Professional and Career Topics

We recently had the 2025 ASCE Education Summit, and the focus was on how industry and academia can partner to spark innovation in civil engineering education. I'm looking forward to seeing the compiled results of the workshops and discussions.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you.

Below are some general questions to spark discussion:

Have you seen any successful programs or partnerships? What do you think made them successful?

Do you have any ideas for more collaborative, impactful, long-term partnerships beyond periodic one-off event participation?

How do we help connect the right people in industry with the academic program coordinators (especially for universities that don't have a lot of local firms)?

Dear Ms. Wallace:

Solutions that I have seen or heard of:

1. Senior design (capstone) classes taught and supervised by practitioners.
2. We one time hired a retiring academic who worked part time for us.  They provided some academic rigor to some of our reports.  He also provided a strong relationship with one of our clients' PM who happened to be a former student.
3. We hire a steady stream of part time geologists who work in our geotechnical lab.  Most do not stay long, but it does build a bridge with the local university.  A few have stuck with us long term.  It has created a nice source (funnel) of potential candidates.
4. Build a bridge with the local university any way you can.  We donated about 15 years of a certain publication which we did no longer need.  We received a big thanks.
5. Find the one project that comes along where you need some academic help either for the marketing of the RFP, or in the project delivery, and then retain the academic for a project (and try to keep them on schedule).

Hope this is helpful.