the university’s civil, construction, and environmental engineering students. In this course, we introduce students to the principles of sustainability and sustainable design from the global to the local scales. 

The course consists of five modules: introductory material, which includes approaches to engineering problem-solving; environmental sustainability; engineering economics; social sustainability; and a module of in-depth case studies to tie these topics together. 

For environmental sustainability, we consider a broad suite of the environmental impacts of infrastructure analyzed through the lens of life-cycle assessment. We also focus on the interplay between climate change and infrastructure, namely, how infrastructure contributes to climate change and what infrastructure-related mitigation and adaptation measures are available. For engineering economics, the students learn discounted cash-flow analysis, benefit-cost analysis, and consideration of externalities. In social sustainability, we tackle concepts such as environmental justice and architectural exclusion.

Why is this course an important element of the civil engineering curriculum?
Taking this course early in the curriculum is intended to build a foundation of knowledge on sustainability and infrastructure that will be revisited in upper-level technical courses. Civil, construction, and environmental engineers are designing infrastructure that will last for decades. It is imperative that our future engineers consider and fully understand the environmental, economic, and social implications of their work.

How is content delivered? What have been some of the challenges with this type of delivery?
In the most recent offerings of this course, I co-taught in an online format with Angela (fall 2020) and Joseph (spring 2021), and we opted for a partially flipped model with weekly recitations. Each week consists of two prerecorded (asynchronous) lectures, two live practice sessions, and one small group recitation for discussion. 

So, basically, we meet as a class online three times a week. On Mondays and Wednesdays, which we term the practice sessions, our time begins with a low-stakes quiz on the prerecorded lecture. This offers us and the students alike instantaneous feedback on what content is already mastered and where they are struggling. The remainder of the practice session is then devoted to example problems related to the content that is not yet mastered. On Fridays, we hold discussion sessions, in which the students are divided into five groups, each led by an instructor. 

Within those sessions, they work in groups of four to discuss relevant topics and complete the associated analyses. These discussion sessions allow for more direct engagement with peers and faculty, which we feel makes the space more inviting for everyone.

I believe that shifting away from a fully in-person model with three lectures per week has improved learning outcomes. The students are offered much more time to practice problems, and the small discussion groups offer them an opportunity to more deeply explore topics and engage with us and their peers. 

What makes this course unique? 
This course covers content that is not always included in standard engineering curricula. Through it, we build a knowledge base and skills in assessing all three pillars of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social. Through the use of real-world infrastructure case studies, we challenge the students to assess competing priorities using incomplete or uncertain data that yield, at times, ambiguous answers. In essence, we walk them through the process of considering messy real-world problems. 

Why do you make use of case studies?
The case studies bring forth examples that future engineers may face, while integrating analyses related to environmental impacts, economics, and society. The case studies that we have developed span a wide range of topics, including an assessment of the options to deal with coal ash ponds in North Carolina and the implications of a highway expansion. Students are expected to deconstruct complex problems and deploy a variety of approaches to offer novel insights into these real-world challenges. 

I am always looking for new case studies that offer a challenging analysis of infrastructure’s environmental, economic, and social impacts. It is important to keep the content fresh and to have a wide variety of case studies that meet the diverse interests of our students.

What is a fun or interesting assignment students enjoy?
Assessing the options for dealing with coal ash ponds in North Carolina. It’s a massive problem, and they quickly see how long it would take to move the material to properly lined landfills. In addition, they are introduced to alternative remediation options, including biocementation, a topic taught by Brina Montoya, Ph.D., an associate professor in our department. 

Are you ready to return to in-person learning? 
Definitely! But I do think that we will retain some elements of our new teaching model. Namely, I think that the students benefit from the immediate feedback that the quizzes and other activities provide as well as the more personalized engagement of the small group discussion sessions. 

Is there anything you would like to say to instructors who may be struggling with the challenges of online content delivery?
Zoom fatigue is real! So go easy on yourself and your students. We are all learning how to do this as we go. The online/asynchronous approach has required me to prepare and finalize content far in advance of its delivery, which carries with it advantages and disadvantages, and our teaching team has worked hard to make the live sessions engaging and fun.

For our live practice sessions, I find that it is helpful to have a variety of examples ready to go. This allows me to select examples and better focus our time on the areas where the students need the most help. 

What do you want your teaching legacy to be?
I hope that I effectively challenge my students to ask and answer big, difficult questions and that they are better equipped to consider the societal impacts of their work. 

This article first appeared in the May/June 2021 issue of Civil Engineering as “Teaching Sustainability from All Angles.”

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“I wish we had a soundtrack to play with applause,” one of the judges, Arielle Malinowski, joked.

Yes, the student conferences are a little different this spring, hosted by different colleges’ and universities’ ASCE student chapters as virtual events. But the conferences are succeeding in the new format – particularly after many of last spring’s events were canceled outright at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The UIUC team executed an excellent presentation even without the auditorium applause, and the Purdue University-hosted Great Lakes Student Conference had all the fundamental tenets of an ASCE event: students meeting, sharing ideas, having fun, competing, and learning.

“I think things went very well,” said Mackenzie Henson, graduating senior in civil engineering at Purdue University and coordinator of the 2021 Great Lakes Student Conference. “It was challenging to turn an in-person event into a virtual event, but we were able to make changes to accommodate the new format. The conference was a success, and the students had fun.”

The Great Lakes Student Conference was one of 19 student conferences on the ASCE calendar this spring – 18 in North America and one in India. The conferences of course are primarily about professional development, but a big part of that – and maybe the most fun aspect – are the competitions.

This year featured a large array of ASCE competitions: the concrete canoe competition, the ASCE sustainable solutions competition, the ASCE Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute competition, the ASCE Blue Sky Innovation Contest pilot, the ASCE Construction Institute Student Conference competition pilot, and the Timber-Strong Design Build competition pilot.

The concrete canoe competitions do not feature the usual series of races this year but instead judge each team in three categories: a technical proposal for a canoe prototype, oral presentation, and their use of different enhanced focus areas in their proposal.

The top-finishing student chapters at the student conferences in concrete canoe, surveying, and sustainable solutions advance to compete in the Society-wide competitions weekend, June 25-27, hosted by the University of Wisconsin–Platteville and ASCE on a virtual platform.

The virtual format allowed different conference hosts to try different innovations too. For instance, an AutoCAD competition worked perfectly in the online venue at the Great Lakes Student Conference.

“After looking through the archives of past events held at different student conferences, I stumbled upon an AutoCAD competition that we could make into a virtual competition,” Henson said. “In an online format, students would not have the judges looking over their shoulder while they worked, and we wouldn’t have to rent out a computer lab on campus to host the event. This way, students could use their own computer in the comfort of their own home, and we could run everything from one computer.

“Not that we couldn’t have pulled it off in an in-person setting, but we tailored it to be a virtual event but still be interactive.”

At the Pacific Southwest Student Conference, the hosts at UCLA added several features to the program, specifically geared for a virtual environment.

“The Pacific Southwest Conference traditionally hosts a variety of nontechnical events, and with the virtual platform, we adopted some fun online games,” said Tori Mok, civil and environmental engineering student at UCLA and the conference chair. “For example, we hosted a Nintendo Smash Ultimate tournament and a Tetris tournament.

“We were also able to host the first PSWC talent show during our closing banquet. Students took advantage of the virtual platform by editing their video submissions or by showcasing talents that would not have been possible in-person, such as rock climbing. And we live-streamed all of our events on Facebook, so the conference experience could be shared with friends and family.

“We are grateful for the new opportunities that the virtual platform provided.”

Learn more about ASCE’s student conferences.

The post ASCE student conferences, competitions embrace the virtual appeared first on Civil Engineering Source.

ASCE’s Future World Vision calls for creative and motivated students to be attracted to the civil engineering profession so that they can bring novel solutions to challenging world problems. Civil engineering institutions of higher education have already successfully turned to problem- or project-based active learning pedagogies to prepare and retain these students.

In some courses we have co-taught, we have adopted a learning approach commonly found in creative disciplines. In these courses, students engage with physical materials and tools in creative and iterative ways, continually reevaluating their goals, exploring new paths, and imagining new possibilities. They make things, and they make them better. This creative process is variously codified as design thinking, haptic learning, and making things.

The benefit of making things for younger children in STEM education has been widely supported. But what about the civil engineering students in college-level courses? They seem to be having fun, but what are they learning as engineers?

Creativity is key

One way of invigorating engineering education is to combine engineering with liberal arts, grounding students more firmly in creative and innovative design, social responsibility, and critical thinking. These three outcomes are key to forming our future civil engineers.

Creativity is key to unleashing new and innovative ways of thinking and solving problems. Human safety, environmental protection, and social justice are at the core of the civil engineer’s design sense and social responsibilities. Critical thinking allows engineers to see the bigger picture, and haptic learning – sensory, experiential learning – helps them understand the consequences of the decisions they make by requiring that they experience them firsthand.

Our belief in haptic learning is based on our observations and students’ reactions during a co-taught undergraduate course that integrates structural engineering and woodworking at Princeton University. This course, “CEE418/VIS418 Extraordinary Processes,” has been taught on an annual basis during the fall semester since 2015. The course attracts mostly senior students and is capped at 15 enrollees because of space and material limitations. The 12-week course has highly structured learning components through lectures and reading materials, along with less-structured learning components through lab sessions that are self-paced.

Knowledge and skill take place in the lab sessions and through individual and group assignments. The course prerequisites include “CEE205 Mechanics of Solids” and any other 300-level civil engineering course, and/or one 200- and one 300-level visual arts studio course. Practically, this means that the civil engineering students entering this course do not necessarily have any woodworking skills.

The course objectives are to: (1) comprehend mechanical properties of wood, specifically their relationship to moisture and temperature; (2) prepare, carry out, and process physical wood lab experiments that focus on strength and flexibility for different wood grain orientations and moisture content; (3) apply wood working skills and structural wood design principles to open-ended assignments; (4) organize, plan, make decisions, (re)construct, and create solutions to these structural sculpture assignments (haptic learning); and (5) evaluate the merit of structural sculpture based on esthetic and engineering criteria.

Making and thinking like an engineer

For each assignment in the course, students are given a rather vague and open-ended description. For example, open-ended problems have included the synthesis of acquired knowledge and skills in creating common objects like a prosthetic, a cushion, or a small-span bridge. When tackling these assignments, the students start using their minds in at least six different ways that practicing civil engineers do, such as finding a specific problem, system-thinking, visualizing, improving, solving problems, and adapting their work.

First, the students are finding a specific problem by clarifying which issue to address (such as deciding between a mobility or a dexterity prosthetic) and looking up the functional requirements and pros and cons of existing solutions. They also investigate the boundary conditions of the assignment. These limitations include the amount and format of wood (e.g., length of wood veneer strips and volume/area of wood boards), tools and connectors (e.g., Japanese handsaw, lightweight rotary and carving tools, wood glue, dowels, rivets) and time and workspace available.

Based on these constraints, they imagine a system and how they can not only make the system’s parts but also connect them as a functioning whole. This is system thinking, a habit of a civil engineer’s mind. As they sketch many practical solutions with pencil and paper, they critically reflect on conversations with us, the instructors, and with their peers. Using materials and tools, they move their idea from the abstract to the concrete and visualizetheir projects in three dimensions.

They continuously improve their projects by prototyping in cardboard and wood, more sketching, and relentlessly trying to make things better. For example, one student increased the bending stiffness of a beam element by laminating additional wood strip layers to it.

When they meet obstacles, we look at techniques from other disciplines and solve the problem creatively. For example, to establish the right flexibility for a veneer strip network cushion, the student looked at a variation of textile and basketry weaving patterns that resulted in different stiffnesses.

Throughout the assignment, the students adapt their work by testing, analysis, skepticism, rethinking, and changing. Adaptation, creative problem-solving, improvement, visualization, system thinking, and finding a specific problem are habits of an engineering mind. They capture what engineers do when they are in the full flow of engineering.

Our civil engineering students are not only having fun; they are developing engineering habits of mind.

’Making’ a better civil engineer

We are interested in developing and enhancing our students’ competence with practical skills that a civil engineer might use.

For example, students gain experience with hard physical tasks. In our course, they manipulate a bandsaw, make identical components on a table saw, assemble parts using clamps and cordless drills, and consider screws and adhesives to construct, modify, and repair parts in their systems. In the lab studio, students learn these skills at their own pace and progress to new skills according to their own comfort and confidence levels.

Every week, as we make our rounds through the space, we have conversations with them about what is working (and what is not). In doing so, we track each student’s progress, identify any gaps in skill or understanding, and give them one-on-one attention.

We see that the students become persistent in pursuing intrinsic goals. They are willing to attempt difficult tasks and understand the levels of effort required to achieve success. This personal judgment of “how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations,” as defined by Albert Bandura in his 1977 book “Social Learning Theory,” is self-efficacy. By successfully solving problems, students learn to determine the level of effort needed to achieve success. High self-efficacy has been shown to lead to persistence and a sense of belonging in engineering communities.

Our civil engineering students are not only having fun; they are developing engineering habits of mind.

Too often, civil engineering students are externally motivated. They want to obtain good grades, compete with one other, or earn awards. In this course, we notice that the students are internally motivated. They want to be challenged and master content, and they want to solve a problem and make it their own because this gives them internal satisfaction.

Research suggests that intrinsically motivated students prioritize and achieve more profound levels of knowledge whereas externally motivated students use more superficial processing strategies, such as memorization or guessing.

The role of visual arts

We would be remiss not to mention the role of visual art in this learning environment. As the title of the course makes clear, the enrollments for “CEE418/VIS418 Extraordinary Processes” have been an even mix of civil engineering and visual art students. Because of this mix, each group is not only exposed to the other’s habits of mind and working methods but also compelled to incorporate them into their own.

Thus, concepts normally attributed to visual art – beauty, psyche, idiosyncrasy, uselessness – come to bear on civil engineering students as well. In a word, the presence of art makes failure an option. When failure is a viable – even beautiful! – outcome, civil engineering students have the freedom to question and rediscover the “purpose” of their work, be it functional or beautiful or both.

The authors wish to acknowledge the insights of Sami Kahn, executive director of the Council on Science and Technology at Princeton University and member of the ASCE Committee on Aesthetics in Design, on these topics.

The post Why civil engineering students should make things appeared first on Civil Engineering Source.

Competence is defined as the possession of a required skill, knowledge, or qualification. It is also an ethical obligation for civil engineers because their competence has a direct impact on the public.

People expect the structures and systems that engineers build to be safe and resilient. You don’t think about how a bridge holds your weight when you cross it, and you assume the water will run when you turn the tap on to wash your hands.

Civil engineers are responsible for upholding those expectations. They must ensure they have the knowledge and skills they need to do their job effectively and guarantee what they create is safe.

But innovation drives civil engineering forward, constantly evolving the profession. Therefore, the need for engineers to raise their level of competency grows.

In the second part of this series, interviewees discuss how ethics and expertise intersect; civil engineers’ duty to work “only in their areas of competence”; and the importance of lifelong learning during an era of scientific and technological advancement.

View the full Engineering Ethics series.

The post Engineering Ethics: Competence appeared first on Civil Engineering Source.

In a strategic decision more than two years in the making, ASCE has realigned the conferences to better fit with the Society’s geographic region boundaries, creating a more integrated, consistent, and valuable student experience.

“The more we can leverage ASCE resources and volunteers for these student conferences, the better it will be for the students as they look to grow their careers and their networks,” said Schiff, Ph.D., M.ASCE, a professor and undergraduate program director in the civil engineering department at Kansas State University who has helped lead the ASCE team developing this new student conference model over the last year.

The student conferences have long been a staple of the ASCE calendar, convening student chapters for weekend-long programs of competition, professional development, and networking. The new model takes the positive aspects of the previous conferences and streamlines them, makes them more consistent and repeatable across the country, and – most crucially – better connects them to the ASCE volunteer community.

Beginning in 2022, instead of a student conference potentially including schools from three different ASCE geographic regions with the region leadership often disconnected from the planning and hosting of the event, the new student conferences are aligned specifically with those geographic regions in mind. Schools will play host on a rotating schedule, just as before, but now they will have far more support and participation from ASCE region leadership and section, branch, institute, and younger member groups.

Region Champion Support teams include the region director, region governors, section, branch, and younger member group leaders, along with a representative from the Committee on Student Conferences and Competitions or the Committee on Student Members, will form each year to support the student conference hosts, making it easier to identify volunteers, sponsors, and competition judges for the events, while forging stronger connections between students and local ASCE members.

“A lot of students graduating now have visions of changing the world,” Schiff said. “Well, you change the world by being a leader. And by connecting students to our ASCE leadership at these student conferences, it allows the students to envision themselves in that position.”

ASCE’s Board of Direction last October approved the proposal for student conference realignment, giving the geographic region boards of governors final say over the specifics. The Committee on Student Conferences and Competitions then worked with student chapters, region leadership, and other stakeholders to develop the new conference plan.

Next steps include identifying host schools for each 2022 event, naming the new student conferences, and hosting an inaugural business meeting for each conference later this spring.

“This is not the end. It’s the beginning,” Schiff said. “The real work is ahead of us, as we help provide the structure and tools to grow these student conferences.

“It’s a great opportunity. I think we’re really just getting started.”

The post ASCE realigns student conferences, enhances student experience appeared first on Civil Engineering Source.

So much hope, so much promise.

So many things to learn.

If you had to highlight one lesson any civil engineering student should learn during their first year in college, what would you pick? What’s the essential knowledge base a young civil engineer should build on for a career in the 2020s?

Here are some highlights from a recent ASCE Collaborate discussion addressing just this issue (and be sure to log in and contribute your own memories):

Yvonne Pawtowski, P.E., M.ASCE

Engineer, Gray and Osborne Inc., Arlington, Washington

“Communication skills are key. Whether you are working in the private or public sector, your clients (developers, public works directors) may have different thought processes and working assumptions than you.”

Daniel P. Sheer, M ASCE

Retired, founder and former president of HydroLogics, Columbia, Maryland

“The art of engineering is a problem-solving art. Fundamental to that art, and the first step in the Dima’s design process, is identifying the objectiveS (capital S because there are usually many) of the problem-solving activity and the ways in which progress toward meeting those objectives is to be measured.

“Almost as critical is the task of identifying constraints. Together, objectiveS and constraints define ‘What you are trying to do.’ Experienced engineers can (usually) do this intuitively, without even realizing it, because they are familiar with the class of problems they often solve. But even for experienced engineers, a formal identification of O&C is vital when working on a unique or unfamiliar problem.

“Beginning engineers must learn how to identify O&C and what metrics to use (or to create). [Freshman year is] time to teach beginning engineers (of all ages) how to figure out ‘What they’re trying to do.’ The rest of the engineering curriculum can teach them how to actually do it.”

Michael Kozinetz Aff.M.ASCE

Construction Manager, AECOM, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

“I did not designate a major (civil engineering) until my sophomore year (we took mathematics, physics, and electives in freshman year that could be applied to any engineering or scientific paths). So considering that was my ‘first’ year on an engineering path, one of the most memorable courses was a series of lectures by local professional practitioners – PEs, construction contractors, municipal and state authorities, lawyers, insurance executives, etc. – along with an outstanding professor who was engaging. That gave us all brief glimpses into the ‘real world’ of those working in the field.

“In later graduate courses, a similar course was offered for construction management students, and it had the same effect. The speakers had worldwide experience, and it was a great introduction to a fascinating career! The nuts and bolts of detailed engineering, calculations, computers (batch processing back then!), problem sets, collaborative thinking, communication with others, and technical preparation started at that time as well, but ‘real’ stories and events stick with us!”

Richard Geekie P.E., M.ASCE

Shawnee, Kansas

“The first-year engineering student should study the history of war, why cultures and civilizations fail, art history, or art courses, such as free-hand drawing or sketching, a course in the philosophy of science, and a course in logic.”

Karl Sieg, P.E., M.ASCE

Sieg & Associates Inc., Venice, Florida

“English! And the arts and humanities. Say what?

“During one’s career, one will interact with many different people of many different backgrounds, experiences, heritage, values, and perspectives. Throughout human history, people have communicated through art, which reflects the understandings and perspectives of the time of the art.

“The humanities reveal how the different people you meet can or could think and therefore clue one into how one should or should not interact with them.

“And English. As editor of a newsletter for several years, some submitted articles were excellent, while others left me thinking: ‘Don’t they teach freshman English anymore?’ The point is that if you can’t successfully get your ideas and thoughts across to others, it doesn’t matter how good an engineer you are.

“The freshman year is the foundation. If the above isn’t learned and grasped, the foundation is built on loose sand at the beach of a tempestuous sea.”

Join the conversation on ASCE Collaborate.

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Not even building the first highway in the United Arab Emirates could approach his love for the students he taught over his career, as well as his delight in those he mentored. His greatest joy was spent in his research with them as they looked toward the future of construction management.

Minkarah, Ph.D., M.ASCE, came to the United States from Beirut, Lebanon, to earn his master of science and Ph.D. degrees, both in civil engineering, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. While there, he taught at RPI and designed bridges for the State of New York. Returning then to the Middle East, he worked for the CAT Company, a premier construction and trading group, leading construction projects in Sudan, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai as well as the highway project for the UAE.

After seven years of primarily building roads and bridges, he felt fulfilled on that front and was happy to join the faculty of the University of Cincinnati as a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He taught and directed research projects for 29 years, sharing his practical knowledge with his students and proudly becoming an American citizen.

Minkarah also spent a year as an adjunct professor at the University of Khartoum and a year at Purdue University’s College of Engineering, in Indiana.

He was an active Life Member of ASCE, and involved in the committees dealing with construction management. He also applied his guiding hand to editing a special issue of the Journal of Management in Engineering in 2012, as he had been an associate editor of that journal in 2008.

He loved spending time with family, and he and his wife traveled extensively over the years, visiting much of Europe, Russia, South America, China, and, of course, the Middle East. Being a lover of classical music and opera, Minkarah held subscription tickets to the Cincinnati Opera, the Linton Chamber Music Series, and the Cincinnati Symphony for many years.

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Abstract

An extensive experimental program of constant-volume (undrained) cyclic simple shear tests was undertaken on Ticino, Italy, sand with different contents of nonplastic fines, ranging from 0% to 40%. The samples were reconstituted by moist tamping and tested with different initial states, including void ratios and effective vertical stresses. Test results confirmed that the concept of equivalent granular void ratio e∗is appropriate for the interpretation of the undrained cyclic behavior of sand with different amounts of fines up to the limiting fines content. Because a single trend for critical state (CS) data points was observed in the e∗-log(p′) plane (EG-CSL) for different amounts of fines, the cyclic simple shear test results were analyzed within a unified critical state soil mechanics (CSSM) framework in terms of an alternative state parameter, Ψ∗. A unique correlation between undrained cyclic strength (CRR) and Ψ∗ was found, irrespective of the fines content and initial state. Although a correlation between the cyclic resistance ratio and the conventional state parameter Ψ works as well, the procedure based on Ψ∗ has the advantage that the cyclic behavior of a certain sand with different contents of non plastic fines is described by a single reference curve (EG-CSL). In contrast to previous investigations in the literature, which mainly used triaxial tests, the CRR-Ψ∗correlation proposed in the present study is based on cyclic simple shear tests, which better represent the real ground conditions under seismic loading.

Read the full paper in the ASCE Library: https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)GT.1943-5606.0002470

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Hurwitz is the Eric H.I. and Janice Hoffman Faculty Scholar and the director of the Driving and Bicycling Simulator Laboratory in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering.

He has been an instructor at the undergraduate and graduate levels for 12 years, and he has received many regional and national teaching awards, including the Faculty Teaching Excellence Award 2019-20, bestowed by OSU’s College of Engineering. 

I believe that teaching is a performance art. To promote effective information transfer and deep understanding of class content, we have to deliver an engaging ‘performance’ in the classroom.

Briefly describe CE 595, Traffic Operations and Design. 
It is a graduate-level transportation engineering course offered in the fall quarter. CE 595 provides a robust introduction to concepts, theory, and tools widely used by transportation engineering professionals who work in the traffic operations domain. In addition to the weekly lectures, students participate in hands-on laboratories that include collecting a variety of traffic data, using calculations and software to analyze field data, and conducting a full traffic impact study, which is documented in a technical report and presented to the class at the end of the quarter. 

CE 595 is the first of three required courses in the transportation engineering curriculum at OSU. The other two are CE 594, Transportation Facilities Design and CE 591, Transportation Systems Analysis, Planning, and Policy. Together, these three classes provide a breadth of knowledge in the broad areas of operations, design, and planning, which are foundational in the transportation domain. 

You employ the ASCE ExCEEd model in your classes. What is it and how do you integrate it into this course?
The ExCEEd model proposes the teacher as a professional role model in the classroom. The model incorporates six tenants of good teaching, including: 

• Structured organization
• Engaging presentation
• Enthusiasm
• Positive rapport with students
• Frequent assessment of student learning
• Appropriate use of technology

I have implemented this teaching model in a variety of ways that maximize my strengths and minimize my weaknesses as an instructor. 

Elements of the model that work well for me include course- and module-level learning objectives, detailed documentation of my lesson plans in a framework referred to as board notes, and the development of preplanned, nontrivial questions. In addition, I use Microsoft PowerPoint to show only pictures or large tables/complex figures, a whiteboard during class to display the irreducible minimum amount of documentation students need to understand the material presented, and learning activities as often as is practically possible. 

What makes this course (or the way you teach it) innovative or unique? 
One aspect of the class that students regularly comment on is how well the theory from our lectures is aligned with the applied laboratory activities. Students have said that these hands-on labs provide an opportunity to improve the depth of their conceptual understanding.

Another common student observation is that they love that the data we collect and analyze during the first half of the class are used in the traffic impact study. They have commented that seeing how the process works from end to end gives them greater confidence in their abilities and understanding of the material. 

This past fall was the first time it was taught solely online. Tell us about your experience so far.
I have had immense support at all levels from OSU. That support included clear and timely policies and the acquisition of desperately needed hardware such as a Wacom tablet and Jabra microphone as well as software such as Canvas and Kaltura Capture. I also received training on these new technologies and was given templates and tips for implementing this technology in our learning management system. The university also supported me in my desire to attend professional trainings both at OSU and from professional societies.

I have been teaching college classes for 12 years, and I can say unequivocally that I have not worked this hard on constructing and delivering classes since my first few years as an untenured assistant professor. At that time, I was building class material from scratch one lecture at a time and never more than a day ahead of my students. 

My challenges during the pandemic revolved around a series of critical path choices: synchronous or asynchronous delivery, how much HTML formatting would I adopt, which capabilities of my learning management system should I pursue and to what degree, and whom should I go to for advice and guidance. These were among the many issues I grappled with. A year ago, I hadn’t spent more than five minutes considering any of these issues, and after the university announced we would be remote during the spring 2020 quarter, I had about 10 days to pivot to a new form of instruction. 

A governing principle of my teaching, again informed by my experiences with ExCEEd, is the continuous pursuit of positive, incremental improvement.

What have you had to change most about your teaching style moving to remote delivery? 
I believe that teaching is a performance art. To effectively promote effective information transfer and deep understanding of class content, we have to deliver an engaging ‘performance’ in the classroom. Exemplary teachers intentionally consider their movement around the classroom (for example, not staying in one place near the board) as well as their nonverbal communication, articulation, volume and pitch, and humor.

A big part of my classroom delivery includes interacting with my students through preplanned questions. My choice to deliver the class asynchronously required that I adopt other tools and techniques to benefit the student learning experience. 

Although I have had a number of challenges, I’ve experienced some success as well. First, delivery of dozens of short five- to 10-minute video clips with high-resolution audio for my narration and a large-screen tablet to produce the notes I would typically document on a whiteboard. Second, adoption of discussion boards for my weekly modules during which I respond to every primary post from every student every week, resulting in hundreds of posts from me throughout the quarter asking and answering student questions. Third, development of remote laboratories. This was possible only because student members of my research laboratory collected dozens of videos in the field last summer. They created transcription and calculation templates for the incoming students to take advantage of. 

You believe that students should be prepared to have their ideas challenged. Are students ever daunted by having their ideas challenged? If so, how you do handle that?
Transportation engineering problems are often complex and multifaceted. Regularly, these problems are of great concern to myriad stakeholders, whose desires are often in direct conflict. The transportation professionals of the future will need to be able to articulate their thinking in clear and concise terms to move their preferred solutions toward implementation. 

I work very hard to promote a welcoming classroom environment in which a variety of ideas and ways of being are welcomed and encouraged. I set expectations for professionalism and collegiality at the outset of the course, and I try to model those standards through my behaviors in and out of the classroom. I am also intentional about developing a rapport with every student. In these ways, I try to make all my students comfortable in order to actively participate in the class. I have very rarely had students express anything but enjoyment of our classroom dynamic.

I work very hard to promote a welcoming classroom environment in which a variety of ideas and ways of being are welcomed and encouraged.

Students are graded on their contributions to discussions. Explain how that works. 
Discussion posts are evaluated with a rubric that is presented at the beginning of the class. That rubric includes four dimensions: quality of the original post, quality of response posts, quantity of postings, and demonstrated understanding of the learning materials. Each dimension is scored as unsatisfactory, satisfactory, and exemplary. 

If students do not participate in the optional office hours offered through Zoom each week, I will have very little direct interaction with them. This structure provides an opportunity for me to ask and answer questions from every student in the class and for them to have similar experiences with each other.

Is there anything you would like to say to instructors who may be struggling with the challenges of asynchronous content delivery?
A governing principle of my teaching, again informed by my experiences with ExCEEd, is the continuous pursuit of positive, incremental improvement. Our courses, lectures, and individual assignments do not need to be perfect the first time we deliver them, but it is critical that we reflect on every element of our teaching, identify those elements that are working well and propagate those forward, while simultaneously working to improve elements that are not working as well.

So, pick one item from your delivery last quarter or semester that did not work as well as it could have, and be intentional about improving that during your next class offering. For example, if you looked at my spring 2020 class offerings and compared them to my winter ‘21 offerings, three iterations later, you would see some elements that worked very well initially are still there (discussion boards) and other elements that are not even recognizable (hyperlinked buttons and graphics on the home­page of the class).

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.” 

This article first appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of Civil Engineering.

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Daniel Bressler, EIT, A.M.ASCE, was laid off from his position as a project engineer several months ago due to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Bressler — who earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from New York University and is now pursuing his master’s degree in structural engineering through The City College of New York — was undaunted. He pursued employment by establishing clear steps he would take each day and week and completed those steps as if they were his job. By the end of just one month, he had a new position that he enjoys and feels confident in. To succeed in civil engineering, he recommends mentorships and curiosity — plus a generous helping of humor.

How did you land your current job during the pandemic?
I follow step-by-step guides for most things. So first I told my inner circle — my family and close friends — that I was looking for a job. Then I told my college friends, and after that I told my college professors. I had saved emails from my undergraduate school that listed jobs, so I went through those and reached out to the companies to ask if they still had anything available. Then I used LinkedIn, and finally I just searched websites of companies I thought I would be interested in and applied online. I used an Excel spreadsheet to track everything, and every two weeks I sent follow-up emails, up to two or three times.

It’s easier to take baby steps and take it piece by piece. And it helped that my family was there to support me. My dad said, ‘Don’t feel sorry for yourself. These things happen. Get back on your feet. Do the work.’

A friend of mine works with an architect who worked with the owner of York Tower Consulting Engineering, and that’s how my resume eventually made its way to them.

How does this new job compare to your last?
The biggest difference is that I have more responsibility. As I am earning trust from my employer, I am allowed to do more independent design. I now have more input into the final product that we deliver to the client.

For example, I designed the gravity and lateral system for an extension on an existing building. The caveat of the design was the client — an architect — did not account for columns in the layout and did not want to change the design. The solution that I got to design was a structure that started outside the existing building, so it wouldn’t disrupt the layout. For the extension of the existing building — the new upper two floors — the structure went over the existing building and continued from there, almost as if it were hugging the existing building. 

It was a really different experience that I would not have thought I would have had the chance to design. I am also lucky that my days always stay interesting with other small jobs like designing connections for balconies and such.

What are the chief skills and abilities that you developed in your previous positions that enabled you to move on to this new position?
I learned self-confidence in my designs and how to gather data. When I was in school, all the information was presented to me, but over the previous two jobs, I learned that the world is far from perfect. Sometimes you must do some research and guesstimate to come up with an adequate design for the situation at hand. 

What nontechnical skills have helped you so far in your career?
I always look for a challenge and ways to learn. I ask ‘why’ and dig deeper into how someone came up with an answer and how I can apply that in the future. I’m willing to take critiques and be a team player. 

I also did Toastmasters, which gave me confidence in public speaking. I recommend it to anyone.

And having a sense of humor helps in an industry that can be a little bit dry. It makes it more lively and easier to work with people.

What role have mentors played in your career?
I work very intimately with my current manager, who has an open-door policy and is a very warm person, very open to any questions I have. It’s just him and me on the renovation team. 

I am also part of ASCE’s Mentor Match. I’ve been with Dustin Cole, P.E., P.Eng, M.ASCE, for two years. He has taken the time and patience to help me through many of the challenges of a young engineer starting out in the industry. Every month we have a phone call. I have a checklist we go through, and then we talk about whatever else came up that month. And I take notes so I can refer back.

And my mother was a big role model for me. She went to college later — after she raised her kids — and went into nursing. That was amazing to see. It showed that if you have your mind set on something, you can do it, and it doesn’t matter when.

How did you get interested in engineering, and civil engineering specifically?
In undergraduate school, I was taking lots of courses; I was good at math, and I was interested in how things work. My brother suggested a physics course because we had a friend who is an engineer, and he suggested that. I took physics and loved it. Then I spoke to that friend, and he asked questions about what parts of the course I liked the most, and through those answers we narrowed it down to civil. And the more I took civil engineering courses, the more I fell in love with it. And now I’m pursuing my master’s degree, and the more in-depth I get, the more excited I get.

What do you hope to accomplish next in your career?
I want to get my master’s degree, which I am in the process of doing now. Within the next two years, I want to sit for my professional engineer license exam. 

And I want my managers and company to feel like I am a reliable asset, that they can send something my way and know it will come back done — and done well. I strive for personal excellence.

How have you worked on developing your leadership skills?
I was a transfer student, and when I transferred to NYU, I wanted to pursue extracurricular activities to get to know people. So I went to a meeting for the ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition. I had barely taken any engineering courses yet, but I signed up to get involved. Two days later they asked me to be the construction captain. We had one project manager and five subteams, and I led one of those. It was phenomenal. We won everything on the regional level, and at nationals, we were in the top 10 — and my category placed third. That experience taught me deadlines, responsibility, and how to manage and work with people. It was fun, and I learned a lot.

Where do you see your career heading next?
After getting my master’s degree and my P.E., I may look at getting a structural engineering license. And I do want to take on more management tasks while still doing design. But beyond that? Honestly, who knows what’s next? I’m ambitious. But I’m just as curious as you!

What personal traits or characteristics do you believe helped you in this new position?
My perseverance and focus. When I don’t succeed the first time, I use that as incentive to try even harder. I truly believe that anyone can do anything they set their mind to if they put in the work, as long as they take it step by step and learn something new every day. 

What advice would you give to other young engineers who would seek positions similar to yours?
I am only two years into the industry, so that’s hard to say. But I would say, ‘Try, no matter what.’ Even if you are not receiving any responses from your dream company, keep applying and do not get discouraged. I always pictured myself at a large firm, but now that I am happily employed at York Tower, which is a small firm, I realize that every organization has a unique culture and value. 

Where do you think the field of civil engineering is headed in the next five to 10 years?
I think civil engineering is going to be a lot more computer based, with people connecting virtually as part of the regular routine. Already we are seeing the increased use of 3D modeling software to create construction documents. That progression will continue.

What is one item that you can share from your personal or professional bucket list?
My bucket list used to include riding a roller coaster, but I got over that fear a year and a half ago. I rode the Incredible Hulk Coaster at Universal Orlando Resort. It uses a drive-tire launch system, which avoids the dreaded chain lift!

What would your current coworkers be surprised to learn about you?
I do not drink coffee, so if you ever see me with a thermos, it’s hot cocoa. And yes, there are probably marshmallows or whipped cream in there as well!

What quote or principle do you try to live by, in your work or your personal life?
‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste.’ (The United Negro College Fund launched an ad campaign with this slogan in 1972.) My teacher in ninth grade told me this, and it stuck with me ever since. If you want to do something, set a goal and take it in baby steps. 

Another similar idea came from a college professor, Ron Pennella, CCM, FCMAA: Use the word ‘challenge’ to describe goals because ‘challenge’ implies that it is something that can be overcome.

What is one routine you couldn’t do without?
Playing basketball. I need to play ball at least once a week, or I will go nuts from not moving. Before lockdown, I would play religiously twice a week, sometimes more. Right now, though, it is a little hard to play defense while staying 6 feet apart! 

Are you a younger member who has recently taken the next step in your career? We’d like to hear from you. Email [email protected] using the subject line “Next Step.”

This article first appeared in the March/April 2021 issue of Civil Engineering as “Break Down Your Goals and Follow the Steps.”

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Meet the 2021 ASCE New Faces of Civil Engineering–College honorees:

Erin Bereyso

Missouri University of Science and Technology – Missouri State University cooperative program

Inspired by her late aunt Kate, the first woman in her university’s physics department to earn a doctorate, Bereyso is completing a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, environemtnal emphasis, this spring, with plans to pursue a doctorate of her own.

Her accomplishments span the social and the technical. As her school’s ASCE student chapter president, Bereyso has organized community service events for local food pantries and nearby stream cleanups. She also participates in the school’s Engineers Without Borders chapter.

Her research earned second prize at the 2019 EWRI World Environmental and Water Resources Congress. And she works year-round as an environmental engineering intern for her local electric cooperative.

“It feels like we are on the cusp of an environmental revolution,” Bereyso said. “Sustainability is becoming more central to business practices, and decreasing human impact on the environment is crucial to maintaining our current standard of living. It’s also exciting to know that my contribution to society as a civil engineer in the form of sustainable infrastructure will still be making a positive impact 100 years from now.”

Keenan Do

University of California Irvine

Do, like so many, experienced the events of 2020 – particularly the social unrest in the United States – and did not like what he saw. He wondered if civil engineering was perhaps part of the problem and, more optimistically, if it could be the key to a solution.

So, as president of the UC Irvine ASCE student chapter, he worked with his fellow chapter leaders to create the “Engineering a More Equitable Society: Healing Injustice within the Civil Engineering World” campaign on Instagram, reaching more than 5,000 people.

“In writing these posts, my friends and I grappled with scientific data and experiences we hadn’t considered before,” Do said. “Through these tough conversations, we concluded our series outlining a future vision for engineering called ‘Power with the People’ that emphasized ethics, equity, and empathy, which we hope will lead to further identification and investment in addressing infrastructure disparities.”

The chapter has since created a coalition that will continue to pursue similar work. And Do will continue these lessons learned in his work as he plans to study urban planning at graduate school.

Gaelle Ghanem

Lebanese University

Ghanem planned to pursue her Ph.D. so that she could someday teach. Then Aug. 4, 2020, happened – the deadly explosion in the Port of Beirut.

“It changed my plans,” said Ghanem, who helped volunteer in the explosion’s aftermath to help survey damage. “This disastrous event made me want to become an active engineer to offer my services to society.”

Ghanem has been an active member of Lebanese University’s ASCE student chapter since 2017, serving a term as secretary. She was also president of the school’s faculty social club. She interned with the Dar Group last summer and is now focused on using her skills to help her community.

“My future as an engineer in uncertain times like these is surely full of surprises, bad and good, which I hope will help me learn and evolve as a person,” she said. “In a country like mine, in Lebanon, giving back is what it is most about.”

Hritik Kothari

Purdue University

Student members around the globe look to Kothari for leadership. As ASCE’s Region 10 student president, Kothari represents nearly 25,000 student members in 74 international student chapters, spread across five continents.

Kothari is more than up for the challenge, having already led several large projects during his undergrad years at VIT Vellore in India, where he helped organize the country’s first ASCE student conference in 2018.

Now a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in construction management at Purdue, Kothari is a project coordinator intern with Healy Construction Services.

“As a student, it feels great to have that responsibility on my shoulders, and I am thankful to my company to show great trust in me,” Kothari said. “My ambition is to run multimillion-dollar projects and improve infrastructure for the well-being of the nation.”

Jessica Lewis

Mississippi State University

Lewis views her civil engineering path as leading toward twin outcomes – research contributions to improve infrastructure and serving as a role model.

She’s off to a good start on both goals.

At Mississippi State, she’s served as an undergraduate research assistant, focused on materials and construction with an emphasis on asphalt paving. Meanwhile, she’s also very active with the I.D.E.A.L. Woman group on campus, doing community service projects and mentoring local students.

“I have a strong desire to raise awareness about opportunities that younger students can take advantage of,” Lewis said. “I ultimately hope to use my platform that I am building here at MSU to inspire younger students to pursue higher education, and especially to show the younger female and minority students that they too can be successful in this field.”

Myisha Majumder

Tufts University

Majumder does not have the typical collection of skills and interests you’d probably associate with a civil engineering major.

For instance, she served on the staff of the Tufts Observer, a student magazine, for four years, including a term as editor-in-chief – a rarity for someone with a STEM background.

Meanwhile, a double major in quantitative economics led her to a two-and-a-half-year internship at the Applied Economic Clinic, a nonprofit focused on energy, the environment, and equity.

She hopes to take much of that experience into her post-graduate work in the energy industry. She’s already brought it back to Tufts as a cofounder of the ASCE student chapter’s equity team, a student group that works with faculty to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion in the civil and environmental engineering department.

“I am excited about the amount of diversity engineering is attracting now,” Majumder said. “The recent engineering class enrolled at Tufts was over 50% women, showing a marked improvement from the last several decades. We still have a way to go with increasing diversity in race and ethnicity, and also creating an inclusive space for all marginalized identities, but we’re making the right steps. Diversity of thought is crucial for improvement and advancement of the field.

“I am also excited about the interdisciplinary work that is beginning to occur in the engineering world. While it is still important that we have students and industry experts working the classical engineering jobs, this can happen alongside innovative thinking and progressive work.”

Christopher Patron

California State University, Northridge

Patron never has to look far to be reminded of his career motivation.

“Since the age of 13, I was raised in a single-parent household with a widowed mother and two younger siblings,” Patron said. “As a first-generation college student and the eldest of my siblings, I saw my success in college as an essential way to demonstrate to my siblings that any form of adversity can be overcome through self-determination.”

He’s clearly been driven to succeed at Cal State Northridge, where he’s served as the vice president of the ASCE student chapter and the project manager for the steel bridge team.

Patron also has worked as an intern for LC Engineering Group, assisting in the design and analysis of site structures that are then integrated into work on residential and industrial buildings. He plans to pursue his master’s degree in structural engineering.

Emily Perkins

The Citadel

Inspired by her nuclear-engineer father and what she called the “problem-solving skills, ethical background, and influence an engineer can make,” Perkins is a third-year civil engineering student at The Citadel, with a rank position of team captain (master sergeant) in the Corps of Cadets.

Perkins has been an active member of ASCE and the Society of Women Engineers; is the proctor for the civil engineering department; and manages to find time to serve as captain of the Citadel’s rifle team.

During her summer and winter breaks, her Navy cruise training trips reinforce the fluid mechanics principles she learns in the classroom.

“I am excited to make a difference and an impact on my community,” Perkins said. “I look forward to having professional skills and judgment that can help others and improve the quality of others’ lives.”

Peter Psaltakis

Georgia Institute of Technology

Psaltakis is taking his place in the family lineage, following both his grandfather and father into the civil engineering profession.

Taking full advantage of the opportunities afforded him at Georgia Tech, Psaltakis has been very involved in a variety of activities, including steel bridge, intramural soccer, and the Chi Epsilon civil engineering honors society.

He also has been active in the ASCE student chapter, serving as president this year, with previous roles including student conference chair, secretary, and ASCE student ambassador.

“What I’m most looking forward to is the impact the projects I work on will have on my community,” Psaltakis said. “Inherently, as the name of the occupation suggests, civil engineers work toward making society a better place to live. While an engineer’s effect on a community is generally limited by a project’s scope, I plan to always put my best work forward and strive to make the world we share a better place.”

Colby Wong

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Wong maps the start of her civil engineering career back to the day she decided as a 6-year-old to build a chair her cousin could use at the dinner table. She wasn’t allowed to use a hammer, so she drove nails into the pieces of wood with the heel of her shoe.

“It wasn’t the most stable chair, so my grandpa had to add reinforcements,” Wong said. “He taught me step by step. Since then, my love for constructing things grew. To this day, that chair is still being used by my grandma around the house.”

As a commuter student at Cal Poly Pomona, she has made it a point to get involved with campus life, including several roles with the ASCE student chapter, which she now leads as president.

Wong decided to pursue structural engineering after a successful and inspiring internship with Southern California Edison’s seismic resiliency and climate adaptation team, and hopes to continue giving back to her community.

Learn more about the ASCE 2021 New Faces of Civil Engineering–Professional honorees.

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Every year during February, engineers around the country come together to inspire students, educators, and parents by showing them the incredible things engineers contribute to the world.

Though this year’s celebrations looked a little different due to COVID-19 restrictions, ASCE members were still able to share their passion for the profession with the next generation of STEM enthusiasts.

Here are some highlights from Engineers Week 2021:

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Two of the possible knee-jerk reactions to this book’s title are 1) “Yeah, the heck with all these so-called experts, I’m going with my gut!” and 2) “There are definitely a lot of people who (unlike me) need to learn to think for themselves!” In broad terms, author Vikram Mansharamani — a Harvard lecturer and holder of a Ph.D. and two master’s degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology — might answer those statements more or less as follows: 1) “Well, we still need the legitimate experts, and they aren’t actually the main problem,” and 2) “Yes, you too.”

The main premise of Think for Yourself is that we have landed in a place where “You may not realize it, but you’ve lost your mind,” as the author writes in the introduction, by which he means that most of us, at least part of the time, “blindly outsource our thinking to technologies, experts, and rules.” And that we do this — in areas as diverse as retail shopping, health care, and relationships — is a reaction to a world where the amount of available information on practically any topic is simply overwhelming, so much so that “automating” it can seem like the only way to cope.

Mansharamani wrote this book largely to show people that there is another way to cope and wrest back control of your thought process and decision-making. And the first, most important step is to understand just how often you are, in fact, “coping.” Whether that means, for example, that you unwittingly are allowing algorithms to filter your reading, over-relying on an incompatible financial adviser, or “overspecializing” on the job to manage your workload.

Think for Yourself asserts that the complexity of the modern world in virtually every area (more data, more options, more “things to know”) has necessarily driven greater specialization of disciplines, jobs, and knowledge in general. But the pendulum has swung too far. The person who can most nimbly adopt other perspectives, understand the gaps in their own knowledge, and discern where they should listen most carefully to the experts is in the best position to succeed — whether personally or professionally.

By recognizing when you’ve mentally put your decision-making process on autopilot, you can take back manual control to ensure that your decisions are truly yours — or at least are driven by the experts you’ve consciously decided to trust. Because, as Mansharamani argues, rejection of expert knowledge is not the point; what’s important is assimilating that information and synthesizing it for yourself and your own needs.

Peppered with real-world examples and brimming with practical strategies, Think for Yourself is a tour de force that will make you think anew about how you think about the world and which information sources — be they advisers, rules of thumb, or invisible algorithms — you lean on to make your own choices.

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This brings the total number of Trimble Technology Labs to 19 in 11 countries; 19 more are in the works. The program is relatively new. The first Trimble Tech Lab was established at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2016.

That lab came to be because of Alexander C. Schreyer, the director of UMass Amherst’s Building and Construction Technology program, who approached Trimble about adding a larger portfolio of Trimble products to the university’s program, according to Allyson McDuffie, the director of education and outreach at Trimble. Schreyer was interested in this expansion “to help provide students with a deeper, more well-rounded exposure to construction technologies in general but especially in the connection between office and field technologies,” explains McDuffie. “He thought it would provide a great advantage as students were graduating into their careers.” 

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s a great idea. I think I can form a program out of that actually,’” McDuffie says. “And so we did.” 

Schreyer’s efforts not only helped create the first Trimble Technology Lab, but his ideas were also integral to the development of a framework for how that process would look for other institutions interested in partnering with Trimble. Having a faculty champion within an institution who will spearhead the proposal and drive the process is key to it ultimately being successful, according to McDuffie. In some instances, universities approach Trimble first; in others Trimble approaches universities first. In both scenarios, a faculty advocate who navigates the process on the university side is key. “This is a legal gift agreement that we sign. It has to go through a lot of processes and people,” McDuffie says. The university advocate “really manages the chaos behind the curtain, as I like to say it.”

The tech labs provide educators and students with access to the most up-to-date hardware and software tools that Trimble makes as well as the training necessary to fully employ them.

The tech labs provide educators and students with access to the most up-to-date hardware and software tools that Trimble makes as well as the training necessary to fully employ them. The tech labs are required to seat a minimum of 25 students — although most are larger than that — and are established with in-kind donations from Trimble. 

Each institution receives a core selection of Trimble hardware and software, with additional supplementary products granted, depending on what students will be specializing in at a particular institution, according to McDuffie.

“Every portfolio that is gifted is customized,” she says. “I don’t think there’s been one list of products that has been exactly the same school to school, but most labs do include a core set of solutions.” That core software typically includes Trimble’s SketchUp Pro, Tekla Structures, Tekla Structural Designer, Tekla Tedds, Trimble Connect, Trimble RealWorks, Trimble Business Center, Trimble SysQue, and Accubid. Typically, the core hardware includes robotic and mechanical total stations used for surveying in construction, 3D laser scanners, Trimble Rapid Positioning System, Trimble Field Link, global navigation satellite system technology, and Trimble XR10 with Hololens 2.

McDuffie and her colleagues work with each university to determine the specialized products the lab will offer. “We work with the university to build that list together,” McDuffie says. “They may initially ask for a list of things in their proposal, but when we read through and really understand their program and their areas of research and how they want (students) to get onboarded, we can better help them identify things they might not even know exist.”

The University of Colorado Denver’s lab will be located in its College of Engineering, Design and Computing. It will support departments and programs in construction engineering and construction management, geography and environmental sciences, physics, and urban and regional planning. The gift is expected to “accelerate our strategic vision to educate diverse graduates who will not only make an immediate impact in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry but will (also) emerge as its future leaders,” says Martin Dunn, Ph.D., the dean of the university’s College of Engineering, Design and Computing, who was quoted in a press release about the new tech lab. Dunn expects that the impact of the gift will extend across the university’s campus and allow interdisciplinary collaboration among engineers, architects, construction managers, and scientists as they create and implement technological innovations in the built environment.

McDuffie and her colleagues work with each university to determine the specialized products the lab will offer.

The Illinois Tech lab was gifted to the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering’s Construction Engineering and Management Program. The university expects that the lab will enable the expansion of its expertise in civil and environmental infrastructure, building construction field systems, project controls, and collaboration. The hands-on learning that the tech lab will make possible aligns closely with the university’s focus on hands-on pedagogy, according to Ernie Iseminger, the vice president for advancement at Illinois Tech, who was quoted in a press release announcing the lab.

At the University of São Paulo, the new lab will expand the university’s capabilities in 3D building design, building information modeling, surveying and georeferencing, scanning, and the sustainable built environment. This is the first time Trimble will open a tech lab in South America, according to the company.

The lab is part of the university’s Polytechnic School of Engineering and will provide engineering students — as well as those in the Civil Construction Department and the Transportation Department — with the equipment to scan buildings or construction sites, design architectural building models, and perform digital construction cost estimates and scheduling to improve productivity and reduce costs. “For the University of São Paulo, receiving a gift from Trimble provides not just a financial advantage to improve a lab or support research,” says Vahan Agopyan, Ph.D., the president of the university. “First, it speaks to the trust invested in what we are doing; second, it is an endorsement of our activities; and third, the lab collaboration provides an ongoing dialogue with Trimble, which we believe will become even stronger as we continue to build our relationship with a construction technology leader.”

As with most learning institutions, there have been changes due to COVID-19. “It varies, by school and sometimes even by department, whether students are in-person, remote, or some hybrid of the two. Although, this late in the term, most everyone has gone completely remote,” says Amy Northcutt, the senior education program manager at Trimble. “Luckily, some of the solutions that Trimble has provided could already be remotely accessed by students or faculty, regardless of COVID-19. Even in some cases where that wasn’t initially the intent, we’ve been able to increase the number of licenses so that students can now access the additional tools from their remote locations,” Northcutt explains.

When it comes to partnering with institutions to create these labs, Trimble’s goal is quality rather than quantity: “The objective is not how many; it’s how many good relationships we can have and maintain,” McDuffie says. 

“These labs are really a considerable long-term investment on our part,” McDuffie explains. “They include ongoing support and training, (and) we have regular check-ins with the faculty. We require regular reporting from them on how they have implemented things that we have provided and areas of research where they might be using our solutions,” she says. “We try and communicate with each campus as often as possible, (and) in many cases we end up granting new technologies that we identify and think they can use as they become available.” 

Trimble has also funded grants for research and student clubs at universities where tech labs have been gifted, although those are separate opportunities that typically evolve organically, according to McDuffie.

This year, Trimble is focusing on developing labs and partnerships with historically black colleges and universities, minority-serving institutions, Hispanic-serving institutions, and tribal colleges. But any university or institution interested in partnering with Trimble to develop a tech lab is invited to contact the company.

More information about applying to Trimble to establish a tech lab at a university or institution can be found at its website, education.trimble.com/programs/trimble-technology-labs. The process of having a Trimble tech lab gifted to a university typically takes between four and eight months. 

This article first appeared in the January/February 2021 issue of Civil Engineering as “Trimble Donates In-Kind Tech Labs across the Globe.”

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Briefly describe ENGR 211 – Statics. What are the learning goals for this course?
ENGR 211 is the first of a three-part series devoted to the study of mechanics, and it is required for all engineering majors. The progression looks like this:

• ENGR 211 – Statics (the study of objects that are mostly at rest, or at least not changing speed).
• ENGR 212 – Dynamics (now the objects are moving and accelerating).
• ENGR 213 – Strength of Materials (now we consider how objects flex, bend, twist, and generally change shape when loaded).

Unlike some universities where each engineering discipline has its own version of these classes, at OSU all engineering majors are blended together. That makes for a diverse learning environment as well as potentially high enrollment numbers. We don’t compete in size with the likes of biology, chemistry, math, physics, et cetera, but statics is definitely one of the larger classes within the engineering program. I only bring this up because it is one of the characteristics of delivering the course — managing teaching assistants, students, labs, et cetera, with a high volume.

I wanted to avoid a lackluster, go-through-the-motions vibe some students lament over. … This class was a game changer for me when I was in school, and I want to share that feeling with my students.

As for the learning objectives, think of this course as ‘physics meets engineering.’ We take the fundamental math concepts and blend them with physics to teach students how to evaluate typical structures and systems — trusses, beams, bridges, you name it. We also teach students how to present their work in a professional manner. We emphasize ‘neat, professional, and organized’ with their work, as if they were submitting to their boss or to a client in the real world. Essentially, students learn to think critically and develop problem-solving skills, apply everything to common engineering situations, and then thoughtfully explain their solution process.

It’s exciting for everyone because it’s the first time students feel like they’re real engineers. It’s like that exhilaration you feel when the training wheels come off and you’re riding for the first time. It is truly a rite of passage of sorts. In the industry, we wouldn’t hire interns unless this class was under their belts. Similarly, nearly all professional engineers, no matter their discipline, can share with you their own personal ‘statics experience.’

Why is this course innovative? 
Because of its nature as a required, core-curriculum class, it could easily succumb to feeling dull, repetitive, or boring. I wanted to avoid a lackluster, go-through-the-motions vibe some students lament over. I wanted the opposite. This class was a game changer for me when I was in school, and I want to share that feeling with my students. I come at them with passion and energy, and my goal is to have impact. That’s how I show up for them. And I weave that passion into the course materials I prepare for my students.

One example is the videos I have created. There are between 40 and 50 high-quality videos, each approximately 10 minutes in length. Some explain important concepts visually, while others show example problems. Some demonstrate the connection to real-world scenarios. And I’m not referring to canned recordings of a lecture. I reserved time in a studio and worked with a production team from our own Ecampus (online education portal) to create these videos. They have become a valued resource for students who take the course. 

Based on requests from other professors and students, we created a dedicated webpage that contains all the videos, and the link is available to all students and faculty members at OSU. Other courses in the sequence refer back to the videos, so students have them as a refresher, and they can also be used as a preparation tool when they study for the Fundamentals of Engineering Examination.

Moving forward, I envision working with OSU to offer these videos via the Open Educational Resources Unit. This would allow more folks to access these educational resources — students, faculty, and even members of industry.

How do you ensure students grasp the concepts of statics?
One touch point is called recitation, which is a fancy way of saying lab or studio. It’s a way to complement and reinforce the learning concepts. It can take many forms, but I have chosen to create weekly assignments that peel back the layers on whatever we covered that week in class. In the in-person delivery of the course, students work in small groups to collaboratively proceed through the assignment. In this setting, they also have access to a TA (teaching assistant) who floats around the room answering questions as needed.

The idea is to steer them in the right direction without giving away the answers. I like to think of it as a safe learning environment where it’s OK to mess up. Students are graded for their submissions, but the hope is that they should get everything right if they use their resources properly. It’s a little harder to replicate the group collaboration in the Ecampus version, so those students work through the assignment individually rather than in a group, but they still have access to discussion boards, me, and the TAs. And the student-to-student interaction in that section comes afterwards when they perform peer evaluations on each other’s work.

Maintaining a positive and supportive learning environment online can be a challenge. How do you accomplish that?
You know, this hasn’t really been an issue for me. I’m not sure if it’s the tone I set from the get-go, but students show up in a positive way for this class. I’m not afraid to be vulnerable in front of my students, and I try to offer as much empathy as I can. Perhaps because of that they offer their respect in return.

What sparked your interest in statics?
Filis T. Kokkinos, Ph.D. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Infrastructure Engineering at the Technological Educational Institute of Athens, in Greece. He was my statics professor when I was 19 years old at Texas A&M University. His command of the topic and delivery of the material inspired me, and it definitely lit a fire within that is still aflame today. I know it sounds nerdy to say this, but I genuinely loved statics. I didn’t mind doing the homework, and I enjoyed going to class. Perhaps like many teenagers and early 20-somethings, that was a foreign feeling to me. At that time in my life I didn’t particularly enjoy any lectures or even the folks giving them. Everything felt stale, canned, rote. Kokkinos changed that. And at any given moment in my own teaching career, that’s what I’m trying to replicate for my students.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I learned recently Kokkinos was ranked in the top 1 percent of engineering faculty at Texas A&M. The same year I took his class he received the award for Outstanding Contribution to the Undergraduate Program.

I have a ‘So What?’ component to every lecture. I feel students should feel authorized and empowered to raise their hands and say, ‘So what?’

What are some of the novel teaching methods you have implemented in this course? 
First are the helpful videos I mentioned above, including access to those videos after a student completes the course. This is noteworthy because I feel we should vertically integrate concepts as students move through our program. Too many times I see students and instructors who think of course material as a one-term or one-semester package that gets delivered and then stashed away for storage upon completion. I feel differently. Students should take these concepts with them and have access to tap into them as needed whenever they want. I wanted to ensure this could happen.

Also, by making the videos available to all faculty members at OSU, my goal was to offer some transparency into my teaching methods. Because this class is a fundamental course and subsequent courses build from it, I want instructors of those courses to know what I taught and how I taught it. Often, students go from one class to the next and they discover one instructor does things completely differently than their predecessor. Students get discouraged because they think they have to learn everything again from scratch. I think they should receive a cohesive message that shows how to synthesize concepts throughout their coursework. By offering my videos to other instructors, my hope is we can get on the same page and build from each other, vertically, not laterally.

Another teaching method are the low-stakes quizzes offered each week. These are used so that students can gauge their understanding of the material. They are available throughout the term, which gives students the ability to practice at various times over specific content throughout the course. I also created helpful text responses to accompany correct and incorrect answers. Upon completion of each item, additional answers and resources are released, allowing students to build their confidence and understanding of the concepts.

Additionally, I have a ‘So What?’ component to every lecture. I feel students should feel authorized and empowered to raise their hands and say, ‘So what?’ In these segments, I tie everything we just talked about back to specific real-world examples. I’m fortunate to have 10 years of industry experience to draw from. I think it legitimizes the material I’m asking students to consume.

Another approach that makes this course innovative is giving students a choice when it comes to proctored exams. They can opt for an outside service like Proctorio, or they can join a Zoom session. The former sometimes feels foreign to some students, which is why many (more than 85 percent) opt for the Zoom sessions, which are managed by me and my team (no outsiders). Not many professors I’ve spoken to are offering this type of accommodation with proctoring. It’s a big deal to students, and they are very appreciative to have a choice in the matter. 

I also created a detailed FAQ (frequently asked questions) page that provides explanations on grading, policies, assignment formats and submissions, and other aspects of the course. Think of it as an interactive syllabus, without the legal tone a typical syllabus has. Furthermore, I give them clear and defined deadlines for all assignments. That may sound trivial, but some professors are ambiguous with expectations and deadlines. Students dislike that. They want to know what’s expected of them and when it’s due. 

I’d say the main focus of my efforts during the pandemic has been to offer more flexibility than usual and to be more empathetic with the students. 

Is there one section of the course that is a student favorite? 
It’s funny, I teach lots of different things, but trusses always bubble to the top as a favorite with students. Perhaps it’s because we see them everywhere or because trusses look complicated at first but really aren’t that mysterious once students learn the fundamentals. I don’t know why exactly, but they’re consistently a hit.

Did you have to go through any special training when switching from in-person to online? 
I had several years of teaching experience when I started developing the online material, and I’m extremely grateful I did. But even with that experience to draw from, I was required to take part in a multiweek training course offered by Ecampus, which was exceptional. I really can’t say enough good things about our Ecampus program here. I learned so many outstanding pedagogies in those seminars, and I have brought them back into my in-person courses as well. As a whole, I am a much better instructor because of this training and experience.

You redesigned ENGR 211. Would the changes to the course have been made regardless of COVID-19?
Yes. One of the requirements within the OSU Ecampus program is that all Ecampus courses must undergo a comprehensive redevelopment every few years. This redevelopment keeps the material fresh, and it also gives instructors a chance to incorporate ideas that maybe we’ve been mulling over but haven’t had time to officially implement. The redevelopment requirement is clever and brilliant. Many of the best practices and novel teaching methods I described earlier were born out of my redevelopment efforts. Again, regardless of an instructor’s background or experience, Ecampus requires another multiweek training seminar at the time of redevelopment, and as before, I learned so much from going through that.

As for COVID-19, I was well poised to transition to remote delivery because of my involvement in the Ecampus program. I’d say the main focus of my efforts during the pandemic has been to offer more flexibility than usual and to be more empathetic with the students. 

Is there anything you would do differently next semester?
Using Zoom has opened my eyes to its potential for interactive online office hours and working with students one-on-one. I’ve been hosting short, 15-minute Zoom meetings with students to answer their questions, where normally we would conduct that conversation via email or they’d have to wait in the hall during office hours. It’s been so effective that I plan to incorporate Zoom into my normal routine, even when we return to in-person teaching. 

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.” 

This article first appeared in the January/February 2021 issue of Civil Engineering as “Instructor Brings Statics to Life.”

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During a building fire, thermal expansion and large deformations impose loads on structural components that are not considered during the design of the building for ambient temperatures. Unfortunately, these principles of structural fire engineering are not being taught at the undergraduate level, according to Erica C. Fischer, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, an assistant professor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. As a result, there is an entire subset of civil and structural engineering that many graduates know next to nothing about. However, Fischer is working to change this. She has developed a series of structural fire engineering modules that instructors can seamlessly incorporate into their undergraduate civil engineering curriculum. These teaching modules, she says, will help “build a pipeline of engineers who understand structural fire engineering and who can use newly published guidelines and code changes.”

ASCE has supported the development of structural fire engineering initiatives and recommendations for professional practice for the last decade.

ASCE has supported the development of structural fire engineering initiatives and recommendations for professional practice for the last decade. This guidance includes Appendix E in Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures (ASCEI 7-16), “which introduces the concept of performance-based structural fire design in a deterministic way,” she explains. Guidance also includes the ASCE/Structural Engineering Institute Fire Protection Committee’s Structural Fire Engineering, Manual of Practice 138 and the joint venture between ASCE/SEI and the Charles Pankow Foundation that produced Performance-Based Structural Fire Design: Exemplar Designs of Four Regionally Diverse Buildings Using ASCE 7-16, Appendix E. 

These publications have been instrumental in the motivation for the development of the learning modules, notes Fischer. Furthermore, the modules will enable future civil and structural engineers to be “ready to work with the documents developed by the structural fire engineering community, have conversations about structural fire engineering with experts, and be aware of the option to design buildings for fires.”

There is an entire subset of civil and structural engineering that many graduates know next to nothing about. Erica Fischer, Ph.D., M.ASCE, is working to change this.

Fischer is collaborating with the Fire Protection Committee’s educational working group, which is made up of U.S. and British professors who teach structural fire engineering at the graduate level. She is also working with a civil engineering graduate student at Oregon State to create and test the modules. The project also ties into the SEI Futures Fund, which supports the future of structural engineering. “The development of these modules is making sure that we are educating our engineers to be future leaders and innovators in this new area of structural engineering within the United States,” Fischer says.

The modules have been designed to be easily inserted into existing civil engineering courses such as materials, steel design, timber design, and concrete design. “They are targeting professors who have no background within this topic area, so we are aiming to keep the barrier to entry low enough that (instructors) feel comfortable using them,” she notes. 

The modules have been designed to be easily inserted into existing civil engineering courses such as materials, steel design, timber design, and concrete design.

The teaching modules will comprise lecture notes, classroom exercises, lab experiments, homework assignments, and examination questions. Although implementation has been delayed due to the pandemic, Fischer hopes to start rolling out the modules at Oregon State (and other universities where members of the educational working group are housed) in the spring. Feedback collected from students and instructors via surveys at the start and end of the courses will be used to modify the modules to ensure they are ready for mass distribution within the civil and structural engineering communities. “The ability to implement the course modules and receive feedback from both teachers and students are critical in making sure these modules are implementable around the country at a wide variety of institutions,” Fischer says. 

Once the modules have been fully vetted at universities, the plan is to make them available free of charge online for anyone to use.

Fischer earned her doctorate in structural fire engineering, and when she started her education journey, she had no idea she would end up where she is. “I never intended to get a Ph.D. in this topic, but I found it so challenging and interesting. I had a supportive and inspiring adviser to work with, so it just happened!” she says. “I think this is the story of many individuals within the U.S. We just fell into the topic.” 

And while “falling into the topic” is not a bad way to get where she is, she hopes future civil engineers will be more deliberate in their choice to specialize in this area. “That is what I hope to achieve with this project — to show undergraduates another possibility for them within the vast field of structural engineering!”

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.” 

This article first appeared in the December 2020 issue of Civil Engineering as “Ready to withstand the Fire.”

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But a study released this year by a team of University of Washington researchers, led by biology teachers Elli J. Theobald, Ph.D., and Scott Freeman, Ph.D., concluded that the practice of “active learning” can reduce the achievement gaps seen between students in the majority and those from underrepresented groups in undergraduate STEM educations.

The report, “Active Learning Narrows Achievement Gaps for Underrepresented Students in Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers analyzed 9,238 student examinations from 15 studies across the country and data on student failure rates from 26 studies covering 44,606 total students. The report found that on average, hands-on learning methods reduced the gaps in exam scores by 33 percent and narrowed gaps in pass rates by 45 percent for low-income and racially underrepresented groups, including Black, Latino, Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander students. More intensive classes in which students spend two-thirds of their course time in active learning narrow the gap in test scores and pass rates even further, by, respectively, 42 percent and 76 percent.

According to 2017 data from the Economic Policy Institute, the median income for Black men is 30 percent lower than the median income for white men, and the gap between Black women and white women is 21 percent. In STEM fields, the gap is smaller but still there. According to the National Science Foundation, in 2010, engineers’ median annual salary was $87,000. The median salary for whites was $89,000; for Blacks it was $78,000, a difference of 14.1 percent. This is potentially significant, given the importance of education in closing income gaps between whites and racial minorities.

Underrepresentation in STEM fields is “primarily due to attrition” during college, according to the report. Minority students begin college with the same levels of interest in STEM fields as their overrepresented peers, but the six-year STEM degree completion rate drops from 52 percent for Asian Americans and 43 percent for whites to 29 percent for Latinos, 25 percent for Native Americans, and 22 percent for African Americans, the report concludes. Disparities also exist for lower-income students versus higher-income students.         

Getting active

So what is active learning? Freeman, a professor emeritus in biology at UW, defines it as a group of techniques that engage students dynamically in the process of learning. Rather than sitting back and passively receiving lectures, students participate in group work that develops high-level problem-solving skills.

According to the report, to be considered “active learning,” a curriculum must:

            * Stress the importance of deliberate and focused practice.

            * Use “scaffolded exercises” that address specific skills.

            * Provide feedback and repetition.

            * Offer an inclusive approach that emphasizes “treating students with dignity and respect” and a faith in students’ capacity to excel.    

This goes against the traditional model of university education, says Freeman, in which “domain experts” lecture to students, who are treated as simply empty vessels for that knowledge to be poured into. Recent research in cognitive psychology has upended this view.

“Students have mental models of how the world works, whether it’s engineering or basic physics, and your job as an instructor is to understand what those are and understand what’s wrong with them,” says Freeman.

In other words, it is the job of professors to help students improve their own mental capacity for learning — turning students into participants in the absorption and organization of knowledge. This is a process sometimes called having a growth mindset — a belief that one can change how one learns and understand difficult topics. And the first people to adopt that growth mindset must be the professors.

“Small(er) gaps are associated with faculty who have a growth or challenge mindset, which emphasizes the expandability of intelligence and is inclusion-oriented, while larger gaps are correlated with faculty who have a fixed mindset, which interprets intelligence as innate and immutable and is therefore exclusion or selection-oriented,” Freeman says.

“The analogy I use is when somebody with talent and motivation in music or athletics, for example, finally gets a good coach or a good music teacher. Because of their upbringing or their neighborhood, (some underrepresented students) never had a decent basketball coach or soccer coach or gymnastics coach. And then they get into a program where they have one, and it’s like: Bam! They just take off!”

Heads and hearts together

The techniques above are one part of what the researchers dub a “heads-and-hearts” strategy. The hearts side of the equation has to do with making underrepresented students feel welcome and valued. Traditionally STEM classes have been dominated by white and male students; women, Black students, and other minorities can feel like they do not belong when they first walk into a classroom.

“When students feel excluded, their participation is diminished and their academic performance suffers,” says Benjamin Flores, Ph.D., a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso. “Honestly, who would want to be in a room with peers and instructors that work around them (rather than with them)? This is not only true for students of color but also for other groups like women in the physical science and engineering disciplines.”

Active learning is not about watering down challenging curriculum but reframing the way courses are taught to encourage students to rise to meet those challenges. “The whole idea is that the instructor is creating this culture. We’re telling these students this is really rigorous,” says Freeman. “We’re telling them: ‘This is going to be the hardest course you’ve ever taken, but you can do it. And I’m here to do everything I can to help you. And you’ve got a team all around you.’ It’s creating a sense of belonging.”

Teaching the teachers

“In general, STEM faculty have become more aware of the importance of engaging students in class,” Flores adds. “Department chairs and college deans have adopted language that promotes student success. Also, junior faculty benefit from faculty development programs that aim at preparing them to create engaging classroom environments. This is a major shift that has taken root across higher education.”

Still, this transition will not happen overnight; many young faculty members have much more experience as experts in their fields than they do at teaching their expertise. Additionally, “while STEM faculty may be well-versed in active learning methodologies, they may not be fully aware of the need for creating and maintaining inclusive environments,” Flores says.

And the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated the picture, of course — teachers at all levels are trying to figure out how best to create active, inclusive learning environments remotely.    

This research, Freeman contends, points the way for universities to do more than simply make statements about diversity or hire staff to work on the issue of diversity. “The literature shows that each and every faculty member can do something right now that will make a difference,” he says. “We need to change the way we teach, and we can do that right now.

“It’s not a committee. It’s not some statement on a website. It’s actual action.”

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Transportation systems are changing rapidly and engineering colleges need to keep up with those changes. Autonomous vehicles, connected vehicles, connected roadways, et cetera, are being tested around the country and are likely to become more mainstream in the coming decades, so our schools need to train our engineers to work in these fields. One such school that is aiming to do just that is Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh. CMU offers an advanced undergraduate elective transportation course that is split into half semesters. The first is a “traditional” course in traffic engineering, which is taught by a practicing engineer. The second is called Smart Cities: Growth with Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), and it is taught by Sean Qian, Ph.D., M.ASCE, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

The course is interdisciplinary, combining engineering, public policy, and business management principles and is thus cross-listed in the university’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Smart Cities is taken by students from a variety of disciplines and interests, including civil and environmental engineering, architecture, urban design, public policy, information systems, business, computer science, human–computer interaction, and robotics, according to Qian. 

The overarching purpose of the class is for participants to develop an understanding of the dynamics of smart cities and how ITS is integrated into these cities, stated Qian. The course focuses on the concepts behind, and case studies of, each component of ITS, including intelligent sensing, shared mobility services, and autonomous and connected vehicle technology that enables vehicles to communicate with infrastructure. The course also features ITS applications—such as advanced traffic-control systems and intelligent parking management systems—and their deployment in the real world locally, nationally, and even internationally.

The course focuses on the concepts behind, and case studies of, each component of ITS, including intelligent sensing, shared mobility services, and autonomous and connected vehicle technology.

The eight-week minicourse is divided into four modules: introduction to smart cities and their purpose, ITS technology, ITS applications, and final project presentations. Each three-hour class focuses on a discrete component and is taught from engineering, public policy, and business management perspectives. Class starts with an overview of the component to be covered followed by a guest lecture and question-and-answer session. The guest lecturer is either a CMU faculty member or an industry or government ITS professional who brings “cutting-edge ITS projects, ideas, and experiences to the class,” stated Qian. 

A formal lecture, which complements what was imparted during the guest lecture, follows. After this is discussion time; students form mixed-discipline groups to discuss what they have learned and their “reflection questions,” which are based on the required reading they had been given the week prior. After the group discussions, the entire class reconvenes to debate the technological or policy implications of that particular ITS component. Then the process begins again, with Qian introducing the next week’s topic as well as the required reading and reflection questions for it.

Reflection is critical to understanding the content, according to Qian, and reflection assignments are 40 percent of the final grade. Having time to reflect on a topic before it’s presented in class makes the lectures and the discussions all the richer, and the reflection exercise serves as a springboard for group and class discussions.  

What makes this course innovative is its atypical class structure and its interdisciplinary approach.

Class participation makes up 10 percent of the grade, and the final project accounts for 50 percent. The final project must tackle a real-world ITS problem and have technical and public policy dimensions, Qian stated. Students work in multidisciplinary teams of three or four—at least one engineer (or computer scientist) and one policy analyst (social scientist). Qian believes students learn much better in teams because each member has valuable input and expertise based on his or her life and educational experiences. Teams can choose their topics, or if they’re having trouble coming up with something compelling, they brainstorm ideas with Qian. Teams present oral summaries as well as written reports. Each member of the group must have a part in the oral presentation, and it must have technology and policy components to be considered complete. In addition to the oral presentation, the final project has to include a clearly defined statement of the project’s goal or problem, literature review, research approach, analysis, results, conclusions, limitations of the existing technologies, and what can be done in the near future to further improve ITS.

What makes this course innovative is its atypical class structure for a transportation engineering course and its interdisciplinary approach, one that helps students build new skill sets, Qian noted. “ITS is a very interdisciplinary field, and there are public policy and business management aspects that make ITS solutions unique to traditional road-design problems.” 

Now in its fifth year, the course has “evolved and improved tremendously,” Qian said. The aim from the start has been to design an interdisciplinary course that not only featured innovative technologies but one that also had real-world components and applications, and the present course still meets this goal. For the foreseeable future, he will keep to the same class structure since it has proved to be popular.  The students enjoy the teamwork aspect and the discussions, which really come alive when those from different disciplines share their thoughts. 

“Training the next generation of transportation engineers, scientists, and managers who understand engineering design, systems frameworks, technologies, policies, and their real-world applications is my goal,” Qian said.

This article first appeared in the June 2018 issue of Civil Engineering.                            

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.”

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Celso Ferreira, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, is an assistant professor in the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, Virginia. He teaches classes that focus on water resources engineering and the effects that water-related weather events, such as hurricanes, can have on civil engineering infrastructure.

Knowing that there needed to be a change in the way civil engineers are taught so that they can become creative problem solvers who can conceptualize and implement novel and inventive engineering design approaches, Ferreira decided to change the way content was delivered in some of his courses. He adopted what is called the flipped classroom model in which classroom time is devoted to practical activities and answering questions, and students view the lectures on their own time. Having this extra time in the classroom has been good for him and his students: It allows him to form relationships with them, and it affords them the time they need to explore in a stress-free way the correlation between current engineering methods and the challenges to these methods. 

With the goal of providing an environment in which students can develop their problem-solving skills, Ferreira has spearheaded two educational initiatives that employ project-based, hands-on learning as well as video and social media: the Mason Educational Watershed and OutSIDE Classroom: Teaching across America and the World. Both support the Mason Impact initiative, a separate university-wide initiative that affords all students opportunities to participate in “high-impact activities that support their development as engaged citizens and well-rounded scholars who are prepared to act,” according to GMU’s website.

The Mason Educational Watershed on GMU’s Fairfax campus is a “living laboratory,” says Ferreira. The watershed has two uses: connecting theory and engineering methods to reality and providing hands-on, project-based learning experiences, according to Ferreira and a website dedicated to the watershed. 

Knowing that there needed to be a change in the way civil engineers are taught, Ferreira decided to change the way content was delivered.

During their time at the watershed students observe, collect, and monitor atmospheric conditions, such as rainfall on the watershed and stream flow. While these two activities have their merits, what is most important about this living lab is that activities are designed to develop and deepen “critical thinking on the effects of urban infrastructure and civil engineering structures on watershed response and flooding,” Ferreira states. 

All the data that are generated are incorporated into projects in the water resource engineering courses he teaches. Besides producing valuable scientific data, the projects are an excellent way to involve undergraduate students in professional, real-world activities and research.

The goal of the OutSIDE project, Ferreira says, is to engage students by providing “virtual field trips” across the United States and other countries. The premise is simple but necessary for today’s tech-savvy students. Marshalling the power and appeal that technology holds for many young people, he records short videos that “introduce new concepts, describe engineering methods in action, propose homework questions, and enable critical thinking.” Using video, students have explored watershed concepts from the top of the continental divide at the Rocky Mountains, studied the effects of precipitation events on the Colorado River in Austin, Texas, and discussed the implications of climate variability in the portion of California’s water supply that comes from Lake Tahoe, he says.  

Ferreira states that the “videos pre­sent a great link for topics we study in class.” In addition to the videos, Ferreira has opted to add social media to his teaching “toolbox,” which he says has let him “connect with his students in a way that goes beyond classroom time.” Facebook has features that allow him to share current content with the students related to the class topics because the content goes directly into their newsfeeds. Furthermore, he maintains an Instagram account that, he says, “offers a little glimpse of my personal life and its intersection with water resources engineering.” He also uses Kahoot!, a game-based learning platform, to post interactive quizzes. And Ferreira is also working to develop an online educational coding repository on GitHub (an online “storage” site where people can share programing codes) that will be dedicated to water resources engineering. 

He firmly believes that an engaged student is a student who is learning, and a student who is learning is the professional who will make the necessary difference in restoring and improving the world’s urban infrastructure.

Getting to this point has been quite the journey for Ferreira. Like many, he began his teaching career by using PowerPoint slides and writing important concepts on the board. And although he was armed with passion and enthusiasm, he says he soon realized that, despite his efforts, many of the students were not as enthusiastic as he was; they just wanted to take the class, get a decent grade, and move on. Now, however, student engagement and interest—inside and out of the classroom—are up, and he credits much of that to the addition of social media and videos as well as having a flipped classroom. Although he would not describe himself as a “social media person,” he says that it is definitely worth the struggle and time for the returns he gets on his investment.

The same goes for adding real-life, hands-on projects to the educational lineup. “Real-life events are key to student engagement,” he says. He firmly believes that an engaged student is a student who is learning, and a student who is learning is the professional who will make the necessary difference in restoring and improving the world’s urban infrastructure, which is desperately needed. Ferreira says students feel much more motivated if they are able to see the link between what they are studying in the classroom and the real-world cases that are close to them. 

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.”        

This article first appeared in the November 2017 issue of Civil Engineering. 

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Teaching methods are evolving as instructors and researchers embrace the knowledge that there is more than one way for students to learn. We are rapidly moving toward an educational landscape in which the mastery of professional skills—such as teamwork, communication, ethical judgment, and critical thinking—is just as important as the mastery of technical ones. What’s more, employers are looking for candidates who have these technical and professional skills, but they are also looking for those who have practical experience, and engineering programs are often challenged by balancing accreditation requirements and attempts to infuse these elements into their curricula. 

Technology is playing a role in these shifts in curricula as well. Smartphones, tablets, virtual reality, gaming, and other technologies are increasingly infiltrating classrooms, just as they have the rest of the world. The need for technology in higher education has perhaps never been more apparent than in the past three months, as instructors across the country pivoted to an online mode of instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Enter GeoExplorer, an immersive, mixed-reality game designed for geotechnical engineering students that makes it possible for them to obtain practical experience, build their technical skills, exercise engineering judgment, and learn from failure—all in a stress-free and engaging environment. 

Funded by a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Science Foundation, a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in Troy, New York; Northeastern University, in Boston; and Olin College of Engineering, in Needham, Massachusetts, are hoping to “fundamentally transform engineering education with mixed-reality, game-based learning” in civil engineering curricula at more than 20 colleges and universities across the country, including historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions, according to Tarek Abdoun, Ph.D., M.ASCE, in written comments to Civil Engineering. 

GeoExplorer is a comprehensive tool, one that the team hopes will motivate and engage students in STEM education.

Leading the curriculum design team are Abdoun, who is the Thomas Iovino chaired professor in RPI’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and a Global Distinguished Professor at New York University Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), and Victoria Bennett, Ph.D., A.M.ASCE, an assistant professor in the same department at RPI. Together, they are responsible for developing the technical content for GeoExplorer, spearheading its classroom implementation, assessing student learning outcomes, and hosting professional development workshops for early adopter faculty. The game development effort is led by Casper Harteveld, Ph.D., an associate professor of game design at Northeastern University. Yevgeniya V. Zastavker, Ph.D., an associate professor of physics at Olin College, is leading the education research and evaluation effort. 

GeoExplorer is a comprehensive tool, one that the team hopes will motivate and engage students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Now under development to expand beyond a field testing module, the final GeoExplorer activity will combine “actual lab testing, virtual field testing (cone penetration test [CPT]), theoretical system design, and virtual inspection of flood-protection systems during extreme events [in a] mock internship experience,”  Abdoun explained. 

The appeal for students is that it uses technology they are familiar with and simultaneously gives them the opportunity to apply the knowledge they have garnered in class and develop their engineering judgment skills as they complete the missions—all in an environment in which they have the freedom to learn by failing. Activities in the virtual environment include conducting a CPT site investigation, inspecting a levee system, and testing student-designed levees to failure. 

Many students find it fun, Abdoun noted. “We designed four sites for site investigation and asked students to complete only two of them as their assignment,” he said. However, 40 percent wished to complete all the sites. “You know you have a very successful learning tool when your students tell you they want to do more assignments!” 

And they should find it fun, because they have been integral to the game’s development since it was first introduced four years ago at RPI and Southern Methodist University, in Dallas. In the early phases of this project, students completed surveys before and after they played the game. These questions were designed to test what they learned on a technical level as well as the game’s quality and their perception of its effectiveness as a learning tool. “The results showed that over 80 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed that this computer-based game was an effective way to learn about field testing,” he noted.

Students are still heavily involved in the research four years later.  “Students—undergraduates and graduates—are the core of the game development, as the majority of our research team members are students,” said Abdoun. He and Bennett use student feedback—from those on the research team as well as the 500 or so students who have played it since its first implementation in 2016—to craft and fine-tune the missions and make it more appealing for players. 

Immersive and mixed-reality educational games are the “next generation” in delivering innovative, engaging, and effective learning.

The research team is not resting on what has already been accomplished with the game. Team members hope it will be an integral tool in geotechnical engineering courses in the United States and abroad. “I believe virtual and mixed-reality gaming will be the core of effective STEM learning,” Abdoun stated. Although they are pleased with the results and its reach so far, they hope for more: within five years they would like to see Geo-
Explorer “fully developed, tested, and broadly used by engineering universities on the national and international level.”

And perhaps it may someday be broadly used by employers as well. During a summer internship, one of the students performed a CPT in the field (a task she had done virtually in class). She completed the task so well and her boss was so amazed that he contacted Abdoun wanting to know if the company could make the game part of the training for new hires, which, he says, he and Bennett readily agreed to.

Immersive and mixed-reality educational games are the “next generation” in delivering innovative, engaging, and effective learning, Bennett said in written comments to Civil Engineering. GeoExplorer provides the platform needed to “teach and assess engineering concepts when students might not have access to a physical laboratory or field testing,” she said.

“For engineering education, in particular, this is an important point since many of us believe that a quality engineering education is marked by hands-on learning, interdisciplinary and teamwork experiences, integrated learning opportunities, design, and many other components that are difficult to achieve through traditional online education.” 

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.”    

This article first appeared in the July/August 2020 issue of Civil Engineering.            

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Melanie Villatoro, P.E., M.ASCE, is an assistant professor in the Department of Construction Management and Civil Engineering Technology (CMCE) at New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, New York. She teaches Statics, which is a required course for freshmen construction management and civil engineering technology majors. It is the first of four in the department’s design course sequence; therefore, mastering the material is vital, because students must pass this course to proceed to the others in the sequence. One method Villatoro has implemented in Statics to foster success is the Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) instructional model. 

PLTL is a method first pioneered in chemistry courses and later expanded to other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines in order to retain students in these majors and lower failure rates. “The PLTL strategy involves students working in small groups to solve problems designed to reinforce the lecture material,” said Villatoro, who wrote in response to questions posed by Civil Engineering. In Statics at City Tech, each group is led by a peer leader who has either completed an undergraduate degree or is currently an upper-level undergraduate student.  All peer leaders must complete a semester of training by taking a one-credit peer-leader training course. 

Implementing the PLTL strategy was years in the making. Villatoro observed that student performance was low and withdrawal rates were high for Statics. “A student’s performance in Statics is indicative of [his or her]success in the curriculum; without satisfactorily passing the course, it is unlikely the student will be retained in the major,” according to Villatoro, Karla Peña, and Janet Liou-Mark, Ph.D., in the paper “The Effects of Peer-Led Workshops in a Statics Course” (presented at the 2018 American Society for Engineering Education Mid-Atlantic Section Spring Conference, Washington, D.C.).

Implementing the PLTL strategy was years in the making.

With this in mind, the CMCE department conducted a study that began in spring 2009 and concluded in fall 2016. Participants were freshmen who were majoring in construction management and civil engineering technology. Over the seven years, 1,396 students participated in the study. They were divided into three cohorts: no PLTL, nonmandatory PLTL, and mandatory PLTL. “These categories reflect the time periods of the Statics course where PLTL was not offered at all, when it was an optional support program, and when it officially became part of the curriculum,” stated the paper’s authors.

For each cohort, the final grade distributions were recorded and organized into five categories: 

“The results showed that ABC pass rates of the mandatory PLTL sections were approximately twenty percent higher when compared to sections with no PLTL,” Villatoro stated. “Moreover, the withdrawal rates were approximately ten percent lower for the mandatory PLTL sections when compared to the rates of the other sections.” Just as important, having the support of their peers played a pivotal role in boosting the level of learning in Statics.  

The class is divided into two parts: lecture and workshop. During the lecture portion, Villatoro summarizes the concepts to be tackled during the workshop, which is where the peer facilitation and collaborative learning occur. Workshops are an hour long, during which the groups solve problems that are aligned with the lectures. Villatoro develops the problem sets; however, the peer leaders are responsible for creating their own answer keys before each workshop. Peer leaders are discouraged from providing answers to their group members. Instead their training reinforces the importance of the students working together to determine the answers. “When they are working together to solve a problem, they start to identify their errors and erroneous patterns of thinking in their work,” Villatoro says. 

Students are not the only ones who benefit from this learning strategy — peer leaders benefit as well.

“PLTL forces the students into structured study groups,” giving them a framework for “studying with their peers, building their confidence, and providing them with a support network,” Villatoro said. Additionally, the groups are an optimal arena for active learning. Groups remain the same throughout the semester, providing added levels of continuity and stability, which are especially beneficial during students’ first year, noted Villatoro.

Sample workshop topics include truss analysis, equilibrium, friction, and section properties. Students are assessed in the workshop based on their level of engagement and contribution, attendance, and workbook completion (students complete workshop problems in a notebook). Projects, exams, and homework assignments, in addition to the workshop, determine their overall grades. 

Students are not the only ones who benefit from this learning strategy—peer leaders benefit as well. Facilitating groups enables them to develop their leadership skills and master statics, assisting them in their advanced studies or careers.

At City Tech, PLTL is integrated into seven math courses, but right now, Statics is the only course in the CMCE department in which it is mandatory. “PLTL in Statics is one of the first adaptations of the program in engineering curricula,” Villatoro said, “and it could be a useful tool for civil engineering programs struggling with student performance in Statics.” 

Villatoro wants her students to succeed, and PLTL is a proven way for them to do so. 

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.”                                   

This article first appeared in the February 2019 issue of Civil Engineering.

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Garit Poire, A.M.ASCE, has always stood out from the crowd. As a student at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering — a joint college operated by Florida A&M University and Florida State University — he served as the student chapter president for both ASCE and the Florida Engineering Society as well as the publications and communications co-chair for ASCE’s Florida section. He is the co-founder of the INSPIRE program, which provided science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education outreach days to nearly 1,000 at-risk youth in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama by way of ASCE’s Dream Big educational film. With ASCE’s Florida Section, he also created the Great Give initiative, which ensured 2,400 Dream Big DVDs were delivered to Florida K-12 schools. He has won 13 local, state, and national awards, was given the key to the college, and was named one of ASCE’s New Faces in 2019. Turner Construction Co. recently promoted him from a construction engineering position to business development engineer, a role normally reserved for more experienced engineers. He credits having high professional standards, a willingness to take on untested opportunities, and supportive friends, company, schools, and parents for his success.

What are the chief responsibilities that come with your new position?
On a day-to-day basis, I try to do anything I can to make new work for our company be successful. We have a marketing team, and I outline for them the path I think we will need to take to best connect with the client. I determine if we have the correct documents in the submission package: Do we have the right insurance forms and relevant work samples? Are we marketing our skills in a way that will communicate clearly with the owner? 

I also do research on clients and determine what work we have done with them before. I look at the contract terms and try to determine how these align with company policy. I work with our in-house legal counsel, and we go line by line through every contract and do risk-mitigation studies. I look at all the details that are necessary for us to win the work but also at what is good for us as a company. While other construction companies might want to go after all work, we want to go with clients we know, that respect the work we do, and that we respect. 

What are the chief skills and abilities that you developed in your previous positions that enabled you to move on to this new position?
When I first came to Turner, they asked if I wanted to take on an opportunity doing something they normally don’t do. Turner builds many of the largest projects in the world, including Burj Khalifa. They asked me to consider being a part of the Special Projects Division, which focuses on smaller projects, $30 million and under, throughout the city of Orlando (Florida). On my first project, I was the only construction engineer, along with a project manager and a superintendent. The three of us were responsible for the entire site and structure, including the building envelope system, the fire protection system, the mechanical systems, quality control, planning, phasing, and logistics. This was an incredible opportunity to learn, so I said yes; I wanted to see how everything on a project came together. 

Within six months, I received my first promotion. I had been working countless hours into the night to understand all the different components of projects. It was stressful but also rewarding. Even the city recognized how detailed I had been, and by the completion of the project, I’d had special training with the city of Orlando’s surveying and permitting processes. I wanted to understand how the city did things, and I could teach others at Turner, which would help Turner in its future submissions to the city. I learned things I had never learned in school, and I developed such great relationships with individuals at the city that we became friends.

When Turner saw my ability to create good relationships with people, that solidified my opportunity to become a business development engineer. That role is usually for people more seasoned in the company; I was only a year and a half in. If I had to guess why they asked me, I believe it would be because of my ability to create relationships as well as the additional marketing skills I learned by raising funds for my student chapter.

I have always tried to go after things I wanted, but I have also found that when you work hard, the opportunities will be laid in front of you. When another opportunity popped up, they said, ‘This is going to be something completely different,’ and I said, ‘Let’s do it!’ 

How did you learn relationship and marketing skills?
I originally learned my marketing skills when I raised funds for my chapter as a former ASCE and Florida Engineering Society student chapter president. When the ASCE Florida Section saw how effective I was at marketing and graphic design, they named me a committee co-chair. Now I run all design aspects for the state, including its annual conference. 

When I transitioned into the graduate adviser role for my former chapter, I co-founded the INSPIRE program, a nonprofit K-12 program that created STEM outreach days for at-risk youth. We raised more than $25,000 to sponsor the activities for those kids, cost-free, in relation to the Dream Big release. We reached almost 1,000 kids. If I hadn’t put in the effort to develop the skills to effectively market programs, that program would not have reached the amount of donors and assistance necessary to be successful. 

All those experiences helped to lay the groundwork for me to transition into the role I’m in today. And as an extrovert, I’m a natural relationship builder; I approach everyone as if they are my friend.

How did your university education prepare you for your professional roles?
I graduated with a bachelor’s and a master’s in civil engineering from FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, which is the only joint college of engineering in the nation. It’s between a Research I University, which is Florida State University, and a historically Black college and university, which is Florida A&M University. That helped me develop relationships with people outside the norm for me. And the college is heavily involved in organizations like ASCE and other student organizations, and that helped us students expand beyond engineering. It gave us the soft skills that other engineering colleges don’t really teach. I was actively involved in the FES and the ASCE student chapter, and I was president of both.

I was the State Student of the Year for the ASCE and FES, and by the time I was done with my college career, because of all the support everyone gave me, I had earned 13 awards. When I finished my master’s degree, I received a key to the college of engineering, which is a lifelong honor. If I had not been given the support emotionally and the push from my faculty — the sense that they believed in me — then I wouldn’t have been able to work and create the programs that were the base for those awards. The faculty and staff are like my family. I am a Ph.D. student there while working full time.

What personal traits or characteristics do you believe helped you win this new position?
Empathy and emotional intelligence. These are things that aren’t talked about much. When I talk to people, it’s not because I want something from them; I want to be friends with them. I love listening to everyone’s story because everyone is so unique. And I think I have semi-decent jokes. That helps. 

What skills helped you achieve this position?
When I first came to Turner, I was a construction engineer and I focused on constructability — taking the 2D plans that the engineer designed and asking, ‘Can these things be built? Do they meet code? How do we build them and in what order? Are there clashes between the disciplines?’ It was like a giant puzzle, and that taught me so much.

Also, I have high standards for my work, but one of the lessons I had to learn is that everything can’t be to my standards all the time; there is not enough time, and I would drain myself trying to make time. So I had to learn to put the energy in the right places. If I’m burned out, the whole project gets burned out. 

What role did mentors, advisers, or your network play in your achievement?
I owe so much of my support to my parents, who always made sure that I could pursue whatever dream or crazy idea I wanted to, knowing they would always have my back. 

At the university, two of my closest friends were Lisa Spainhour, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, the civil engineering chair, and Michelle Rambo-Roddenberry, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, the associate dean of student services and undergraduate affairs. They are both incredible individuals, and I am lucky to have them as mentors to guide me. 

Here at Turner, Dan LaMorte, general manager, is a leader who creates a positive and caring culture. He always makes sure that I am supported. Matt Aber, the former business development manager, brought me into this role and has always made my development a priority as a friend and a mentor. And Andrew Cameron, the current business development manager, is always by my side, supporting my wild ideas and always laughing at my semi-decent jokes. No matter how tough the day, I know he is always there for me. The only reason I can do what I do is because I have individuals like those above — and the countless not mentioned — who make me feel like I am worth it every day. 

Where do you hope to take your career next?
I wish I was that strategic! I don’t know what’s next. I’m in a position now where I can help my friends here at Turner so that they can work on incredible projects. What matters to me is that I get to support those I care about with the job I am in. Being there for those around me is always my top priority. I am going to go for my professional engineer license, though, because I do think it’s important. I may never sign and seal a plan, but I think it’s important that construction engineers, even if they are not design engineers, get their licenses. It solidifies what our community is as engineers.

There is a civil construction test on the P.E. exam that I will take. And then I am going to have a fun time trying to figure out how to write up my experience for the licensing board! 

What advice would you give to other young engineers who would seek positions similar to yours? 
Be kind. Approach everyone as a friend. That’s it. If you put in the standard of work that is important to you and you treat people well, everything else will work out.

Are you a younger member who has recently taken the next step in your career? We’d like to hear from you. Email [email protected] using the subject line “Next Step.”                                                                                  

This article first appeared in the November 2020 issue of Civil Engineering.

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Solving complex civil engineering problems requires critical thinking, ingenuity, a willingness to see other points of view, a multidisciplinary approach, and the ability to lead in challenging circumstances. These elements are key components of CE401 Civil Engineering Professional Practice and Application, a senior-level civil engineering course at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. 

CE401 is an amalgamation of military methodology and civil engineering principles. “The course integrates the military and civil engineering professions in applying a doctrinal military ‘design process’ to address complex civil engineering problems,” explains Col. Joe Hanus, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, the director of West Point’s Civil Engineering Program and one of the instructors of the course. Teaching along with Hanus are retired Lt. Gen. Bill Grisoli, P.E., M.ASCE, Distinguished Chair of Civil Engineering, and Col. Brad W. Wambeke, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, the director of the Civil Engineering Division.

This design process is known as Army Design Methodology. It “applies critical and creative thinking to understand, visualize, and describe complex problems and approaches to solving them,” Hanus says. 

The ADM involves four steps: framing the operational environment, framing the problem, developing an operational approach, and developing a plan — a process that is most beneficial in the early stages of design and planning, according to Hanus. It is an iterative and incremental process; steps and plans are reworked as new information comes in or other demands arise.

Establishing or framing the operational environment is the springboard for the rest of the problem-solving process. It involves assessing in detail the current environment and then determining what the optimal end result or environment is. According to course materials, there are four questions that help determine the operational environment. They include: 

The next step is to frame the problem, identifying the obstacles that are blocking progress and ultimately resolution. Once the problem is defined, the next step is to develop an operational approach and ascertain the “broad general actions” that could be taken to solve the issue. According to course materials, items to consider include:

The last step is to devise a plan to solve the issue by employing the military decision-making process, which Hanus describes as “the formal design process that results in detailed military operation plans. It is analogous to detailed design.” 

Cadets apply ADM in increasing degrees as they complete group projects. The first is a study of the showdown between Robert Moses, an urban planner, master builder, and onetime New York City Parks commissioner, and Jane Jacobs, an activist and journalist. Moses wanted to construct a new highway through parts of Manhattan that would have severely altered the landscape, including demolishing a park and other buildings and tearing up neighborhoods. Jacobs led the fight against him and won; eventually, the plans were scrapped. A case like this is ideal because it enables the students to gain a general understanding of what a complex civil engineering problem looks like — the actors, relationships, and consequences (good or bad) of decisions.

The second project leads to the Mosul Dam in Iraq, a project that Hanus was part of. This is the first step to learning how to frame an operational environment. The students do that by creating a current state model of the problems associated with the dam. A current state model is a “framework to better understand the problem at the conceptual level,” says Hanus. “It usually consists of a graphic and a narrative that describe the current conditions of the environment in which a technical engineering problem exists. This environment is what makes the problem complex, as there are competing social, political, and economic demands from different stakeholders.” 

For the third project, they go deeper into the ADM, this time developing an operational approach to design the Missouri River Master Manual, a project that Grisoli led as the commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Northwest Division. What makes this step fun for the cadets is that they have the opportunity to practice their communication, leadership, and critical-thinking skills as they role-play the various stakeholders in a mock U.S. Army Corps of Engineers town hall. 

The final project covers the work the Corps has done in New Jersey for the Green Brook Flood Mitigation Project. The area experienced major flooding in the early 1970s, and since then the Corps has worked to build levees and infrastructure to mitigate the effects of flooding. At this stage the cadets are ready to apply all the steps of the ADM. “The process allows them to synthesize and understand a wide variety of information from project documents, meetings with project leaders, and site visits,” Hanus notes. The last step is for them to hold a mock briefing with the Corps’ New York district commander to assume responsibility as the project engineer and present an operational approach to addressing this complex civil engineering project.

“This is truly an interdisciplinary approach that integrates a methodology from the military profession into the context of complex civil engineering problems,” Hanus says. It is a course that reinforces the technical skills and develops the operational skills the students will need to solve these multi­layered, deep civil engineering problems. It is also a course that instills in them the importance of ethical decision-making. “We want them to be leaders of character in seeking solutions to these problems,” he says. 

Preparing the cadets for their careers as civil engineers is a lot of work but well worth it. The skills and knowledge they will take with them in their careers across the globe are invaluable. “We educate and inspire our students to be ready to apply the Army Design Methodology to any complex problem. We want them to instinctually develop an understanding of a problem before they try to solve it.”  

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.”   

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.”

This article first appeared in the October 2020 issue of Civil Engineering.

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There are no prerequisites other than a semester of algebra and trigonometry, and that is purposeful, explains associate professor Doug Leaffer, MSCE, EIT, P.G., M.ASCE, who teaches the class. “It’s more of an introductory course for students coming into community college who want to explore engineering as a possible major and a possible career but who often have had no prior exposure to engineering.”

Before the pandemic, the class was predominantly in-class lectures and labs. When the pandemic hit in the spring, all classes were moved to an online-only format. For the fall, however, the class has a hybrid format: weekly in-person labs coupled with online learning, using a variety of low-cost or free software and simulation software tools. 

The transition from in-person to online-only to a hybrid format has been a learning experience not only for the students but for the instructors as well. One of the reasons the transition this fall has been more sustainable, seamless, and professional is due to iTeach, a six-week, online, comp­etency-based teacher-training module that was developed by NECC’s Center for Instructional Technology. 

“We advanced through this training module when we mastered a skill,” Leaffer explains. Skills included preparing a digital syllabus with embedded links and alt text for images and creating short videos with slides and drawings, explaining to students how to interpret them. The content the instructors created as they learned each skill went on to form the shell of their respective courses. By the end of the six weeks, instructors had finalized their content and uploaded it to the school’s Blackboard site in time for the start of the fall semester. In addition, they were matched with an iTeach “buddy” — someone who had already successfully demonstrated online teaching skills and who could provide help if needed.

In addition to iTeach, the simulation software — Tinkercad, Bridge Designer, and MATLAB Grader — has been invaluable to teaching the basic principles of engineering such as circuit design, structural analysis and design, and coding, respectively. What makes these tools so worthwhile is that they are free, come with tutorials on how to use the software, and provide immediate feedback if the coding, design, or circuitry has been properly executed. Students must purchase low-cost microprocessor controller unit kits that have sensor and digital analog components that “interface” with the licensed MATLAB software. 

Although the majority of the class is online, students must come in once a week to the lab to collect data, using equipment that is not cost-effective for them to purchase — such as spectrometers. And collecting data is all they do while they are in the lab. Before the pan­demic, Leaffer had 18 to 20 students in the class and more than three hours with them each week in the lab. Because of class-size restrictions and social distancing rules, those three hours have been cut into three 75-minute sessions with six or so students in each session, with a cleaning between each one. It is not an ideal scenario for learning, but he is grateful that the students have some time in the lab.

Keeping students engaged in the material has been a challenge but one he has been able to combat in a variety of ways. Besides their hands-on time in the lab, students are offered extra credit and bonus points. Instructional videos and free online training courses are also available to augment their studies. What has worked particularly well at keeping them invested are the Zoom breakout rooms he has set up, which give them opportunities to interact with the teaching assistant as well as one another. During the lecture, Leaffer will walk students through a coding problem in the main chat room. They then leave the main chat to enter their breakout sessions, returning 10 to 15 minutes later when they discuss “the solutions, results, and challenges,” Leaffer states.

For the most part, though, the work is solitary. “The hallmarks of the course were team- and project-based learning. We still do PBL (in the breakout sessions), but we can’t do TBL this year,” he says. “So for PBL, we explain to students how to build their sensor kits or how to build their project, and they can do most of the design and building at home.”

One thing that has not been sacrificed is the final design project, and students are allowed to pick the topic. “Because this is an exploratory and foundational course, we hope that they will be more excited and stimulated about one particular topic, whether it’s structural, electrical, or optical, or some other property of engineering that they studied in the class,” says Leaffer. 

And something that might have been easier to do in normal circumstances now requires more ingenuity because much of it has to be done using simulation software. “Students will have to build the design/engineering project using circuits, code, materials, or some optical components, and they won’t have the hardware to do much of the investigation and testing. They’ll need to come up with a way to simulate that. It is a challenging opportunity, but I think it will get students to think” of creative ways to do their projects, he says.

Having the freedom to work at their own pace, the asynchronous content delivery, and his virtual office hours on Zoom are positives of this hybrid format. “Particularly with community college students, many of them are working or are caring for younger siblings during
COVID. So, they need flexibility.” 

He cites the added costs for the software license and kits, internet accessibility issues, and no or subpar laptops as some of the downsides to the online component of class. However, to counteract the latter two, NECC implemented two initiatives. The first was establishing a $200,000 fund so that students who did not own suitable computers could purchase them. The second was free Wi-Fi access in the school’s parking lot, which was especially handy in the warmer months when they could study in their cars or the other outdoor areas. 

Overall, though, Leaffer is pleased with the class and how he has been able to continue to give his students a comprehensive introduction to engineering. “Community colleges offer a very solid foundation in engineering courses, and NECC is no exception,” he says.

Do you have an innovative program for reaching and teaching today’s technology-savvy civil engineering students? If so, email [email protected] using the subject line “Higher Learning.”      

This article first appeared in the November 2020 issue of Civil Engineering.

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A team of researchers at the University of Kentucky (UK) in Lexington are creating, testing, and deploying a family of lightweight, carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite products, dubbed CatStrong, that are being developed to repair damaged and deteriorating bridges in the state. What’s more, they are also being used in undergraduate civil engineering curriculum for teaching purposes to demonstrate composite strength.

Issam Harik, Ph.D., M.ASCE, and Abheetha Peiris, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE, lead the research team. Harik is the director of UK’s structures lab, where the research and testing for the CatStrong products are performed, and Peiris is a research engineer for the university’s Kentucky Transportation Center and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering. Rounding out the team are undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students, who are instrumental in the products’ research. “The students assist in every aspect of the CatStrong development. They prepare large and small samples and collect and reduce data” and perform other tasks in the structures lab, Harik said in written answers to questions posed by Civil Engineering. “A number of graduate students’ M.S. and Ph.D. theses are based on the testing of the products.”

CatStrong, according to Harik, is a portmanteau of the school’s mascot—the Wildcats—and the word “strong.” The suite of products includes CFRP rod panels, wraps, and fabrics that are primarily used for bridge repair. “To date, we have repaired almost forty bridges [in Kentucky], and the majority use the CatStrong products. All proceeds go to support students and product development,” Harik said. 

Once the product is applied to a structure and cured, the result is a concrete pier, pile, beam, or span that is stronger than the as-built (or original) structural element. Using CFRP products in bridge repair is a cost-effective, quick solution to traditional repairs, and the bridge can remain in use during installation in most cases. 

“To date, we have repaired almost forty bridges [in Kentucky], and the majority use the CatStrong products. All proceeds go to support students and product development.” — Issam Harik, Ph.D., M.ASCE

Harik has spent more than a decade developing the CatStrong materials, with research and testing beginning in 2008. Two years later, after continued testing, trials, and modifications, the first product, the CatStrong rod panel, was developed. A year later the first field application of the panels was performed, with testing continuing until 2017. “In May, we received a patent for the rod panels,” Harik said. “The names of three students who assisted us during the development stage are included on the patent inventor list, along with Dr. Peiris and me.”

Harik and Peiris work directly with stakeholders in the products’ deployment. “When a repair project is identified, Dr. Peiris and I communicate and meet on a regular basis with representatives from the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the district engineers [in which] the bridge is located,” Harik said. “We also supervise the repair and submit a final report to the district and cabinet that includes the design and construction process that was carried out along with the bridge load rating before and after the repair.” 

Because of the COVID-19 restrictions in place, work in the structures lab and in the field has been suspended. Harik hopes the team will be able to resume product testing and bridge repair in the fall.

WHILE THE CATSTRONG products feature heavily in the team’s work in the structures lab, they also play a role in civil engineering undergraduate curriculum. Peiris—along with Clark Graves, Ph.D., P.E., P.G., an adjunct assistant professor in UK’s Kentucky Transportation Center, and Kamyar C. Mahboub, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, the Lawson professor of civil engineering at UK—teaches CE 381 Civil Engineering Materials I. The class and lab introduce students to the properties of civil engineering construction materials, including CFRP composites. 

“While most of the sections covered in the class and the teaching methods are probably common with many undergraduate engineering institutes around the country, one aspect that may be unique is the section on composites,” Peiris stated in written statements to Civil Engineering. “As FRP materials are being utilized more in both new construction and especially in rehabilitation and retrofit of existing bridges and buildings, it was decided to include a section on composites within the CE 381 curriculum.” 

In addition to the composites lectures, the teaching team decided two years ago to augment the in-class component to include two lab sessions. The overall lab schedule is comprehensive, with labs not only in composites but also steel, aggregate testing and gradation, concrete testing and mixing, and asphalt mix design. There is also time built into the lab schedule for group presentations.

In the concrete labs, students are tasked with making three concrete cylinders according to set design specifications. One extra concrete cylinder is cast and set aside to be used during the upcoming composites portion of the lab. Several weeks after the cylinders are made, two are tested in compression and one in splitting tension, according to Peiris. All work is done in groups, and each is assigned a design strength for its concrete cylinders. “The final test results are shared among groups, and the students evaluate any correlation found between strength and respective mixes.” 

“The students readily understand the benefits of composite material when they see the degree of strengthening achieved by the FRP-wrapped cylinder beyond what they tested previously.” — Abheetha Peiris, Ph.D., P.E., M.ASCE

FRP fabrics, according to Peiris, are commonly used to “confine concrete columns and improve their load-carrying capacity.” The students get to test this with their concrete cylinders during the composites section. The extra cylinder that was made during the concrete lab and the cracked cylinder (which was split in two) are wrapped in CFRP materials not long after the groups have completed the compression and splitting tension tests. 

The next step is to test the wrapped cylinders in compression, which is usually done a week after they have been wrapped. Peiris provides the material properties of the CFRP, and using American Concrete Institute guidelines, the students must determine the increased load-bearing capacity compared with the cylinders’ unwrapped capacity. “The students readily understand the benefits of composite material when they see the degree of strengthening achieved by the FRP-wrapped cylinder beyond what they tested previously,” Peiris noted. But that is not the only phenomenon they observe. “The more surprising test for the students is usually the cylinder that was put back together and wrapped following the splitting tensile test. Especially for lower-grade concrete, the CatStrong carbon fabric used provides sufficient confinement to increase the cracked cylinder strength above the original concrete strength.”

Peiris explained that after a field repair project, leftover CatStrong CFRPs are stored in the lab, and that is what they use in place of purchasing other brands of FRP materials. Besides the CatStrong wraps, students have the opportunity to “handle” FRP rebar, fabrics, pultruded laminates, and pultruded sections, Peiris said. “While it is easy to have a student feel the weight difference between the same size steel and carbon FRP rebar and let them know that the carbon FRP, while being less than a quarter of the weight, is more than four times as strong, it is much more convincing to show the students the material being utilized and tested in a way that it is actually used in real-world applications.”

Unfortunately, testing the strength of the CFRP materials for themselves was not an option in the spring when in-person classes were canceled and learning moved online. Instead, Peiris and the other instructors recorded themselves performing the lab exer­cises, and students watched and then reported on the data they gathered. 

If in-person instruction resumes this fall, the lectures will be given twice, splitting the cohort in two so that social distancing can be maintained. However, that will not be the case for the labs. “They will either be presented via video or have one person carry out activities, while group members observe and take notes, maintaining social distance,” he stated. It is not the best solution, but he recognizes that this is how learning must be conducted. He is concerned, however, by what they will not be able to do: build their teamwork skills. “One of the biggest components of lab work is working in a group, which the students miss out on when the labs are virtual,” Peiris said. 

Not only will they miss out on group activities, but with virtual labs they will lose the opportunity to appreciate the beauty and properties of the various materials they will learn about in the lectures, according to Peiris. “It’s difficult to show on a video how light a composite rebar is when compared to a steel rebar or to feel how warm a steel rebar gets when tested in tension or how bad a concrete cylinder would turn out if you don’t follow American Society for Testing and Materials standards!” 

This column first appeared in the September 2020 issue of Civil Engineering.

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For centuries, civil engineers have dedicated themselves to serving the public. But as the world and society’s needs evolve, so does civil engineering. Ensuring the viability of the profession and the built environment begins with how 21st century civil engineers are educated.

In this episode of “ASCE Interchange,” Kevin Hall, professor of infrastructure engineering at the University of Arkansas and the chair of the 2019 Civil Engineering Education Summit program committee, discusses the future of civil engineering education.

The breadth of technical civil engineering knowledge is expanding and will likely continue to do so as the profession evolves. The emphasis on professional skills has also grown immensely. Current education systems must adapt to effectively prepare the next generation of engineers.

“One of the misconceptions of a lot of folks is that civil engineering education is absolutely a zero-sum game. If you add something in, you must take something out. We believe that through innovation in education we can begin to incorporate these professional skills into our current curricula and really not miss a beat,” said Hall.

He also discusses COVID-19’s impacts on the civil engineering education model.

To view all “Interchange” episodes, visit ASCE’s YouTube channel.

“ASCE Interchange” is brought to you by Contech Engineered Solutions, a leading provider of site solutions for the civil engineering industry. Contech’s portfolio includes bridges, drainage, erosion control, retaining wall, sanitary, stormwater and wastewater treatment products. For more info, visit www.ContechES.com or call 800-338-1122.

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What if people with certain traits and behavior styles were naturally attracted to certain jobs or professions?

That might help explain why certain people act the way they do on the job and outside of work. It might also explain why people who exhibit very good professional or interpersonal skills may have a challenging time when it comes to other kinds of skills.

Although we cannot generalize across the entire population, we can determine where someone’s strengths lie and where they don’t. After all, very few people are “naturals” with every behavior pattern.

Seeking Answers

In 2009, while teaching the capstone course (senior project) for civil engineering students at Oregon State University, I wanted to gather students into small teams. The class sizes during the period, from 2009 to 2013, ranged from 65 to 105 students. We didn’t want students to pick their own teams because we wanted the team formation to be as realistic as possible, reflecting what they may find in their future professional situations.

The sorting criteria included the following:

1. Various disciplines within civil engineering [(a) transportation, (b) geotech, (c) structures and (d) water resources/surveying/environmental/other]

2. Grade point average

3. Gender

4. Behavior pattern or style (via DISC (Dominance, Inducement, Submission and Compliance profile)

We wanted each team to be diverse in disciplinary skills. We wanted each team to have about the same overall GPA (i.e., no team with just top students). We wanted each team to have at least one female member. The civil engineering senior classes during the period were about 13 percent female students. In this case, we also allowed for one all-female team for those who didn’t want to be outnumbered by a majority of male team members. This was a personal selection by female students.

But why try to vary the behavior styles on each team? We knew that there were distinct behavior styles, even if the student didn’t know this at the start of the term. So, we established a partnership with TTI Success Insights (Scottsdale, Arizona) so that all of the students took the DISC personal profile as the new term began. This enabled us to have a full diversity of behavior styles on each team.

Although the team-sorting process was challenging, we managed to meet our goals of team diversity along all sorting criteria. These teams worked together over two consecutive terms on a single senior project (sponsored by an outside public or private engineering entity).

What is DISC and How Does It Work?

The DISC Model of Behavior was first proposed by William Moulton Marston, a physiological psychologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard. His 1928 book “Emotions of Normal People” explains his theory on how normal human emotions lead to behavioral differences among groups of people and how a person’s behavior might change over time.

Marston theorized that the behavioral expression of emotions could be categorized into four primary types, stemming from the person’s perceptions of self in relationship to his or her environment. These four types were labeled by Marston as Dominance (D), Inducement (I), Submission (S) and Compliance (C).

DISC Summary

The following are ways that we can associate words or actions with each of the DISC behavior styles:

DOMINANCE

Person places emphasis on accomplishing results, the bottom line and confidence

Behaviors: Sees the big picture; can be blunt; accepts challenges; and gets straight to the point

INFLUENCE/INSPIRING

Person places emphasis on influencing or persuading others, openness and relationships

Behaviors: Shows enthusiasm; is optimistic; likes to collaborate; and dislikes being ignored

STEADINESS/SUPPORTIVE

Person places emphasis on cooperation, sincerity and dependability

Behaviors: Doesn’t like to be rushed; calm manner and approach; and supportive actions

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS/COMPLIANCE

Person places emphasis on quality and accuracy, expertise and competency

Behaviors: Enjoys independence; objective reasoning; wants the details; and fears being wrong

Findings at Oregon State University – Civil Engineering Students

Without getting into an in-depth statistical data analysis, it appears that the DISC styles of Steady and Conscientious dominated the students’ natural styles in each year that was studied. This was followed by Influencer, with Dominant  trailing in last place.

Table 1 (below) presents the DISC total for each year (2009-2013 period, OSU Civil Engineering Capstone course), and the percentage for each of the DISC styles. All of the data is for students who were seniors and ready to graduate.

Table 1. Oregon State University – Civil Engineering Seniors 2009-2013 

Those familiar with the DISC process note that, in general, the average person’s profile tends to stay fairly consistent over time. While you may find small differences in your results from one time taking the assessment to the next, you’re unlikely to experience major shifts in style.

According to Personality Profile Solutions LLC, “people with the ‘S’ style place an emphasis on cooperating with others within existing circumstances to carry out the task.” They go on to say—

A person with an “S” style:

• Is motivated by cooperation, opportunities to help and sincere appreciation.

• Prioritizes giving support, collaboration and maintaining stability.

• Is described as calm, patient, predictable, deliberate, stable and consistent.

• May be limited by being indecisive, overly accommodating and tendency to avoid change.

• May fear change, loss of stability and offending others.

• Values loyalty, helping others and security.

Goals:

• Personal accomplishments, Group acceptance, Power through formal roles and positions of authority, and Maintenance of status quo and controlled environment

When communicating with the “S”-style individuals, be personal and amiable, express your interest in them and what you expect from them, take time to provide clarification, be polite, and avoid being confrontational, overly aggressive or rude.

According to Personality Profile Solutions LLC (website), “people with the ‘C’ style place an emphasis on working conscientiously within existing circumstances to ensure quality and accuracy.” They go on to say—

A person with a “C” style:

• Is motivated by opportunities to gain knowledge, show their expertise and do quality work.

• Prioritizes ensuring accuracy, maintaining stability and challenging assumptions.

• Is described as careful, cautious, systematic, diplomatic, accurate and tactful.

• May be limited by being overcritical, overanalyzing and isolating themselves.

• May fear criticism and being wrong.

• Values quality and accuracy.

Goals:

• Unique accomplishments, Correctness, Stability, Predictable accomplishments, and Personal growth

When communicating with the “C”-style individual, focus on facts and details; minimize “pep talk” or emotional language; be patient, persistent and diplomatic.

In addition, the OSU data shows that a significant number of civil engineering students do not just possess high levels of single behavior styles. Many students exhibit high levels of both – that is, Steady and Conscientious. Figure 1 (below) illustrates data from a single DISC profile from the Class of 2013. Note the high “S and “C” data points.

To reinforce the point, as an example, within the class of 2011, those possessing a high Steady  level accounted for 34 students out of 98. Those possessing a high Conscientious level totaled 28 out of 98. However, there were 35 students within those two groups who possessed high “S” and high “C” levels simultaneously, as shown in Table 1. This accounted for 36 percent of the total class. This is about twice as high as the general population (18 percent). So, for the class of 2011, 56 percent of the high “S” and “C” total possess both behavior styles at high levels.

Using the class of 2011 as an example, many of the data points for the entire class reside in a relatively small “slice” of the DISC circle. See Figure 2 (below).

In my opinion, this quarter of the DISC circle must represent those most likely to be drawn to the profession of civil engineering. But, to be a successful engineer and future leader, one will have to go well beyond these “natural” behavior styles.

On the other hand, Figure 3 illustrates the area of the DISC circle that is relatively absent of data points for the class of 2011.

Meaning for Engineers?

Having divided the world into four quadrants (DISC), and associated traits or style elements to each, can we draw any conclusions about civil engineers from this data? My response is “Yes!”

According to Axiom Human Resource Development LLC (who work with the DISC profiles for clients):

“Profiles of this kind, showing both high Steadiness and high Compliance, are often referred to as ‘Technical’. This term is used in its broadest sense; people with this type of approach are suited to jobs such as accountancy, computer programming or engineering, because their personalities combine accuracy and precision with the patience to work at a problem until it has been solved. They are interested in producing quality work, and will often go to great lengths to ensure that the results of their efforts are the best they can possibly achieve. Because of their interest in quality and productivity, it is not unusual to find people of this kind who possess special skills or knowledge, especially in the ‘technical’ areas described.”

Axiom Human Resource Development LLC goes on to note that people who show strengths in the “S” and “C” aspects are—

“Calm and rational in approach, this type of person often has a better understanding of personal or emotional issues than might be suggested by their relatively detached demeanor. They are not assertive in style, and will rarely offer input in a group situation, or act in an independent manner.”

Relating to Others

Although we know that some in the engineering profession are outgoing and gregarious, many are not, at least in the earlier years of their careers. For them, these skills are learned and practiced, rather than a “natural” skill. Axiom goes on to note that people who show strengths in the “S” and “C” may have difficulties in interpersonal skills:

“This rather passive style often finds it difficult to relate to other people, especially in unfamiliar settings, because they need to know exactly where they stand before they feel able to act. While they value friendships and strong relations with others, this factor is often disguised by an apparently aloof and reserved style. In order to interact effectively with others, this type will look to more direct and outgoing styles to initiate and take control of interpersonal issues.”

In a wide range of cases, those drawn to the engineering profession concentrate heavily during their education in math, science and related fields. They often neglect such subjects as writing, English and, to some extent, building social skills.  University curricula for civil engineers are crammed with technical subjects and very low on others so that students can fulfill the stiff engineering accreditation requirements during a baccalaureate program.

What Was Missing?

Without team members with high levels of these two behavioral styles (“D” and “I”), it meant that some teams were short of three vital skills … leadership, communications, and team building.

Are all civil engineers the same? Obviously not. There are successful civil engineers who don’t exhibit the typical high “S” and/or high “C” levels. These individuals may well be very valuable to a project team or organization dominated by those with high “S” and/or high “C” levels. They could be the communicators, leaders, marketers and visionaries. They could provide different points of view or become mentors for others who are trying to go beyond their “natural” behavior styles.

What Can Be Done?

Training for civil engineers at universities and at the workplace should include in-depth coursework about

1. Behavior styles (DISC or equivalent)

2. Leadership

3. Communications, writing and presenting/speaking

4. Team building

5. Interpersonal skills

This training/education could be woven into other coursework. It does not have to replace other vital education or training. Opportunities should be planned and executed for individuals and teams to exercise these skills. Performance reviews in the workplace should include measurements and attainment of these skills. Ensure that teams have a diversity of behavior styles!

The post Do Leadership and Social Skills Come Naturally to Civil Engineers? appeared first on Civil Engineering Source.

A year later, ASCE has released that map.

The full report of summit findings is available as a free download on the ASCE website.

Included in the report are four key recommendations that provide a structure of aspirations for civil engineering education:

• Elevate professional skills to an equal footing with technical skills.

• Develop a diverse, inclusive, equitable and engaging culture within the civil engineering profession.

• Reexamine and potentially redefine the domain of civil engineering.

• Foster an ongoing commitment to transformative education.

“We need to, as educators, incorporate this into the curriculum but also articulate why the students need this knowledge, why these changes are happening and why they should continue to happen into the future,” said Audra Morse, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, chair of the civil and environmental engineering department at Michigan Tech.

“I really like that the report starts out by saying ‘Engineering is not static.’ The profession is not static. Their careers will not be static. So the knowledge that they need is not going to be static.”

More than 200 civil engineering educators, practitioners and guests convened at the ASCE Civil Engineering Education Summit in Dallas, May 2019, for group discussions and workshops surrounding the future of civil engineering education. Now that the report has been released, a newly formed Civil Engineering Education Summit working group is refining and further developing the objectives outlined in the report into actions for ASCE to take.

“It gives people time to meet with industry, to meet with academia, and say, ‘OK, what do we see? Let’s look beyond tomorrow. Let’s look well into the future. What do we see as trends? What do we see as the needs both from industry as well as what students are demanding?’” said Scott Hamilton, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, chair of ASCE’s Committee on Education and chair of the civil and mechanical engineering department at York College of Pennsylvania.

“Because the majority of civil engineering majors are going to go out and practice, and being able to prepare them is job number one for us.”

It was the first such ASCE conference since 1995’s Civil Engineering Education Conference. And a quarter-century is a long time in any industry, but the last particular quarter-century feels particularly momentous in terms of change in this particular industry.

The summit report’s recommended objective to potentially redefine the domain of civil engineering feels especially necessary and powerful, Hamilton and Morse agreed.

“So many things have happened since 1995, new things that were never even considered civil engineering then and now are,” Hamilton said. “We’re looking at the role of data analytics now. No one was really doing that then. We know AI is coming forward. How is that going to impact buildings? The whole idea of the Internet of Things. How do we integrate all of this?

“It changes the way we can operate and should operate. And it means that as a profession we have to keep up.”

COVID-19 has changed the world even further in the 13 months since the 2019 Education Summit. Morse said she thinks the current events of 2020 have only reinforced the summit findings.

“Our world has been shaken up, and there’s good that can come from that shakeup,” Morse said. “It will be interesting to see how we rethink infrastructure, how we move people, how we plan things like stadiums.

“I think the civil engineering profession has to respond and learn and do better. Which is really what this document is all about.”

Download and read the full report.

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Scheduled for completion in December 2022, the Innovation Center is designed as a unifying master-plan element for the Baldwin School that “aims to enhance its physical space and campus connectivity,” explained Monique Lugo-López, the president and chief operating officer of Álvarez-Díaz & Villalón. As a “physical representation of the school’s commitment to innovative learning,” wrote Lugo-López, the new facility will “provide spaces for inquiry, discovery, collaboration, and innovation in science, mathematics, technology, and engineering.” The building will also feature a state-of-the-art media center that Lugo-López described as “the library of the 21st century.”

The independent, English-language Baldwin School was Puerto Rico’s first school to offer an International Baccalaureate program.

Local Materials

The structural framing of the Innovation Center will feature a combination of reinforced-concrete moment frames and shear walls—concrete being the only construction material produced in Puerto Rico and thus “our first choice in order to make use of local materials,” noted Miguel A. Zapata Amador, P.E., M.ASCE, the president of Zapata-Zapata & Associates. Because the Innovation Center was designed to be certified at the silver level in the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, the project will use such locally produced products as a posttensioned concrete slab over insulated concrete forms for the floors and roof slab.

This system will provide “quicker construction, longer slab spans, and a high R [heat flow] value that translates [to] reduced energy costs. The system also soundproofs the slabs and reduces the amount of concrete material with the use of a concrete steel rib joist system,” Zapata explained. He described the framing as a “well-balanced solution that takes into account the inherent advantages of structural efficiency plus the thermal characteristics of the system. This solution also reduces overall costs and eliminates the need to rent metal forms [that] are typical in cast-in-place concrete options traditionally built on the island.”

With this integrated system, Zapata added, “you also eliminate the installation of a layer of insulation under a built-up roofing system, which provides overall construction efficiency.”

Resistant Roof

The system also gives the team flexibility in choosing a roofing system that complies with the wind/uplift resistance requirements in Puerto Rico, which is located in a high-wind-velocity hurricane zone, he said.

The reliance on concrete also addresses a current labor shortage in Puerto Rico, especially of carpenters, rebar forepersons, and steel erectors, Zapata noted. The use of concrete framing will help reduce the size of the required workforce by 40 percent.

Envisioned by the Baldwin School as a learning tool, the Innovation Center will feature exposed structural, mechanical, and electrical systems. “The idea is to use the classroom space as an example of innovation and as a tool to teach students how buildings are made and how they work,” noted Lugo-López. “Having the opportunity to teach students how air-conditioning works, where the electricity comes from, [and] how [a] building consumes energy will help them better understand how things work and how overall design decisions will impact everyday lives and the surrounding environment.”

A Suitable Site

The Innovation Center will be constructed adjacent to the school’s existing cafeteria, along the primary pedestrian circulation routes across the campus, said Lugo-López. The site features “favorable subsurface conditions,” noted Carlos Garcia, a Geo Cim principal. “The existing soils consist of mediumstiff to stiff clay and silt layers to a 25 ft depth.” This, he explained, enabled the use of shallow spread footing foundations to support the proposed structure.

Because the clay soils near the surface were classified as high plasticity clays—which suggests potential expansive characteristics—a partial cut and replacement of the upper clay soils will be required, Garcia explained. A minimum of about 3 ft of nonexpansive compacted fill material will be used beneath the proposed structure, and together with other design details this will prevent water infiltration below the structure, Garcia added. These details will include the collection of rainwater from the roof and its disposal in the existing site stormwater system and the regrad regrading of the soils around the perimeter of the building away from the structure.

The Innovation Center’s ground level is being developed around a so-called Maker Space—a central classroom “where students with mutual interests can work together on projects while sharing ideas, equipment, and knowledge,” noted Lugo-López. “The building design is flexible, diverse, and open to acknowledge a range of learners and to reinforce critical thinking as well as complex problem-solving.”

Cooperation Encouraged

Science laboratories and a fabrication shop will be located adjacent to the Maker Space to facilitate cooperative learning and investigation.

The second floor will house the media center, which is an electronic library that will provide classrooms, small study group areas, and an open space that students can reconfigure as needed.

Because the roof slab has been designed for multiple functions—as a green roof, an outdoor terrace, and an assembly area—live loads of 100 lb/sq ft were considered in the design, Zapata wrote. A concrete pergola was also designed above the roof area to support a series of photovoltaic panels.

The design had to consider both hurricane winds and high seismic activity. “A dynamic structural analysis and design was performed using the ETABS computer program [from Computers & Structures Inc., of Walnut Creek, California]. We also considered in-plane horizontal irregularities due to [the] discontinuity of the second floor,” Zapata explained.

A key design goal involved preserving the existing natural habitat while maintaining the integrity of the site location, noted Lugo-López. For example, special seating will be constructed “to embrace the context of the adjoining soccer field and provide an after-school and weekend partial use of the new structure,” she explained.

Because of site restrictions, the main facade of the building will be oriented toward the west, presenting a design challenge with respect to interior glare and solar heat gain. Long overhangs, insulated walls and slabs, and thermally broken translucent panels will be used to offset the exposure.

This news article first appeared in the July/August 2020 issue of Civil Engineering.

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But change—whether in the form of new technologies, shifts in the economy, or other factors—is a given. A willingness to embrace it and a commitment to a lifetime of learning will always be essential elements for continued career growth.

The volume of new information civil engineers face is perpetually expanding. Advancements in materials, technologies, and software continue to improve and disrupt the way we work. These advancements compel us to adjust so that we can thrive in new contexts and under new circumstances. Most often, doing what it takes means learning new skills, deepening our knowledge, and expanding our capabilities throughout our careers.

The alternative is irrelevancy. If you fail to participate in code provision updates, if you don’t understand the properties of new materials, and if you don’t grasp the advantages of new digital technologies, you run the risk of watching the profession pass you by.

The Rise of the Adult Learner

This never-ending need to keep pace with innovations is fueling the growth of adult learning. Across industries and professions, workers are acknowledging the necessity of ongoing professional education to stay abreast of new processes and procedures in their jobs and to avoid becoming obsolete. It’s no wonder that adult learners, once minorities in the university student population, are becoming the new “traditional” students. Adult learners like this aren’t racing to catch up; in fact, they’re staying competitive and leading the pack.

Another factor driving the need to pursue ongoing professional education is the change in life expectancy. People are living longer than past generations, which means they need to spend more time in the workforce and retire significantly later than their parents did. According to data from the aforementioned report, just over one quarter of civil engineers are 55 years old or older, which is higher than the 22 percent average for the labor market.

To extend the shelf life of their careers, older workers need to be open to unlearning the ways they’ve conducted their work and relearning how to do their work going forward. Mastering new technologies, breaking old habits, and revising ways of working require sustained reskilling and upskilling in a formal professional educational setting rather than merely learning on the job.

For working professionals, educational options that provide industry-specific, real-world knowledge in flexible formats are essential to support different stages of their lives and careers. This need is driving change at universities like the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, which is refashioning campus programs to help learners stay current in a dynamic business landscape.

Such programs emphasize the importance of additional capabilities that complement engineers’ traditional skill sets and set them apart from their peers who may have the same technical abilities but lack professional and management expertise.

Choosing a Personal Board of Directors

How should civil engineers get started on this process? Which courses or programs will help you meet your career goals?

One way to find out is to tap into a network of mentors or career advisers. At Georgia Tech, administrators have identified the need for what they call a personal board of directors.

Mentors have always played important roles in our professional lives, but today’s professional landscape means that you’ll need a broader variety of perspectives and a fluid lineup of “board members” who can help you navigate your career and education and offer a mix of experience, talent, and diversity that a single mentor can’t match.

For example, if you’re at an early stage of your career and you aspire to management, select a board member who is just a year ahead of you or at the management level you intend to reach. Likewise, if you’re not sure about which career pathway to pursue, identify someone who could help you think through your options.

Even if you don’t intend to keep progressing to more senior positions in your career, a thoughtfully chosen personal board of directors can help you chart a career path that ensures you remain in demand—and fulfilled—in your current role.

Don’t be afraid to seek out experts from a wide range of disciplines even if you’ve never met them in person. This will allow you to explore new paths and new passions. The personal board of directors you choose should understand what you’re passionate about and help you follow these interests over a lifetime.

It doesn’t matter whether they are on different continents or the other side of the country. In today’s connected world, everyone is a click away. The teleworking movement forced on us by the COVID-19 pandemic has proved that many highly collaborative business relationships can be established and maintained virtually.

You should also consider at least one board member who can help you overcome any self-doubt and provide the encouragement you need to take bold steps. This person needs to have insight as to who you are as a person and could be someone from within your community, your personal life, or any field outside your profession.

Your board may also feature traditional mentors, educators, peers, or bosses, but don’t hesitate to go beyond these roles. The main requirements are that your board members are people who have the skills, background, and knowledge base you need; who take your career development seriously; and who are willing to share their insights with you. You should gravitate toward people who give honest feedback and push you out of your comfort zone.

If you’re wondering why anyone would want to serve on your personal board, consider the benefits to the board members: You represent a potential source of talent to them. In addition, members of your board can become resources for one another and expand their own professional networks, which is valuable at any stage of a career. And don’t forget that they, too, are looking out for their careers. They may have also relied on others for career direction, so doing the same for you is a way to give back.

Career-long education is not optional but rather a matter of professional survival—even in a high-demand field like civil engineering. Having a team to help guide you on your path is not just beneficial—it’s invaluable.

*The data from the report were sourced internally through Emsi, a subscription-based economic data platform.

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She needs to figure out what she wants for graduation dinner.

“My mom said she’ll cook me whatever I want, so that’s a plus,” Cowser said. “I might pick chicken parm – that’s one of my favorites. Or maybe something to go with cheesy potatoes.”

Cowser, A.M.ASCE, graduates from Penn State University on Saturday, May 9, with a degree in civil engineering. She’ll be watching the ceremony online, listening for her name from her parents’ house in Pittsburgh.

It’s not exactly how they drew it up (though the Cowser family celebration dinner menu options do sound enticing), but civil engineering students like Cowser all over the world are adjusting this month as the COVID-19 pandemic has moved graduation ceremonies from the traditional to the virtual.

“I was excited to share that time with my family and friends, and now we have to just roll with the punches and do it virtually,” Cowser said.

“A little less personal, but it is what it is, right?”

The power of Zoom

Schools and students are finding creative ways to celebrate.

Kacy Grundhauser, A.M.ASCE, graduated from the University of Alaska, Anchorage, last Saturday, May 2, with her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. She watched the ceremony on her laptop with her dog, Twinky, nearby providing moral support.

“It was definitely different,” Grundhauser said. “It was interesting seeing your dean in her living room talking to you.”

In Glassboro, New Jersey, Will Reichard, A.M.ASCE, has been finishing his final semester at Rowan University in his off-campus apartment. Social distancing restrictions remain in effect, but that doesn’t mean he can’t celebrate this weekend when he joins the ranks of college graduate.

“It’s kind of taken the wind out of our sails a little bit, but I still on plan on watching the virtual ceremony,” Reichard said. “A lot of my friends who are graduating this year, we might get together on Zoom and party a little bit that night.”

Many schools are planning more formal, in-person ceremonies later in the year.

In the interim, what does an online graduation ceremony look like? It varies, but most include remarks from university leadership, degree conferral and a searchable database of graduates. The University of the Pacific is encouraging people to leave messages of support and congratulations in an online message board set up for the graduating seniors, as well as through social media using specific hashtags.

The Cal Poly Pomona civil engineering department has planned to honor its class of 2020 with a two-hour “Senior Celebration,” May 21 over Zoom.

“If we have been able to meet virtually to continue their education, we can also meet virtually to celebrate their accomplishments and give them a well-deserved farewell before they start the next stage of their life,” said Mónica Palomo, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE, M.ASCE, professor in the civil engineering department at Cal Poly Pomona. “We are one big family.”

Lacking closure

What the creative online commencement ceremonies can’t replicate or recreate is the senior year springtime lost for these graduates.

Most students in the United States left school for spring break and never returned to the classroom, instead wrapping up their college careers through online learning models.

“It’s hard that I didn’t get closure with my friends and professors who have shaped the past four years of my life,” Cowser said.

No Penn State spring football game. No senior concerts.

“It’s really sad that we don’t get that final time together,” Cowser said. “Saying goodbye to people, having those moments of closure.”

Grundhauser, president of the ASCE student chapter at Alaska-Anchorage, closed the group’s school year with a meeting this week – where else? – on Zoom.

“Some people are leaving the state, so it would have been nice to see them before they go,” she said.

Rowan University was set to host the ASCE Metropolitan Student Conference in April. Reichard served as co-chair, planning the event for 14 months. Obviously, he understood the decision to cancel all the in-person events and competitions, but that didn’t make it any less disappointing.

“It was still a good experience, getting all that planning experience, but we didn’t get the payoff that we wanted. I feel bad for the rest of the planning committee,” Reichard said. “And the College of Engineering, every year they have their own private dinner for the graduating seniors. It’s a celebration. I was really looking forward to that. It’s kind of like the thing at Rowan. If you’re a graduating engineer you get to do that, that’s the thing you look forward to. And that got canceled.”

Closure is the word the students kept returning to. And it wasn’t about the graduation ceremony at all for Reichard.

“Honestly, I was prepared to be annoyed about how long it was going to be – before it all got canceled,” Reichard said, laughing. “But it is a shame. I feel like senior year just didn’t wrap up the way it should have. We don’t really get any of the closure I feel like we need to move on.”

Certain uncertainty

At the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, graduation week has been moved back from the typical Memorial Day date as leadership finalizes a new plan. So, unlike many schools, they are not committed to a virtual ceremony. But the mere fact that there needs to be a new plan at all marks this class of 2020 cadets as utterly unique.

“We’re the Army. We’re famous for planning things,” said Brock Barry, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, a professor in West Point’s Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering.

“We will extensively plan what’s for lunch next Tuesday. We plan – that’s what we do for a living.

“So this is a substantial change for an organization that does run on tradition. Everything we do is based on doing that same thing over and over again, because it was the right thing to do, and it’s always been the right thing to do to honor our grads.”

A further wrinkle is the fact that the week of graduation events at West Point fulfill not one but two key purposes – the conferring of academic degrees and the commissioning of each cadet as officers in the U.S. Army.

And of course, there is the famous final command, “Class dismissed,” and tossing of the hats.

“Does that happen this year? Little things like that make you stop and think, ‘Wow, what if you didn’t get a chance to throw your hat up in the air? Would it feel any less important?’” Barry said.

“And I can’t answer that. I do talk to my firsties, which are our seniors, I do speak to them on a regular basis, and I’ve asked that question. The general response is, ‘We just want to graduate. Whatever it looks like, give us something to say this is our gradation. And we’re going to move on, we’re going to be happy.’

“They are just anxious to wrap this phase up and go lead the nation’s young men and women. They want to go do the job they’ve been trained to do. That’s what they’re looking forward to. And I think that’s commendable.”

Ready for the next step

Ultimately, graduation is commemorative. COVID-19 changes nothing about the work these seniors have done and their lists of college accomplishments.

“Graduation wasn’t a super-big thing to me, just because it’s kind of that steppingstone toward the final goal,” Grundhauser said. “I’ve been looking at this semester, when everything hit, as ‘I just hope I get a piece of paper at the end.’”

And she did. Or at least she got an email from the university. Grundhauser is officially a college graduate. In fact, she starts her professional career May 11, transitioning from a previous internship at HDR in Anchorage to a full-time EIT role.

Well before the coronavirus pandemic, Reichard made the decision to attend graduate school. He’ll be attending Georgia Tech in the fall, starting work on his doctorate in civil engineering, with a focus on transportation.

“I’m lucky because I’m going to grad school, so eventually, I will have another graduation ceremony, so this isn’t the end of the line for me,” Reichard said.

Cowser accepted a job with HITT Contracting in Falls Church, Virginia. She pushed her start date back to July and may have to begin her career working remotely, but she’s just excited for the next phase of her life.

“That’s what it’s all about. That’s what we went to school for – to make the world a better place,” Cowser said.

“I feel like I earned the diploma, and now I get to actually go out in the world and make that a reality.”

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Thirty days. Thirty phone calls. Plus an extra three.

Community Call 31 goes to Camilla Saviz, a professor and chair of civil engineering at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Califormnia. She talks about how she’s adapted her classes on the fly to finish the semester with an online-only model.

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Thirty days. Thirty phone calls.

Community Call 29 brings us to the northern part of Italy, battered by the coronavirus in March and still very much in recovery mode. ASCE Fellow Fabio Biondini is a professor of structural engineering at Politecnico di Milano, where he serves as the chair of the degree programs in civil engineering. He talks about working to keep his community resilient and his students learning, in spite of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Along with that, the cycle of civil engineering exams for professional licensure has changed, leaving would-be test-takers with questions.

Tim Miller, director of exam services for the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, talked with ASCE News, hoping to provide some clarity during these challenging times.

ASCE News: Is there any possibility of implementing a process for exams to be taken from home?

Tim Miller: We use an in-person proctored process, where examinees must take their exam in an approved testing center. There are online proctored platforms, but to our knowledge, no one with high-stakes exam programs (those that result in a license where the candidate is providing services to the public) is using it.

It’s mostly used for certification programs. Even though new technology has been developed to increase security, new technology can also assist in defeating security measures and allow collusion.

ASCE News: Will test centers remain closed until they can all open, or could some open earlier than others depending on restrictions in place for certain locations or facilities?

Miller: Our testing partner, Pearson VUE, is monitoring developments and making those decisions to protect the health, safety and welfare of our examinees and their employees based on government guidance. It is possible that test centers will be open in some areas before others. Once open, test-center capacity may be affected by distancing restrictions.

ASCE News: Will those whose scheduled exams were canceled receive priority for exam times when test centers reopen? And how will that impact availability of test slots for new graduates?

Miller: Test centers are currently closed until May 1. Those who were canceled may reschedule at no fee or cancel with a full refund. And those who have appointments already scheduled in May and beyond can do the same.

As this affects all of Pearson VUE’s clients, future appointment times will fill up quickly, so we recommend rescheduling as soon as possible.

ASCE News: What changes to the F.E. and P.E. exams or the exam-taking process are in the works, either related or unrelated to the pandemic?

Miller: We are in the process of transitioning our 33 engineering and surveying licensing exams from pencil and paper to computer-based testing. This is an enormous and complex undertaking, and we anticipate completion in 2024.

In the meantime, we still have some exams, including the five P.E. Civil exams, that are pencil-and-paper. Unfortunately, we had to cancel our April exam administration, and this affected nearly 16,000. We are making plans for a two-day, pencil-and-paper administration in October to increase capacity for those examinees, in addition to the ones who were planning to take the exams in October. Certain exams will be offered on each day, and we intend to open registration on June 1 – two weeks earlier than normal to allow additional registration time for all those wanting to take the exam. More information regarding the October paper and pencil examination can be found here.

ASCE News: Do you have any recommendations for adjustments or strategies exam-takers should plan for or make this year in how they prepare, given the COVID-19 pandemic?

Miller: Monitor our website for announcements and updates. This is an incredibly dynamic situation, and while we understand the frustration of those who have been studying and want to test, our primary mission is assisting the state licensing boards in protecting the health, safety and welfare of the public.

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Thirty days. Thirty phone calls.

Community Call 12 brings us to New Jersey by way of Seattle and Louisville. Sophie Lipomanis, one of ASCE’s inaugural class of student ambassadors, started her first job co-op in January in King County, Washington, just as the coronavirus was starting to spread there. She talks about how the pandemic changed her plans and how it’s affecting her fellow engineering students at the University of Louisville.

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Remarkably though, the school year has not stopped; it’s adapted.

Even as social distancing has effectively barred side-by-side classroom instruction, educators and students at universities across the country have moved the classroom online.

The logistics of adjustment

At the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, the provost decided March 11 – relatively early compared with other schools – to move the remainder of the semester to a remote learning model.

So Camilla Saviz, Ph.D., P.E., ENV SP, F.ASCE, professor and chair of civil engineering at Pacific, had about a week and a half to alter her post–spring break course plans. Webex and Zoom are suddenly much greater parts of her life than they were a month ago.

“We’ve gotten up to speed very quickly,” Saviz said. “All of my colleagues and myself, we’ve revised our syllabi and revising our expectations to focus on the topics that are critical. Some other topics that may have been nice to have or that we can cover in subsequent classes are getting pushed to later in the semester or maybe won’t be covered at all.”

Some courses continue synchronously – at the same time on the same day of the week they were offered earlier in the semester, only now as online webcasts. But Saviz is also recording her presentations and posting them to be accessed by students at any time. The pandemic has produced too many unique considerations not to provide the asynchronous option.

Saviz has one student who returned home to France, eight hours ahead of California. She has another student whose work for a county agency marks her as “essential,” so she can’t attend school during the day anymore.

Across the country in Philadelphia, Drexel University has made a similar adjustment to online everything.

“I think it’s gone smoothly,” said Charles Haas, Ph.D., F.ASCE, Drexel’s head of the civil, architectural and environmental engineering department.

“We’re doing weekly virtual coffee hours by Zoom for faculty and department staff. At the college level, we’re having weekly department head meetings by Zoom. We’re all accessible by Microsoft Teams, so communication is very quick.”

Navigating the necessary technology comes second nature for this generation of students. But there are other adjustments to manage.

Sandra Choice, for example, is a third-year student at Santa Rosa Junior College accustomed to working out chemistry formulas at a quiet desk on campus. And now?

“I’m actually at my kitchen table,” Chance said. “And my little sister (14 years old) is at a tiny desk in the corner, doing her homework.”

Erick D. Moreno Rangel is a junior studying civil engineering at Oregon State University. He finished winter term by doing all his final exams online and now will be taking all of his spring courses remotely.

He’s still on campus but the students have been told to stay inside unless they are getting groceries or going to the doctor.

“It’s been a bit crazy,” Moreno Rangel said. “But in the end I think it will be a smooth transition. For me, I’m able to focus more in a classroom setting than at home. So I will have to adjust to that.”

Saviz said she’s been using principles she learned at ASCE ExCEED workshops to help bring these online lessons to life.

“How can I adapt those messages to this new world I live in now? How can I incorporate demos and student engagement into the synchronous classes I’m teaching so I’m not just a talking head in a video?” Saviz said.

“It’s going to be an ongoing experiment. And, really, it’s all about student learning and how we make it effective even – or maybe especially – given these new challenges.”

Staying on track

This was not how Sophie Lipomanis envisioned her spring semester.

Not even a little bit.

Lipomanis, a sophomore civil engineering student in the J.B. Speed School of Engineering at the University of Louisville, began an internship in January at Stacy and Witbeck Inc. in Seattle, the first of three co-ops she’ll do as part of her school’s program.

Seattle, as we now know, was the first U.S. coronavirus epicenter. So here is Lipomanis, living three time zones away from her family in New Jersey, alone with her dog in a short-term lease apartment, being told that she needs to work from home because of health concerns.

“Everything started happening so fast,” Lipomanis said. “And not being in the office was kind of scary. So I communicated with our project manager and my supervisor – fantastic people, we came up with a solution during that two-week period before employees were asked not to come in.”

Lipomanis was able to shift the focus of her co-op to a document mitigation project, working on a construction project master index for the firm. Crucially, she can do the work remotely.

She returned home to New Jersey this week, completing a five-day drive across the country, complete with a road closure and snowstorm in Utah along the way.

“I’m lucky. I’m able to still learn on my co-op and keep working with this document,” Lipomanis said.

“I’m more nervous about other students who are in different stages of their program at my school. Will their co-ops still be valid? And what happens to our classes? Because we have all these prerequisites that define your semesters after that next co-op. There is a lot of concern about how this is going to affect people in the long term.

“It’s a rough time right now.”

Learning outcomes

As students like Lipomanis try to find answers to the many questions COVID-19 has created surrounding coursework and internships, instructors like Saviz also worry about the potential learning gaps.

“Our institution serves a lot of first-generation college students, and we’ve seen issues with students who don’t have internet access or laptops,” Saviz said. “And now they’ve gone from a very structured organization of scheduled classes to a more open model. Big picture, I’m afraid of students getting lost and struggling and giving up just because of technological issues, lack of resources, being overwhelmed or an inability to get help – and that’s apart from any health issues their families may be experiencing.”

There also is the issue of lab courses.

For graduate students, closed labs could mean significant delays to their personal timelines. And for undergraduates, this semester may simply be unique in its lack of hands-on training.

“How do you do laboratories online? There will be reliance on some YouTube stuff out there, other videos. It’s certainly not going to be the same as physically getting in and mixing a batch of concrete, for example,” Haas said.

“So what that means for learning outcomes is going to be interesting to follow. I don’t think we know. Many people would be adamant that students who don’t get their hands dirty or wet don’t really have a full educational experience.

“And I think this will be an interesting test of that theory as to whether or not that’s necessary or can be gained some other way. I just don’t think we know.”

In the meantime, Haas, Saviz, Moreno Rangel, Chance, Lipomanis and all the other civil engineering educators and students out there will be doing their best to make this strange time of transition as painless as possible.

“Our faculty has really rallied together, and I hope that is true for all universities,” Saviz said. “I’m sure people are rising to the occasion for this.

“We’re committed to the idea that this is what the semester is going to be. So let’s go use the best tools available to make learning as effective as possible for our students.”

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For many of us, that means working from home and social distancing. The downside is that it may not feel like the most productive workplace, especially after several days. And once your workday is over, you may not get the same normal sense of relief of “relaxing at home.”

Watching the hours go by gets boring and repetitive. So instead of just doing things to pass the time, why not put that time to good use?

Here are five ways you can improve your professional skills at home:

Grow Your Skills and Your Career

Working as a full-time engineer does not mean you can’t expand your professional knowledge. And in an ever-changing industry, it’s necessary to increase your value to your organization. One of the best ways you can advance your career is by enrolling in a certificate program or pursuing a graduate degree online. An online program provides you with the opportunity to take courses on specific technical subjects or classes that focus on soft skills. Plus, a non-traditional classroom setting means you can tailor your education to fit your schedule and your goals. An online master’s degree in civil engineering will make you a more knowledgeable engineer, a more effective professional and better prepared to lead.

Read more: Why You Should Be Pursuing Your Master’s Online

Turn Job Applications Into Job Interviews

Take the next step in growing your career by ensuring that you land the job. But before you get the job, you have to get the interview. That all comes down to having the perfect resume. ASCE put together an expert team of resume coaches for its 2020 Resume Workshop. Each coach offered tips and advice on how to make sure your resume is the best that it can be.

See what they had to say: Crafting the Perfect Civil Engineering Resume

Build Your Professional Network

Another great way to connect with potential employers is by creating a dynamic LinkedIn profile. With over 600 million professionals on the social platform, it’s the place to build your professional network and stay informed. In one episode of the “ASCE Interchange,” a senior account executive at LinkedIn offers tips on how to make your profile stand out from the crowd – and that means having the perfect headline and summary.

Watch the video: How to Rock Your LinkedIn Profile and Land a Job

Focus on Your Soft Skills

Today’s world of work is constantly shifting based on demand and opportunities. Civil engineers need to be able to keep up with the evolving workplace. That means improving soft skills that are critical for the success of teams and projects. It goes beyond having good organizational and speaking skills. Engineers must be capable of being a good leader, communicating nonverbally, creative problem-solving and using storytelling to set a project apart from the rest.

Discover 4 Ways to Boost Your Civil Engineering Career.

Think “Outside the Box”

Civil engineering is so much more than logistics, practicality and analysis. It’s about innovation, curiosity and adaptability. While lifelong learning is essential for a civil engineer, creativity cannot play a supporting part. Instead, it should share a co-starring role. Civil engineers are world builders, taking a vision and bringing it to life. Creativity is what allows an engineer to push boundaries and inspire. In an ASCE Member Voice, a life member further explains why developing creative skills and habits are essential to the civil engineering profession.

Read more tips on The Traits and Habits of Creative Civil Engineers.

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It’s the collegiate edition of the New Faces of Civil Engineering – 10 students whose early accomplishments are matched only by their remarkable maturity.

This year’s class of 2020 honorees demonstrates astounding focus, ambition and dedication to helping others.

Get to know the 2020 New Faces of Civil Engineering, Collegiate Edition:

Abby Cowser

Penn State University

Cowser knew she liked engineering but wasn’t sure what discipline or branch in which to focus. But then a trip to Rwanda during her freshman year changed everything.

She traveled as part of her school’s Engineers in Action: Bridge Program chapter and was so moved she determined to make civil engineering, and specifically construction management, her career.

She’s since traveled to Vietnam to research water quality for her undergraduate thesis and to Bolivia as part of another EIA team to build a footbridge – this time as the project manager.

“By living and working alongside rural communities for many months, I have seen how infrastructure can change the lives of everyone,” Cowser said. “Even though we do not speak the same language, we proved that uniting over our mission of improving access was more powerful than words.

“Engineers are tasked with improving the lives of others, and I could not be more excited to dive in.”

Matthew Cristi

California State University, Northridge

Cristi learned about hard work and ethics as a child, looking up to his single mother. Now as a senior and president of the ASCE Student Chapter at California State University, Northridge, he’s turned those lessons into an exemplary record of leadership and community service.

Cristi volunteers with his family at church, serves breakfast to the homeless and has spent seven years giving his time at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

His ASCE work extends beyond the CSUN Student Chapter to participating in the Construction Institute’s Student Days, attending the 2019 International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure and dedicated volunteer work with the Los Angeles Younger Member Forum. The L.A. Section honored him as its 2019 Outstanding Student Member of the Year.

In preparation for his career, he’s serving as a transportation engineering intern for Psomas, working on street rehabilitation and bikeway projects.

“Growing up in a family that focuses on giving back to the community has truly shaped my life,” Cristi said. “Although my life is transitioning from academics to working in the professional industry, one thing that has remained is my passion for service.”

Kacy Grundhauser

University of Alaska, Anchorage

There is no doubt that Grundhauser has maximized her time and opportunities during her undergraduate years at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

Grundhauser manages a hectic schedule that includes active ASCE involvement, work as a water intern with HDR Inc. and of course her full-time class load as a fourth-year civil engineering student.

“By the time I graduate, I strive to have built relationships with companies and individuals to diversify colleagues and grow my career,” she said.

This year, she serves as the UAA Student Chapter president, while also playing important roles as her school’s student representative on the boards of the Alaska Section and the Anchorage Branch. She’s also done research work analyzing driving behavior on Seward Highway.

“Through these experiences, I can better understand the real-world challenges civil engineers have to face every day,” she said. “Living in an ‘icebox’ [Alaska] was never made to come easy. As our icebox begins to melt, we are faced with evolving engineering problems that must be met with feasible solutions.”

Matthew Jacobson

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Jacobson’s love for civil engineering began at a young age when he helped his father build an addition to his grandparents’ house.

“I realized I wanted to study civil engineering because I would be able to create a better way of life for others just like I did with my dad for my family,” Jacobson said. “Now I look forward to the day when I can help create new homes, better infrastructure and improve the quality of life for the public.”

Jacobson has already done a lot to help people through his ASCE work at Cal Poly Pomona. He’s served in various roles for the Student Chapter, including events chair and this year as president. During his stint as the alumni relations chair, he planned the annual alumni golf tournament, raising $41,000 for the Student Chapter. He’s also started a successful alumni mentorship program.

Additionally, Jacobson serves as one of the first ASCE Student Ambassadors, a new program that connects and empowers student leaders to raise awareness for ASCE, both on social media and on their college campuses. He prepared for his professional career last summer as an intern at Kimley Horn and Associates, working in development services and transportation.

Ryn Kalbfleisch

University of Louisville

Kalbfleisch is active with the University of Louisville Student Chapter, serving as the vice president of activities, playing a key role in forming a team for the first ASCE Surveying Competition and leading as a team captain at last summer’s Construction Institute Student Days event.

Kalbfleisch proudly identifies as nonbinary (expressing a gender identity that is neither entirely male nor entirely female) and bisexual, and it was ASCE Code of Ethics’ Canon 8, adopted in 2017, that helped empower her civil engineering dreams.

“Seeing gender identity and sexual orientation recognized and protected at such a high level gave me a renewed burst of enthusiasm to pursue my dreams within the field of civil engineering, even though people who look, act and identify like me aren’t traditionally expected to do so,” Kalbfleisch said.

They’ve done three semesters of full-time engineering work at Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities Energy. They list hydropower as their chief interest now but hopes to excel in many different areas of civil engineering.

“Once I discovered I could do everything I was interested in with a civil engineering degree, I fell in love,” Kalbfleisch said. “The scale and impact of the work civil engineers do captivates me.”

Althea McDavid

University of South Florida

Growing up in Georgetown, Guyana, McDavid was not sure she’d be able to follow her civil engineering dreams – at least not in the United States.

“I was fortunate enough to find the University of South Florida, which offered financial assistance to international students, and also to have parents who were willing to borrow money and use their life savings to help me,” McDavid said. “I feel blessed and proud of my accomplishments.”

McDavid credits her two years on the USF ASCE concrete canoe team with helping her out of her comfort zone and teaching her skills she may not have otherwise learned.

She also serves as the academic excellence chair for the National Society of Black Engineers chapter at USF.

Recently, she’s worked on site development projects as an intern with Landis Evans and Partners.

“I feel like I have chosen a path that will never bore me and one that will make me fulfilled about the work I do,” she said.

Wakil Pranto

University at Buffalo

Pranto is pursuing a career in structural engineering, having interned at HDR and Kiewit. He credits his parents, who moved the family from Bangladesh to the United States in 2000, with instilling in him a talent for adaptation.

“My father encouraged me throughout my childhood to understand the importance of a formal education,” Pranto said. “He would sit me down and teach me subjects far beyond my grade level.”

Pranto serves as vice president of the University at Buffalo ASCE Student Chapter as well as the mix design leader for the concrete canoe team.

He’s earned the Chapter’s Student of the Year and Model Member honors.

His internships have him excited about what he can contribute to the profession and the future of infrastructure. Other goals, meanwhile, hit closer to home.

“I know my father’s proudest day will be witnessing me walk across the stage with my degree in a couple months, but my proudest day will be purchasing him a house near a body of water – something he has always admired.”

Sofia Savoca

University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Savoca has been dreaming of a career in civil engineering since she was a little girl growing up in Caracas, Venezuela. Even a Barbie doll received as a gift for Christmas would soon get a Lego house designed by Savoca.

She reached that goal when she accepted an International Merit Scholarship to attend the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and she has taken full advantage of the opportunity.

Savoca is extremely active in many campus groups, including the ASCE Student Chapter (vice president), Student Society for Sustainability (secretary), Chi Epsilon National Civil Engineering Honors Society, Boys and Girls Club, Lowell Earth Day Festival and more.

Last summer she interned at Stantec, working in environmental services, and she looks forward to starting in the industry soon.

“Within this noble profession, there is always something to be done,” Savoca said. “Civil engineers have always been committed to satisfying people’s needs in the safest way possible, while also adapting them to and caring for our ecosystems.”

Maxx Taga

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Taga is still finishing his degree at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, but already, civil engineering has taken him places – to internships with NASA and Disneyland, to be specific.

“I really was able to press the boundary of what I thought a civil engineering student can do,” Taga said. “The range of projects ran from anchorage design to the new incredicoaster; brine tanks to environmental water documentation of rides like ‘It’s a Small World.’”

Taga actually started college with the intent to be a visual effects artist and his skillset remains diverse. His movie credits as an effects-compositor include “The Revenant” and “Fantastic Four.” He’s worked as an analyst for Pro Football Focus and as a board-game tester.

Ultimately, though, civil engineering – especially the challenge of working toward improving infrastructure – called to him.

“I began with a narrow view of what civil engineering professionals do, and with my internships, the doors swung open,” Taga said. “I am really excited to continue to see what opportunities are available. I can’t wait to continue to dive in.”

Mike Tormey

Northeastern University

Tormey grew up with the idea that “engineers solve problems” in his head. It’s what he heard at engineering camp. It’s how he understood his skillset (good at math and science) might best be applied – solving problems.

As he got older, though, and made civil engineering his field of study, he began to take issue with that mantra.

“Instead of simply applying creative engineering judgement to the solving of problems, I like to think of engineers as ‘creating solutions,’ going beyond technical expertise to achieve excellence for social applications,” Tormey said.

Tormey has been able to apply his talents through a research fellowship, studying green space planning in Singapore and Indonesia. He worked a co-op job at the Boston Transportation Department. And he serves as the publicity coordinator for the ASCE Student Chapter at Northeastern University. All of it part of his ambitious plans for better – more holistic – engineering solutions.

Just don’t call him a problem-solver.

“Rather than ‘solved problems,’ engineers and planners will increasingly be called on to create interdisciplinary solutions and adaptations through engaging visioning and capable implementation,” Tormey said.

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Recently, I’ve been getting questions from high school and some college students interested in civil engineering. They want to know what to expect in a civil engineering career. They want to learn about the industry before deciding to invest time, money and effort in a civil engineering degree (good idea).

Thinking back on this from my own career in civil engineering, my advice would be to gain field experience. I started with a civil engineering firm in high school as a summer intern and was put on a survey team, where I spent a summer as the “rod-person.”

I hated it at the time. Hot days. Poison ivy.

What was to like about it?

However, looking back, it was the most valuable experience of my career, because when I eventually transitioned into the office, it was so much easier to perform practical designs because I knew how projects were laid out and constructed in the field.

I would do it all over again!

But back to what I was going to ask you.

To help develop valuable content and provide quality professional advice for the students, please leave a comment below this post answering the following question (you can leave multiple answers if you’d like):

Question: What is one thing that high school students interested in civil engineering should know about the profession?

Thank you!

Anthony Fasano, P.E., M.ASCE, is the founder of the Engineering Management Institute (previously known as the Engineering Career Coach), which has helped thousands of engineers develop their business and leadership skills. He hosts the Civil Engineering Podcast and he is the author of a bestselling book for engineers, Engineer Your Own Success. You can download a free video series on his website that will give you the tools needed to immediately improve your networking and communication skills by clicking here.

He has also recently started the Engineering Management Accelerator to help engineers become more effective managers: www.EngineerToManager.com.

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