Creating a New Civil Engineering Program in the 21st Century Kenneth R. Leitch and Erick B. Butler School of Engineering and Computer Science West Texas A&M University Canyon, Texas USA
[email protected] and
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Abstract – Starting a new engineering program in the 21st century that fulfills ABET 2000 requirements is a major undertaking. In this paper, the authors will discuss the process of implementing a new civil engineering program at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, TX (in the Amarillo metropolitan area), starting with planning, offering initial discipline-specific courses in Fall 2010, graduating the first cohort of students in 2013, and concluding with an ABET accreditation visit in Fall 2014. This process includes the development of a suitable curriculum using existing and new courses, development of the new civil engineering specific courses and laboratories, the senior design experience, assessment, and final preparation for an ABET accreditation visit. The discussion of the curriculum includes general education, mathematics, applied sciences (chemistry, physics, and biology), general engineering, and civil engineering specific courses is discussed. In particular, emphasis on the unique approach to the senior design capstone experience is described here. Engineering course outcomes are mapped to a modified Bloom’s Taxonomy and to ABET 2000 Outcome 3 a through k. A new program must also meet the requirements of regional and community stakeholders and fit with the unique service population in the greater Texas Panhandle region. West Texas A&M University is also on the verge of becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI, 25% or more of enrolled population) and is seeking to improve participation of women and underserved populations in STEM fields, such as with engineering. An overview of the process of preparation of the ABET self-study is described, including development of assessment tools necessary to determine the effectiveness of the new engineering program. Lessons learned and future improvements for the civil engineering program at West Texas A&M University are discussed.
Keywords – ABET, accreditation, ASCE, civil engineering, c u r r i c u l a , Bloom’s Taxonomy, Body of Knowledge, Hispanic Serving Institution, senior design, WTAMU
I. INTRODUCTION
West Texas A&M University (WTAMU) is one of eleven universities comprising the Texas A&M System, enrolling nearly 9000 undergraduate and postgraduate students. In cooperation with local and regional stakeholders, WTAMU established undergraduate programs in mechanical (2003), civil (2010), and environmental engineering (2012). These programs were joined with existing engineering technology and computer science programs to form what is now the School of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS). ECS has expanded to over 600 students as of Fall 2014, of which over 500 are engineering and engineering technology majors. It is expected that ECS will enroll approximately 700 students in these majors in Fall 2015. Growth has been rapid but the school still maintains a very hands-on and personable approach to instruction with faculty instructing all lectures and laboratory courses. ECS enrolls about 50% of its students through transfers from partner institutions such as Amarillo College [1], South Plains College [2], and Lubbock Christian University [3]. The transfer credits align fairly closely with the preengineering program at WTAMU. This corresponds roughly with the requirements of an engineering associate’s degree program. This policy also ensures that upper division engineering students will thrive in their program of choice because they know that the basic engineering, math, and science courses are foundational to what they will be expected to do in their junior and senior undergraduate years of study. WTAMU requires that at least 39 credit hours of junior and senior level courses be taken in residence at the university in order to earn a degree from the institution. In order to move from the pre-engineering to the civil engineering program, a student must complete the fundamentals of engineering, drafting, chemistry I and II, calculus I and II, statics, and dynamics courses with a GPA of 2.75 or greater, whether taken at the partner institution and/or at WTAMU.
It is also of note that in addition to having a large
transfer contingent is that about 50% of students are firstgeneration college students. Furthermore, the university population is nearing the threshold (23% vs. 25% required) of becoming a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) [4,5], reflecting the population diversity of the state of Texas and the surrounding service area. The university has a borderstate tuition rate [6] (WTAMU defines border states as New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas) that has attracted students from these areas due to favorable costs and desirable university majors, such as those in ECS. The engineering faculty at ECS includes five full-time mechanical engineering, two full-time civil engineering faculty, two full-time environmental engineering, one shared full-time civil/environmental engineering faculty, one fulltime engineering technology faculty, and one full-time engineering instructor. Between these faculty, all required general engineering, required general civil engineering, and elective civil engineering courses can be covered. Two of the mechanical, the two civil, and the one shared civil/environmental engineering faculty are licensed professional engineers. The two environmental engineering faculty are EITs and working toward gaining professional licensure. The civil and environmental engineering faculty function as a unit within ECS in regard to their respective programs since they are interdependent on one another and form a natural grouping within the ECS hierarchy. It is important to note the state of professional licensure because ABET and ASCE prefer that civil engineering faculty to be licensed in order to teach any course with significant design content, typically reflected in the course title and catalog description. This will also be important for the environmental engineering program, as ASCE is a major stakeholder in that discipline as well. The balance of this paper will review the development of the civil engineering program at WTAMU, the first senior design experience, preparation for accreditation, and future changes and conclusions.
One of the oldest civil engineering programs in the USA is that at the United States Military Academy at West Point (USMA), which coincidently has been at the forefront of civil engineering education innovation. In particular, Drs. Stephen Ressler, Alan Estes, Karl Meyer, and others that have been associated with USMA have spurred this innovation out of necessity, as they need to quickly train engineering instructors in order to educate the men and women of the US Army to practice civil engineering, oftentimes under wartime conditions. They have graciously passed along this wisdom through the highly regarded ASCE EXCEED (Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) seminar series [8]. In particular, Drs. Ressler, Estes, and Meyer plus Dr. Tom Lenox from ASCE have spent significant effort in tying the ABET 2000 Outcome 3c [9] and ASCE Body of Knowledge (BOK) 2 [10] to contemporary civil engineering education [11-15]. In short, Appendix H of the BOK 2 neatly ties the ABET 2000 3c Outcomes a-k that many engineering faculty are familiar with to the requirements for the civil engineering discipline in the 21st century. These references validate the process that WTAMU has gone about to pursue accreditation for the civil engineering program. Ressler [11] also validates the need to add biology to the WTAMU civil engineering program, discussed in the next section on curricula. One reference of note by Lambrechts [16] describes the process of elevating a civil engineering technology program to a full civil engineering program. This change was initiated due to the National Council of Examiners of Engineers (NCEES) adopting ASCE’s Policy 465 and its associated BOK 2 (summarized in its Appendix H) [10], further emphasizing the requirement to follow ABET 2000 Outcome 3c plus additional requirements for the education of civil engineers for the 21st century. It is in this light that WTAMU has formulated its civil engineering curricula, described in the following section.
II. PREVIOUS WORK
III. WTAMU CIVIL ENGINEERING CURRICULA
It is helpful understand how other programs have responded to creation and accreditation of new engineering programs in the 21st century. As the population of the USA and Texas in particular grows, there is growing demand for engineers as well. The Texas Office of the State Demographer notes that the 2015 population of 27 million will grow to somewhere between 31 million (no migration, natural growth only) to 54 million (migration following 2000-2010 US Census trends) [7], spurring a strong demand for Texas institutions of higher learning to graduate more engineers. In particular, civil engineers are at the forefront of development, construction, and maintenance of the infrastructure that society is dependent upon.
The development of the civil engineering curriculum must be consistent with ABET 2000 [9] and ASCE Body of Knowledge 2 Appendix H [10] criteria as well as institutional and community stakeholders. The resulting civil engineering curricula at WTAMU resemble that at other ABET aligned programs. Similar to other institutions, the civil engineering program is constrained to operating within requirements for general education coursework (English, speech, history, government, arts, etc.) as well requirements for basic science (chemistry, physics, and biology), mathematics (calculus I-III and differential equations), general engineering (fundamentals of engineering, drafting, statics,
dynamics, mechanics, etc.), and specialized civil engineering coursework. A degree checklist for the BS civil engineering degree may be found at the online WTAMU online catalog [17].
discipline, directed study, or internship. It is possible that one or both of the non-structural electives may be a course shared with the environmental engineering discipline. IV. SENIOR DESIGN CAPSTONE
WTAMU operates on the semester credit system, the dominant system in the USA at this time. Engineering courses are typically offered in fall, spring, summer I, and summer II semesters. Like other similar engineering programs, it is designed for full time students to be completed in approximately four years with a total of 127 semester credit hours. It should be noted that the academic year 2014-2015 degree checklist shows a total of 126 semester credit hours. Why is there a difference of 1 credit hour versus the checklist? The reason is that effective in academic year 2015-2016, the checklist will replace the 3-credit EVEG, MENG, GEOL, CS, OR ET ELECTIVE with a 4-credit biology course. This was in direct response to feedback from the ABET accreditation team that visited WTAMU in October 2014. It was an easy change to implement and puts the civil engineering major in better alignment with ABET and ASCE requirements for applied sciences. It is of note that currently enrolled students are already being required to take the biology course, regardless of catalog year. It is substitutes for the aforementioned elective. In regard to civil engineering discipline specific courses, the curriculum is designed to provide at least one foundational course in all six traditional subareas (structural, transportation, construction, environmental, geotechnical, and water resources) of the civil engineering discipline. Some of these courses are cross-listed with the new environmental engineering degree program such as the introduction to environmental engineering, fluid mechanics, and hydrology and hydraulics courses. The civil engineering program has five courses (two shared with environmental engineering, noted with *) with specific laboratory components: introduction to environmental engineering*, surveying, civil construction materials, geotechnical engineering, and fluid mechanics for civil and environmental engineers*. For the first two years of operation, the civil engineering program used the mechanical engineering fluid mechanics course but this course lacked material in regard to open channel flow, essential for the follow on hydrology and hydraulics course. The civil/environmental engineering fluid mechanics course is a 4-credit lecture/laboratory while the mechanical engineering fluids course is a 3-credit lecture/laboratory. There are three required upper level civil engineering courses. Of these, one must be structural design (ex: steel or concrete design), one is design of any type in regard to any subarea of the civil engineering discipline, and one is a general course in any subarea of the civil engineering
The first civil engineering senior design experience was in summer session 2013. The reasoning for a summer session was to ensure that among the seven participating students, most if not all would have completed coursework in all six traditional subareas (structural, transportation, construction, environmental, geotechnical, and hydrology) of the civil engineering discipline. This first senior design project entailed the design of an outdoor civil engineering laboratory. The project was linked to the ABET 2000 Outcome 3c and modified Bloom’s Taxonomy described in the section of this report in regard to preparation for accreditation. Seven students participated in the course. The students arranged themselves in six subarea teams, each of which had at least three students involved. This means that any one particular student was part of two or more of the smaller subarea teams. One student was chosen by the other students to be the project leader, who in turn organized meetings and met with the three faculty members that were in charge of the course. The students had approximately seven weeks to design the outdoor civil engineering laboratory. At first glance, that may not sound like enough time, but most of these students were taking only this one course in summer. It was much like a 40-hour-a-week job in scope, a fairly reasonable and realistic scenario for the students. Students were responsible for weekly meetings and work summaries that were submitted to the faculty in charge. Along with evaluation of an interim report with presentation and a final report with presentation, peer and faculty evaluation forms were completed for all seven students. This allowed for a final grade to be assigned to each student for his or her performance in the course. Six students were deemed to have passed with a grade of C or better. While it may sound harsh for the seventh student deemed below this threshold, it is very important for program integrity and the safety of the public that a student performing below an acceptable level not graduate until he or she demonstrates the high level of competence required in the civil engineering discipline. The senior design project was very important from the standpoint that the graduation of the first cohort of civil engineering students triggered the year-long process for ABET accreditation of the program. An honest assessment of this project, the students, and the faculty involved is necessary for the integrity and growth of the program.
VI. FUTURE DIRECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
V. PREPARATION FOR ACCREDITATION AND RESPONSE All programs undergoing the accreditation process must submit a self-study. The self-study consists of information that describes the program in details as outlined by the ABET 2000 criteria. The self-study consists of nine different criteria. Self-study materials were to be prepared by the program and submitted by the 1st of July 2014. Faculty from the civil and environmental engineering programs met frequently during the months of May through June to prepare the self-study. An excellent view from the evaluator standpoint describes this preparation process, stating that a program really only gets one chance to make a good impression and that involvement of faculty and documentation are key for gaining or maintaining accreditation15. In addition to the self-study, faculty were also required to prepare materials for the accreditation visit. There were two major components—course binders and senior design videos. The course binders consisted of materials from selected courses taken by civil engineering students. The binders consisted of sample work (i.e. homework, exams, quizzes, and design projects) for the accreditation reviewers. The sample work was assessed by faculty to determine how well the student met metrics as discussed by the civil and environmental engineering faculty. Copies of the two senior design final presentations were placed on flash drives for the reviewers upon request. Videos of the senior design presentations were also made available for review as well. The assessment metrics were tied directly to ABET Outcome 3c a-k with achievement tied to a modified Bloom’s Taxonomy at a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior level. The levels of achievement, in order of increasing difficulty are: knowledge - recall and organization of facts and figures; understanding comprehending the meaning of facts and figures; application - being able to utilize appropriate formulas and principles to determine a problem solution; synthesis being able to break a problem into components and solve by application of basic principles without reliance upon example problems; and design - making something that is new and unique with little reliance upon examples. The ABET accreditation site visit occurred in October 2014. The reviewers were provided access to the self-study materials, met with faculty and administrators, and conducted focus group sessions with current civil engineering students. The comment and response period is currently on-going at the time of this writing in June 2015. It is anticipated that the conclusion of this process will occur during the summer of 2015.
Engineering curricula continues to evolve in regard to stakeholders, technology, business, society, and other outside factors. Developing new engineering programs in the 21st century requires input from these factors and a willingness of faculty to adapt and change in order to develop the problem solving skills that engineering students will need. The lessons learned in the first senior design and initial ABET site visit have been adapted and refined in the second and third cohorts of civil engineering graduates from the WTAMU School of Engineering and Computer Science. The civil engineering faculty decided to implement a continuous improvement program, rather than waiting until the year before an accreditation cycle to gather assessment data. Courses will be on a regular cycle for assessment to address problems and change curriculum more quickly, as needed. Making continuous improvement a part of the ECS culture will ensure the best education for engineering students. The October 2014 ABET visit affirmed the good aspects of the civil engineering program and spurred the faculty to move quickly to address deficiencies, especially to implement a third required science with biology, even before the comment and response period is complete. The new environmental engineering program will also directly benefit from the learning process, much like the civil engineering program learned from the first WTAMU ECS accredited program in mechanical engineering. Newer programs such as the ones at WTAMU have great flexibility in devising and implementing engineering education. Established programs can learn from and share best practices with these newer programs. In any case, the criteria of ABET and the ASCE Body of Knowledge give guidance in regard to what education of engineers in the 21st century should address and the feedback to continually improve and innovate. REFERENCES [1]
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Kenneth R. Leitch, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, West Texas A&M University, PhD, PE, MBA,
[email protected]. Erick B. Butler, Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering, West Texas A&M University, EIT,
[email protected].
