For presentation at the Structural World Congress, San Francisco, CA, 19-23 July 1998.

ON EDUCATION AND PRACTICE OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

Walter P. Moore, Jr.¹ and James T. P. Yao^1
1Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University,
College Station, TX 77843-3136, USA

 ABSTRACT

Because most undergraduate students today will become practitioners (private, industry, or governmental), the way we educate students invariably will affect the practice in the future. On the basis of authors’ experience and active participation in education conferences and workshops, we express our viewpoints and suggest ways to improve structural engineering education and practice in this paper. There have been many occasions to discuss these common issues in the past. It is timely to suggest several steps to implement what we have been discussing.

Results of a literature review showed that we must re-examine our curricula in order to prepare our students for the broadened world of engineering work. We need to incorporate into education programs team skills; leadership; a systems perspective; an understanding and appreciation of diversity; integration of knowledge; a commitment to continuous quality improvement; undergraduate research and engineering work experience; understanding of the societal, economic and environmental impact of engineering decisions; and ethics. Furthermore, we need to concentrate our effort to improve the quality rather than quantity of future civil engineers. While the authors believe that the information age does provide additional opportunities for structural engineers, the Internet as well as all the desirable software is merely a tool and is definitely not a replacement for formal education.

The authors have attempted to illustrate actions that could lead to more effective teaching required today in order to respond to the needs of the profession. Specifically we believe the following actions should be taken immediately:

1. The faculty reward system should be revised to recognize teaching performance and to encourage teaching innovation.
2. The traditional four-year program for obtaining a B.S.C.E. degree for entry into the profession should be reexamined. The four-year degree should not be discarded but the five- or six- year "professional degree" is also needed to respond to the complexities of the civil engineering profession.
3. Methods should be developed which allow the practitioner or industry engineer to assume an active role in the education process.

With continued teaching of fundamental knowledge along with integration of communication, team, leadership, and other skills, the additional requirement of a post-baccalaureate degree for practice will ensure a bright future for the structural engineering profession. The authors are confident that future structural engineers will continue to serve the society by fulfilling its many needs, both effectively and efficiently.

P316-2

ON EDUCATION AND PRACTICE OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

Walter P. Moore, Jr.¹ and James T. P. Yao^1
1Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-3136, USA

Because most undergraduate students today will become practitioners (private, industry, or governmental), the way we educate students invariably will affect the practice in the future. On the basis of authors’ experience and active participation in education conferences and workshops, we express our viewpoints and suggest ways to improve structural engineering education and practice in this paper. There have been many occasions to discuss these common issues in the past. It is timely to suggest several steps to implement what we have been discussing.

ASEE (1994) was a joint report of the Engineering Deans Council and Corporate Roundtable. They advocated establishing individual missions for engineering colleges, re-examining faculty reward systems, reshaping the curriculum, pursuing lifelong learning, broadening educational responsibility, exchanging faculty and engineers between universities with industry and governmental agencies, using outreach within the university, and sharing resources. On "reshaping the curriculum," it was recommended that the teaching of engineering fundamentals be continued. Moreover, "… engineering education must take into account the social, economic, and political contexts of engineering practice; help students develop teamwork and communication skills; and motivate them to acquire new knowledge and capabilities on their own." These objectives should be accomplished "by incorporating them into existing curricula and through non-classroom activities. …" Specifically, the following recommendations were made: "… colleges of engineering must re-examine their curricula and programs to ensure they prepare their students for the broadened world of engineering work. … to incorporate:

• team skills, including collaborative, active learning;
• communication skills;
• leadership;
• a systems perspective;
• an understanding and appreciation of the diversity of students, faculty, and staff;
• integration of knowledge throughout the curriculum;
• a multi-disciplinary perspective;
• a commitment to quality, timeliness and continuous improvement;
• undergraduate research and engineering work experience;
• understanding of the societal, economic and environmental impact of engineering decisions; and
• ethics."

Brown (1996) stated that "To practice a profession requires study and education. The professional has intellectual skills and solves problems, not only by reasoning, but also by intuition. … Finally, the professional must make decisions and those decisions will be of substance. They are enduring, often irreversible and have consequences over a long period of time." He pointed out the distinction between information, which is now readily available, and knowledge, which must be acquired through diligent study. He concluded by saying "Perhaps people will be able to forsake the fireworks and bells of the information age and give time to developing wisdom, understanding and knowledge." He further stated that "the difficulty is keeping up in the changing times. You have to continue your education on a continuing basis over a career so that at the end you are as contemporary as those just entering the profession."

Some argue that education is no longer important since a lot of information is readily available on the Internet. While it is always true that a person must learn all kinds of things without a formal education (e.g., see the accomplishments of the founder of Microsoft), most of us need the discipline and the fundamental knowledge that come with it. The authors believe that the information age does provide additional opportunities for structural engineers. Nevertheless, the Internet as well as all the desirable software is a tool and definitely is not a replacement for education.

Koehn (1995) reported results of a survey among students and alumni of the Department of Civil Engineering at Lamar University of Beaumont, Texas. Some 20% of the forms were returned, and the author drew conclusions from these returns. Although students’ and alumni’s opinions are important and should not be ignored, these results should not be the only voices heard.

Alexander (1990) raised the question about whether we really need more civil engineers, and concluded that we need to improve the quality rather than quantity of future civil engineers. A debate followed (Forum, 1990).

Approximately ten years ago, Roesset and Yao (1987) looked forward toward the civil engineering needs in the next Century. They concluded that civil engineers "have always been eager … to apply methodologies and research results to improve their design and construction procedures." Furthermore, civil engineers "need a solid knowledge of the physical sciences, an understanding of human and social behavior, familiarity with new methodologies and evolving technologies and a continued eagerness to embark into new areas and apply the latest research results." They also advocated directing research efforts "closely related to the national interest and the needs of the society" so that "the results will be more practical, the work itself will be more exciting and rewarding. …"

ASCE (1995) recommended organizing faculty development programs, integrating all the required skills into coursework, requiring post-baccalaureate professional degrees for practice, and having more practitioners involved in teaching. These recommendations are now being implemented by a Board committee (e.g., see Russel and Yao, 1996)

The students today will become practitioners soon. Therefore, their education is important in shaping them to become future professionals. Meanwhile, it is important to have active participation of current practitioners in engineering education so that there is continuity between present and future engineering practice. At present, Yao (1997) describes several possible career paths in civil engineering.

The current and proposed career paths are shown schematically in Figures 1 and 2, respectively. At present, a high school graduate may take the four-year B.S.C.E. curriculum as shown in Figure 1. Following the college degree, the young person may work for a construction company, an industry, or a government agency. Alternatively, he/she may pursue a graduate degree or go into private practice directly. In any event, it is essential that they obtain a P.E. license in order to continue practice. Another possibility is to obtain a doctoral degree and go into college teaching or work in a research laboratory. These alternative paths are interchangeable as shown in Fig. 1.

The proposed new curriculum is illustrated in Figure 2. A person may obtain a B.S. or B. A. degree outside of civil engineering for breadth, and then spend two years in an engineering specialty in order to obtain a professional degree. Alternatively, he/she may pursue a B.S.C.E. degree and then spend an additional year for the professional degree. The professional degree will be required for P.E. license after a period of time working under a registered professional engineer.

The faculty reward system in most universities needs to be further improved. Because state legislatures have been continuously cutting university budgets during these past three decades, increasingly faculty members have been "required" to raise more "research" funds from outside in order to meet the payroll and other educational expenses. Many state universities receive only approximately 30% of their budgets from their state government. This vicious cycle continues to date. In addition, some of the university officials either did not teach much or forgot what it takes to be an excellent teacher. They demand that the faculty devote almost "full" time effort to teaching as well as research. Usually it is easiest to evaluate faculty by funded research and refereed publications. This is an extremely important activity for all faculty members who wish to excel in teaching. On the other hand evaluation of teaching is much more difficult and is usually done by looking at the "rank" of student evaluations as a measure of teaching effectiveness. A side effect of this practice has been the gradual "grade inflation" in many schools. Rightly or wrongly, some faculty members think that giving a better grade to students may result in higher student evaluation scores. It is necessary to change the university environment so that the faculty reward system can recognize teaching properly. Recently, with financial assistance from Syracuse University, ASCE established a task force to define "faculty work" so that teaching and services can be rewarded along with research activities (mainly funded research and refereed publications).

Mentoring of newer faculty members should be further strengthened. It is unreasonable to assume that new faculty members do not need guidance. We need to have more role models (practitioners as well as educators) to mentor newer faculty members. In general, mentors should be supportive, realistic, honest, encouraging, maintaining communication, respectful of the mantee’s social and cultural environment, offering information, teaching networking, and making introductions.

There should be organized programs for the continuous development of faculty members. Most faculty members like to improve themselves by keeping up with the current practice and the state of the art in specialty areas. Unfortunately, every faculty member is overloaded with teaching, research, and service duties. In addition, new rules and regulations tend to increase unnecessary bureaucratic paperwork that makes it even more difficult for faculty members to improve themselves. Therefore, it is necessary to have organized programs helping faculty members further improve their teaching skills, their knowledge of current practice, and their state-of-the-art specialty knowledge.

As it was mentioned earlier, the 1995 Civil Engineering Education Conference (ASCE, 1995) made four major recommendations. In addition to creating formal faculty development programs and obtaining more practitioner involvement in education, the following three actions were recommended.

1. Integration of technical competence, communication skills, teamwork, leadership, and project based learning into various courses.
2. Introduction of a formal internship for each student and retention of the current 4-year B.S.C.E. degree for those graduates who desire careers in government, industry, construction, project management, or a totally different field such as business, law, or medicine.
3. Addition of a fifth year of specialty education to earn a professional degree (e.g., Civil Engineer) for those graduates who want to practice in a particular area of civil engineering where depth of knowledge is needed (e.g., structural, geotechnical, etc.). Alternatively, a student may complete a non-CE B.S. or B.A. degree and then take a two-year degree program to earn the professional degree as shown in Figure 2.

There are many excellent examples at various universities. For example, the eight NSF engineering education coalitions (see http://needs.nsf.gov/) all have experimental programs, some of which may be ready to be implemented elsewhere. As another example, the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory at the University of Colorado (see http://itll.colorado.edu/) gives exemplary facilities and efforts in engineering education.

An emphasis should be placed on full-time teaching appointments for qualified practitioners and engineers from industry. Their strength would most likely be in design courses and construction engineering. The lack of a doctoral degree has presented a major problem in the past for accomplishing this goal. It should be remembered that a doctoral degree is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for any teaching appointment. In fact, knowledge obtained through experience is often lacking at most universities and some of the desired educational objectives such as communication skills, leadership skills, teamwork, multi-disciplinary perspectives, economics and ethics have suffered as a result. The practicing engineers can present these subjects just as well or perhaps even better outside the university. Handling these opportunities using adjuncts has been attempted in the past and while this is better than ignoring the situation, it is not as effective as a full-time teaching appointment. Students need the opportunity to have access to their teachers. Often they learn more outside the classroom than inside and furthermore it allows the teacher to know the students which helps the teacher become more relevant.

A very innovative idea was attempted with the senior level capstone design course at Texas A&M. The senior author accepted an invitation from the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) to work with them on drainage problems and on an environmentally sensitive erosion problem for the City of Smithville Texas. We divided our classes into 3 to 5 person offices and assigned them each the task of determining what the problems were and to develop each office’s planned solution to the problems. Each office had to operate within the budgets given by LCRA and the City of Smithville. LCRA and the City of Smithville agreed to work with the students offices and provide them any information that was available. This situation provided a real-world problem and real-world clients. A further enhancement would have been the addition of the actual consulting firm selected to do the work. At the end of the semester the student offices made oral presentations of their solutions to officials from the City of Smithville and the LCRA who ranked them according to their judgement as project owners. This course ran for five semesters until all the assignments were completed. The students learned the difficulty of solving technical problems and presenting the results to non-technical people. Leadership and communication skills were clearly needed to make the project successful. Practitioners and industry engineers make excellent teachers in these types of courses.

A current problem to be solved is the growing split between the practitioners and the educators. This is not a uniquely civil engineering situation since it has been pointed out (Boyer and Mitgang, 1996) within Colleges of Architecture that this gulf exists also in their profession. This is a situation that needs immediate correction. Poirot and Yao (1991) were among the first to pioneer the ASCE "Practitioner-in-Residence" program at Texas A&M University. The idea is to place experienced and senior practitioners in universities full-time for at least one week. During that time, the practitioner gives lectures, meets with students and observes the faculty at work. Frequent interaction is provided so that faculty can discuss perceived problem areas with the visiting practitioner face to face. Understanding common problems is an important aspect of this process. Important questions still remain such as (1) can we find enough practitioners who volunteer at their own expense to make this process available to the many engineering schools on a continuing basis? (2) how often must we repeat this process in our universities in order to stay in touch and improve our relationship? And (3) how can practitioners provide some sort of senior residence program in industry for professors? The authors believe that answers to these questions are very important to a sound curriculum and should impact teaching effectiveness in the future. We are dangerously close to losing whatever benefits we gained in the initial programs. Perhaps ASCE or SEI as our professional society could provide the impetus to enlarge this program.

Grinter (1955) stated that "The requirement of the master’s degree in engineering science or its equivalent in self education for professional recognition would do much to produce a true profession of engineering knit together by a common understanding of engineering science at a level commensurate with the demands that industry and government will place upon the new generation of engineers now passing through our colleges of engineering." These words are even more important today. Since 1955 there has been an explosion of knowledge within civil engineering. The growth of electronic computation and graphics has placed great power in the hands of civil engineers and indeed the role of civil engineers in adding value to the built environment has radically changed. As a result of this fact it is impossible to give students all of the technical skills required in certain branches of civil engineering in four yeas and also include the softer skills such as communications, the societal, economic and environmental impact of engineering decisions and ethics. In order to technically prepare students for successful careers in structural engineering, geotechnical engineering and other specialized branches additional coursework is required. An additional one to two years is required to achieve a post-baccalaureate degree such as a master’s degree, which would then lead to professional registration. Other colleges such as Architecture have already embraced the 5 to 6 year study programs for the first professional degree. Another attractive possibility for the post-baccalaureate degree program is that it could allow a liberal arts graduate with the math and science prerequisites to obtain a professional degree in civil engineering although it may require one to two years longer than the student with a BS degree.

The authors have attempted to illustrate actions that could lead to more effective teaching required today in order to respond to the needs of the profession. Specifically we believe the following actions should be taken immediately:

1. The faculty reward system should be revised to recognize teaching performance and to encourage teaching innovation.
2. The traditional four-year program for obtaining a BS CE degree for entry into the profession should be reexamined. The four-year degree should not be discarded but the five or six-year "professional degree" is also needed to respond to the complexities of the civil engineering practice.
3. Methods should be developed allowing the practitioner or industry engineer to assume an active role in the education process.

With continued teaching of fundamental knowledge along with integration of communication, team, leadership, and other skills, the additional requirement of a post-baccalaureate degree for practice will ensure a bright future for the structural engineering profession. The authors are confident that future structural engineers will continue to serve the society by fulfilling its many needs, both effectively and efficiently.

Alexander, John A., (1990), "The Civil Engineering Shortage: Reality or Myth?" Education and Continuing Development for The Civil Engineer, ASCE, 17-20 April 1990, pp. 463-468.

ASCE (1995), Summary Report on the 1995 Civil Engineering Education Conference, Denver, Colorado, 16 pages.

ASEE (1994), Engineering Education for a Changing World, Joint Report of the Engineering Deans Council and Corporate Roundtable (available on the Internet at http://www.asee.org/pubs/html/green_report.html).

Boyer, E. L., and Mitgang, L. D., (1996), "Building Community," A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, pp. xvii-xx.

Brown, Colin B., (1996), "Trapped in One’s Own Times: The Individual’s Relationship to Education and Practice," Civil Engineering Systems, 14, pp. 1-18.

Forum (1990), "The Coming Personnel Shortage," by Russel C. Jones; and "The Shortage is a Myth," by John A. Alexander, Civil Engineering, p. 6 and p. 8.

Grinter, L. E., (1955), "Education of Civil Engineers: Need for Reconsideration," Proceedings, ASCE, Vol. 81, Paper No. 858, 8 pages.

Koehn, E., (1995), "Practitioner and Student Recommendations for a Civil Engineering Program," Texas Civil Engineer, April/May 1995, pp. 14-16.

Poirot, J. W., and Yao, J. T. P., (1991), Practitioner-in-Residence: An ASCE Pilot Program and The CH2M Hill – Texas A&M Experience, Report to ASCE EDAC/PAC Joint Task Committee on Educator/Practitioner Interface.

Roesset, J. M., and Yao, J. T. P., (1988), "Civil Engineering Needs in the 21^st Century," Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering, ASCE, 114 (3), July 1988, pp. 248-255.

Russell, J., and Yao, J. T. P., (1996), "Education Conference Delivers Initiatives," Feature, Journal of Management in Engineering, ASCE, November 1996, pp. 17-24.

Yao, J. T. P., (1997), "Career Path-Civil Engineering," Careers and the Engineer, Crimson & Brown Associates (to appear).

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