Session 2315
Suggested Topics for a Civil Engineering Curriculum
Jose M.
Roësset, James T. P. Yao
Texas A&M University
at College Station
Abstract
As continued developments in computer hardware and software provide
us with more efficient means to carry out cumbersome computations
and with enhanced means of communication and information transfer,
the role of civil engineers must change. The current civil engineering
curricula at most universities are no longer appropriate to produce
leaders of our society in the 21st century. If engineers
want to maintain a prominent position in society a new curriculum
that properly balances mathematics, natural sciences and engineering
with humanities and social and political sciences must be developed
and implemented. This new undergraduate curriculum should provide
students with a basic knowledge of the following topics: (1) Mathematics,
basic and engineering sciences; (2) Broad-based technical aspects
of civil engineering; (3) Principles of uncertainty and risk analysis;
(4) Decision analysis and business principles; (4) Management principles;
(5) Societal needs, ethics, public policy, and political science;
and (6) Communication and leadership skills. These topics should
be taught in an integrated manner, and reinforced throughout the
curriculum repeating their applications in various classes. In addition,
the students should be exposed to (1) engineering practice through
a variety of means including summer internships, cooperative programs,
and interactions with practicing professional engineers; and (2)
different cultures and international projects. Faculty members need
also to be continuously exposed to practical problems in order to
bring back that experience into the classroom. New faculty members
should have practical experience or be provided with means to acquire
it. To do so, it is necessary to change the faculty reward system
by emphasizing the quality instead of the quantity of faculty work.
In this paper, we discuss these various aspects in some detail.
I. Introduction
Since the fifties the emphasis in engineering education has been
on mathematics, basic science and theoretical engineering courses
at the expense of more practical engineering
offerings and liberal arts. Engineering students and faculty have
often treated humanities and social science courses as necessary
evils when in fact these courses were designed and intended to:
(1) broaden the engineers' understanding of the societal needs and
relationships, and (2) provide a balanced education rather than
simple training. Consequently, many engineering students fail to
understand the interrelationships between society and technology.
The present civil engineering curricula are not likely to produce
leaders of our society. Instead, the current curricula tend to produce
academic researchers and/or analysts who can only make advanced
computations.
The successful practicing civil engineer of the 21st
century is much more likely to be a
manager, supervisor or coordinator than a mere detail analyst.
Industry, government and academia have all made apparent the need
for engineers who have not only in-depth knowledge of physics, mathematics,
advanced analysis procedures and specific technical subjects, but
who can also communicate effectively, participate in team work with
a variety of other professionals, lead interdisciplinary projects,
and have an understanding of the legal, political and socio-economic
impacts of engineering projects. Many committees and workshops organized
with the sponsorship of the National Academy of Engineering, the
National Science Foundation, professional associations, and academic
institutions have resulted in essentially the same recommendations.
As an example, the Engineering Deans Council and Corporate Roundtable
(ASEE, 1994) recommended that universities continue to teach scientific
and engineering fundamentals as well as a broadened curriculum by
incorporating team skills, communication skills, leadership skills,
system perspective and integration of knowledge throughout the curriculum
with a commitment to quality and ethics.
In this paper, we review several topics for a new curriculum. Many
of these topics were presented at a special meeting of the American
Public Works Association (APWA) in Louisville, KY in September 2000
(Yao and Roësset, 2001), in the context of public works and infrastructure
management. We believe that a four-year bachelor degree in civil
engineering followed by a master degree with practical experience
is needed for successful civil engineering practice at the professional
level. One should thus consider jointly the offerings at the bachelor
and Master’s level instead of looking at them independently.
If we believe that curriculum changes are needed (and not everybody
seems to agree with this premise in spite of the overwhelming amount
of recommendations in this respect), it would be important for educators
to reach some consensus on what the general topics for an appropriate
curriculum should be. Once this consensus is reached a more detailed
curriculum can be developed and implemented. The development of
a new curriculum must be done, however, in an integrated, coordinated,
way rather than as a piecemeal adjustment of existing courses.
II. Mathematics and Sciences
All engineering disciplines are founded on mathematics and physical
sciences form the foundation of most engineering disciplines
(chemical and environmental engineering depend more on chemistry
than on physics). The basic mathematics and science courses have
been traditionally taken in the freshman year with more advanced
material and other science offerings in the sophomore year and several
possible electives in the junior and senior years. These courses must be maintained
in any curriculum. We should also have an increased coverage of
discrete (or applied) mathematics, which have become particularly
important with the increased availability and importance of computers.
One must finally make sure that the material learnt in these basic
subjects is applied in subsequent engineering courses. It is not
uncommon today for example to have students learn differential equations
in their freshman or sophomore year but never use them until graduate
school. Engineering courses often avoid the more rigorous treatment
of problems using differential equations under the assumption that
these make the subject more difficult and complicated. As a result
students not only forget what they learnt in the Calculus courses
but they tend to think that it was unnecessary material required
only for the sake of requirements. This is an important consideration
that applies equally to a number of other topics as discussed later.
Engineering science courses including solid and fluid mechanics,
and thermodynamics are typically taught in the sophomore year. As
Roësset and Yao (1988) pointed out, engineering mechanics can be
used to solve many practical problems in engineering. The actual
application of engineering mechanics to real problems should be
illustrated through meaningful examples. It was common for engineering
students to take all these courses before seeing any actual engineering
applications. At present, most students are no longer willing to
learn abstract concepts without seeing immediately the purpose and
application of what they are learning. As a result, an effort is
being made now to incorporate meaningful practical applications
as early as possible in the curriculum. However, this effort may
be in conflict with another trend to have common courses in engineering
sciences for all students as they were in the 1950s. It is our belief
that basic science courses should be the same for all engineering
and science students. Engineering science offerings should contain
specific real applications of interest to each particular discipline
(e.g., civil, mechanical, and electrical) while emphasizing the
systems approach (e.g., see Bordogna, 1998), and should thus be
tailored to the needs of each discipline.
III. Technical Engineering Courses
At present, civil engineering students are often exposed to an
introductory course providing an overview of each specialty: environmental,
geotechnical, hydraulic, structural, transportation and water resources
engineering. Very general presentations tend to be complemented
by lectures on use of computers for text editing, drafting or computing,
with exposure to many software packages. In some curricula, students
are further required to take a basic introductory course in each
of these specialty areas. In other curricula, students are not required
to take any specific engineering courses beyond the basic engineering
science offerings. These students can tailor their programs of study
to satisfy their own interests by selecting sequences of courses
in a major area and one or two other areas as minors. In that case,
the introductory area course should be required of all undergraduate
students who have designated that specific area as their major option.
The introductory overview course should expose the student to a
complete picture of the issues involved within the field. Included
in such an introductory course should be (1) actual case studies,
and (2) integration of the material of other courses (e.g., mathematics,
probability, risk and decision analysis, ecology, socio-economic
considerations, communication skills, and political and human factors).
This "big picture" should then be followed by more advanced
subjects in the same area at the upper division or graduate level.
IV. Principles of Decision under Uncertainty
Engineering involves decision-making with incomplete knowledge.
An understanding of decision making, uncertainty concepts and risk
analysis is essential for engineers to be able to evaluate alternatives
and make rational decisions in the real world. Since the sixties,
the departments of civil engineering of many universities have been
teaching a required undergraduate course on probabilistic methods.
This course is of limited permanent value unless the probabilistic
concepts are applied in subsequent engineering courses and properly
integrated throughout the curriculum.
In the real world, few things are deterministic without uncertainties. We need to expose students to
uncertainty concepts at an early stage. In response to a written
question by T. V. Galambos concerning
uncertainty in design courses, a panel discussion was held during
the 1982 meeting of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing
Society (NAFIPS) in Logan, Utah (Yao,
1983). The panelists recommended to
·
Teach uncertainty concepts and their applications
to freshman engineering students.
·
Publish at least one undergraduate textbook with
problems and solutions.
·
Teach a sophomore course with a general title of
uncertainty in which both probability theory and fuzzy sets are
covered.
·
Teach a senior course in which real data with uncertainty
are analyzed.
To date, such courses have not materialized in the States to our
knowledge. Recently, Colin Brown, Felix Wong, and Jim Yao (Yao et
al. 1999) presented a paper to advocate an undergraduate course
in civil engineering to
·
Emphasize risk, decision-making, and uncertainty
concepts.
·
Include other uncertainty analyses such as fuzzy
sets (e.g., see Wong, et al. 1999 for civil engineering applications).
·
Encourage educators and practitioners to apply non-deterministic
methods in their applications.
Based on the personal experience of teaching a civil engineering
undergraduate course on probabilistic methods during the past four
decades, it will take more than one course (and more than a few
instructors) to have practical effects on engineering education.
Ideally, uncertainty can be introduced to freshman students in a
basic course offered by the mathematics or statistics department
or by an engineering department.
An engineering course with emphasis on risk analysis and decision-making
should follow. Such concepts should be reinforced
in subsequent engineering courses at all levels with their application
advocated by most instructors.
V. Decision-making, Social and Political Sciences, Management,
Business
Once students have a solid knowledge of engineering sciences, decision
analysis, probabilistic concepts and risk analysis, they can apply
these principles to make rational decisions. This requires consideration
not only of technical issues but also of the economic, social and
political factors affecting all major engineering works as well
as environmental factors and sustainable development (e.g., see
Poirot, 1997). The planning of civil engineering projects requires
the consideration of the complete economics of the project, integration
of the design and construction processes, considerations of financing
alternatives, and return on investment or other expected benefits
to society. Projects that may not be justifiable at a particular
time on the basis of simple economics alone may be desirable because
of social and political consequences such as the creation of jobs
in a depressed area or providing a public service. Engineers must
be aware of all these aspects and must be able to incorporate them
in their decision-making and evaluation of alternatives. Management
of engineering projects requires all these considerations plus management
and administrative skills that are rarely taught to engineers at
present.
All engineering students take at least one course on engineering
economics covering such basic concepts as present worth, rate of
return, and cost-benefit analysis. They should also be exposed to
several courses on social and political issues, which do not exist
at present. Taking an economics and a political science course is
again not sufficient. As in the case of differential equations,
probabilities and risk analysis, the material learned in these courses
must be applied within the context of actual engineering projects
for it to be effective and meaningful. The introductory course in
each area is a first step in that direction. Design courses should again cover aspects of a real engineering
design project. It is particularly important that all design courses
incorporate case studies with real or realistic projects and discussion
of all their aspects as well as budget
preparation. The case study approach
has not been used traditionally in engineering courses, but it is
becoming more popular nowadays and should be used more often.
Little (1999) talked about stakeholders including elected officials,
public administrators, citizens, the financial community, engineers,
architects, planners, and the US defense establishment. In a paper
on structural health monitoring, Wong et al. (2001) referred to
a value chain with the starting link at the "selection of monitoring
systems" and ending at "evaluation of tradeoffs (decision
support technology and value to stakeholder)." Wong is a principal
in the consulting engineering firm of Weidlinger and Associates,
Inc. As a practicing engineer, he understands the value to the stakeholders
and the need to use financial considerations to convince them.
VI. Communication and Leadership Skills
Many people do not have the time or patience to read reports carefully,
but rely instead on headings, outlined extracts, and attractive
visual displays to judge the quality of a proposal. Engineering
projects (just as legislation, research proposals or educational
initiatives) require appropriate marketing and salesmanship to be
approved. The technical quality of a project is not enough by itself.
The way the project is presented to the decision-makers, funding
authorities or to the public in general is crucial to its acceptance.
The engineer in charge of the planning and operation of these projects
must be able to communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing, taking advantage of all the tools now available for
multimedia presentations. Traditional courses on technical communications
involving only technical English (oral or written) have to be supplemented
today by more general courses on technical presentations, something
which is already being done at a number of universities. Courses
on communications must be complemented with material on team working,
conflict resolution, and leadership.
VII. Practical Experience
When we both were undergraduate students in the fifties, all our
teachers had practical experience in engineering. Since the sixties,
an increasing number of professors have started teaching without
practicing engineering first and
thus lack the much-needed ability to bring real-world applications
into the classroom. Worse still, engineering educators are over-relying
on computer simulations to such an extent that costly experimental
studies have been de-emphasized in engineering education. The students
need to be exposed to reality with the following steps:
·
Active participation of experienced practitioners
in teaching - There have been notable and exemplary cases such
as the late Professor Walter P. Moore, Jr., at Texas A&M University
and Professor John M. Hanson at North Carolina State University.
However, they both had Ph.D. degrees and they both were elected
members of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
What we need in academia are many more experienced engineers whether
they have doctoral degrees and/or are elected members in NAE or
not.
·
Actual case studies - We need industry to
share actual case studies with academia. With the assistance of
faculty members, practicing engineers can prepare these case studies
for use by students.
·
Exposure of faculty members to real engineering
problems - Many faculty members need to be exposed to
real engineering problems. However, the present faculty reward systems
do not recognize such efforts. Many of them pay lip service to such
accomplishments, and at most give one-time teaching awards (rather
than permanent salary raises) for such efforts.
·
Summer internship and/or cooperative program
- We need more firms and public works agencies that are willing
to sponsor students (and faculty members who lack experience) to
obtain practical experience through summer internships and/or cooperative
programs. Following the professional master's programs, we can make
the "clinical" experience a required part of the program.
·
Re-emphasis of experimental studies - Students
should be taught how to conduct good experiments. Results of new
analytical studies must be validated by experiments.
The practical experience of faculty members is especially important
for this suggested curriculum. We must merge the interests of academicians
and practitioners again in order to be successful in our effort
to upgrade the profession.
VIII. Length of Education
Even prior to the fifties, there have been discussions about lengthening
the period of formal education in engineering. It is vital that
the curriculum be reformed as well as that the length of formal
education in civil engineering be extended. Since the adoption of
a policy statement on a master's degree as the first professional
degree by the Board of Direction of the ASCE in October 1998, the
pros-and-cons of additional length of education in civil engineering
have been debated (e.g., see Yao and Lutes, 1999). The debate continues
at present. We believe that it is desirable to produce qualified
civil engineers with an additional length of formal education. We
can teach the basic mathematics, science, humanities, social science,
decision theory, engineering practice, etc. in the limited time
available in the undergraduate program, but we cannot cover the
more complex topics. For the graduates to make an immediate impact
as a civil engineer practicing in water resources, environmental
engineering, transportation, or public works and infrastructure
management, they need the additional knowledge that can only be
covered in the master's degree. Skills in infrastructure management
like condition assessment of existing facilities, analysis of needed
work on existing facilities, and planning and programming work on
existing facilities is well beyond what can be covered in the undergraduate
curriculum. Nevertheless, we have to address these legitimate concerns
in the new curriculum. For those students who are not interested
in studying advanced technical subjects, they may pursue a master's
degree in engineering management after the BSCE.
IX. Summary and Conclusions
We believe in summary that a student should have (1) a broad-based
undergraduate education in civil engineering; (2) a more specialized
master's degree to practice civil engineering at a professional
level; (3) exposure to engineering practice through summer internships
and/or a cooperative program; and (4) a strong education in mathematics,
statistics, basic and engineering sciences, and technical aspects
of civil engineering as well as risk analysis, management principles,
social and political sciences, ethics, and communication skills.
In today's global economy civil engineering students who become
successful professionals are likely to be involved in one or more
international projects during their lifetimes. It is therefore important
that they learn about other cultures and about engineering as taught
and carried out in other countries. Interchange of students among
collaborating universities is now common in Europe. American Universities
have had for years large numbers of international students and have
sent students in humanities to other countries for diverse periods
of time. It is rare, however, for US engineering students to study
abroad and this is a situation that should be remedied.
Realistic projects should be used as case studies to emphasize
these issues and these topics should be taught in integrated courses
and reinforced throughout the educational process. It is particularly
important that the curriculum consist of logical sequences of coordinated
courses rather than an ensemble of independent and loosely related
offerings. This requires some amount of faculty time to ensure continuity
of the topics in the various courses. Very often a particular instructor
is only concerned with the subject he/she teaches and has little
knowledge of what is covered in preceding or following subjects.
Appropriate coordination is lacking in many instances because individual
faculty members are too busy with other activities (such as writing
research proposals, supervising research, writing technical papers
or doing administrative work) to be able to devote more time to
the overall academic program in addition to their own teaching duties.
Within the present reward system of most research universities,
major curriculum changes and improvements, which involve more faculty
time become extremely difficult unless special funds are provided
by government agencies for this specific purpose, and then the coordinating
efforts may only be conducted while the funding lasts.
To successfully introduce a new curriculum, it is necessary to
change current faculty reward systems. Roësset and Yao (2000) would
like to measure the quality (in lieu of quantity) of faculty work
and reward the faculty accordingly. Recently, Sarin (2000) discussed
the ABET EC-2000 criteria in terms of quality assurance. He recommended
changing the faculty reward system "or EC-2000 will never achieve
its intended purpose."
In this paper, we suggested general topics to be included in a
new civil engineering curriculum. After there is a consensus of
topics, a detailed curriculum can be developed.
While it is important to produce the quantity of civil engineers
needed to fill the demand, caution must be taken in attracting qualified
students who can think critically. Otherwise, we will produce many
more technicians instead of engineers. Meanwhile, we need to pay
attention to diversity. Moreover, we must attract students interested
in a more active role in management and politics in addition to
technical matters.
Some of our friends have expressed pessimism in relation to the
implementation of this type of curriculum within a reasonable amount
of time. They also question the efficacy of a curriculum change
in improving the social status of civil engineers. We agree with
them that difficult tasks are ahead if something is to be done.
For the sake of future civil engineering practice at a professional
level, however, we must try harder and keep trying.
X. Acknowledgement
We wish to thank the Carolyn S. and Tommie E. Lohman '59 Professorship
in Engineering Education, and the Wofford Cain '13 Senior Chair
of Engineering in Offshore Technology at Texas A&M University
for their financial support in preparing and presenting this paper.
Bibliography
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JOSE M. ROËSSET
Jose M. Roesset is a Professor of
Civil and Ocean Engineering, and is the Holder of the Wolford Cain'13
Senior Chair in Offshore Technology Engineering at the Texas A&M
University (TAMU). He is an elected member of the National Academy
of Engineering and an Honorary Member of the American Society of
Civil Engineers. Prior to join the TAMU faculty, he taught at MIT
and University of Texas at Austin.
JAMES T. P. YAO
James T. P. Yao is a Professor of
Civil Engineering and the Holder of the Caroline S. and Tommie E.
'59 Lohman Professorship in Engineering Education at Texas A&M
University. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne,
an Honorary Member of ASCE, and a fellow member of ASEE.
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