Language programs our minds to eventually operate subconsciously.
This starts from our early formative years right through university and out into our professional life. For myself, I have used NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) to re-program/re-think those language-labels that I have found to be false and negative-reinforcing in practice.
Please consider one such popular verbal expression as a major part of this <g class="gr_ gr_476 gr-alert gr_spell gr_inline_cards gr_disable_anim_appear ContextualSpelling" id="476" data-gr-id="476">edu</g>-initiative going forward.
- Subjects Addressing People, Process & Leadership: Hard Skills for at least 75% of Engineers*.
- Subjects Addressing Technology: Soft Skills for at least 90% of Engineers*.
Once we agree on the 21st-century scope of the challenge most engineers face. . . .people, process, leadership...vs....technology.... we may then plan, design and implement appropriate approaches to support the learning processes.
Thank you for patiently considering my thoughts.
And of course, I may be wrong!
Cheers,
Bill
*Educators as well as those in practice, private sector, and public.
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William M. Hayden Jr., Ph.D., P.E., CMQ/OE, F.ASCE
Buffalo, N.Y.
"It is never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot 1819 - 1880
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-30-2019 17:53
From: Dilip Barua
Subject: Preparing Future Engineers
There are some great discussions here. As pointed out, engineering education, for that matter any other education is an evolving process – in response mostly to industrial and societal needs, interests and foresights. And as always happens, educators often include elements of his or her convictions into an existing curriculum, or make a justifiable proposal to introduce an entirely new one.
Since coining of 'Sustainable Development' in 1987 in the UN report, Our Common Future, the term became very popular, and nowadays most universities offer courses on it – in engineering and others. And most countries have this term written, perhaps many times in documents and memos. But I wonder how much implementation of the sustainability concept is really achieved in policies and projects.
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Dr. Dilip Barua, Ph.D, P.Eng, M. ASCE
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Website: https://widecanvas.weebly.com
Original Message:
Sent: 04-29-2019 08:02
From: William Wallace
Subject: Preparing Future Engineers
I teach an on-line graduate course at the University of Florida, Principles of Sustainable Engineering Design, focused primarily on civil infrastructure. The theme of the course, starting with the first lecture, is the past is no longer prologue. For civil engineers working in the built environment, the obscure but foundational assumption of stationarity (the statistical properties of engineering design parameters will be the same in the future as they have been in the past) is no longer valid for environmental parameters. The ASCE Committee on Sustainability (COS) has been charged by the ASCE Board of Direction to "transform civil engineering," which we've interpreted as helping civil engineers and other practitioners to understand that non-stationarity is the new normal and what that means to the future of civil infrastructure. We're also creating educational materials, new standards, certifications and engineering design methodologies.
What we've struggled with is a general reluctance by the ASCE leadership to publicly recognize the cause of non-stationarity--climate change--and doesn't want to alienate them. Many of the members are climate change skeptics, ranging from "Gee, I haven't thought about it much" to "I get my science from Fox News."
What COS is also struggling with is how to reach the academic community. If we're going to "transform civil engineering" we need to transform the engineering curricula. Based on my experience, albeit limited, the engineering students and the newly minted engineers understand the issues and impacts of non-stationarity and want to learn more. In advertising my course, my pitch is this: Take this course and you will be able to discuss the issues of sustainability confidently with your friends, clients, customers or bosses, identifying opportunities and risks they never imagined they had.
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Bill Wallace ENV-SP, F.ASCE
Wilsonville, Oregon
Original Message:
Sent: 04-28-2019 21:36
From: Kevin Hall
Subject: Preparing Future Engineers
Hey Bill...
Thanks for the post! Indeed, the summary report from the 1995 Education Conference is one of the "read-aheads" that participants in the upcoming Summit are asked to review. The initial afternoon of the Summit will involve a 'look back' at not only the 1995 ASCE conference, but also the two NAE publications The Engineer of 2020 and Educating the Engineer of 2020 (as well as some other materials). I absolutely agree that we need to take care and not reinvent the wheel.
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Kevin Hall Ph.D.,M.ASCE
Professor
Univ Of Arkansas
Fayetteville AR
(479) 575-8695
Original Message:
Sent: 04-28-2019 05:50
From: William Hayden
Subject: Preparing Future Engineers
In preparation for this year's education summit, it would be interesting to ask what lessons have we learned from the ASCE's first Education Summit held in Denver, CO in 1995, and what has been done in Academia to address those lessons.
In June 1995, at the culmination of some 3 years or so of preparation, led by professor Dr. Jim Yao, Texas A&M, resulted in an "ASCE Education Conference" in Denver, CO. At the end of that conference session, there was a lively 'give and take' as attendees* raised questions about matters presented. There were four main "gaps" noted that were recommended to be included in the formal education of the next generation of civil engineers. They were knowledge and skills related to:
Leadership, Teamwork,
Communications and Business Knowledge.
That information was founded on some 3 years of advance preparation involving business leaders, managers and academics in teaching and administration.
Q. As we gear up for another such initiative:<u1:p class=""></u1:p>
A. What progress has been made in academia for any one or more of the identified four (4) subject areas since 1995?
B. What lessons have we learned from those gaps and shouldn't we revisit this as part of this year's summit so we are not reinventing the wheel?
Respectfully,
Bill
"It is never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot 1819 - 1880
Original Message:
Sent: 04-27-2019 14:48
From: Shirley Clark
Subject: Preparing Future Engineers
My two cents are the areas of sustainability and resiliency. As the faculty who teaches hydraulics and hydrology (and this seems to be prevalent in all areas of civil engineering), we teach to current code, which is treated as a static force until a new code is issued. We try to inject issues of uncertainty into the discussion, but at its heart, we are teaching to code. Concurrent with their university education, most of our students have internships. Very few civil engineering firms in our area are designing to anything above the level needed to obtain the appropriate permit, so the students and employers want to ensure that the graduates are grounded in current code.
We know that this is not right, but it is what we do. My students take a 400-level statistics class (which is an improvement on the 200-level basic one we used to require), but nowhere in there is uncertainty analysis covered. Students do not understand how to take a model and run multiple simulations on future scenarios based on appropriate ranges of certain parameters - in my case these are rainfall rates and extreme storm events that are becoming less extreme and more common. We can touch on this in capstone, but it is later than it should be in the curriculum.
Sustainability and resiliency require that students truly adopt the idea of life-long learning because our knowledge is constantly growing. It also requires an acceptance of uncertainty analysis and being able to interpret the results from those analyses. How can we redesign our classes and curriculum (and accreditation requirements) to push these ideas forward?
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Shirley Clark Ph.D.,P.E.,D.WRE,F.EWRI,M.ASCE
Professor
Penn State Harrisburg
Middletown PA
(717) 948-6127
Penn State HarrisburgProfessor
Original Message:
Sent: 04-23-2019 10:18
From: Kevin Hall
Subject: Preparing Future Engineers
The world is certainly changing - what challenges will this present to civil engineers in 2040? 2060?
ASCE and the Department Heads Council (DHC) is sponsoring a Civil Engineering Education Summit, to be held on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, May 28-30 to discuss how engineering education can better prepare civil engineers for these challenges. I would like to start the discussion in this thread.
Any/all persons interested in civil engineering education -- academics, practitioners, students, and others - How can we prepare future civil engineers to anticipate these challenges and adapt to societal needs?
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Kevin Hall Ph.D.,M.ASCE
Univ Of Arkansas
Fayetteville AR
(479) 575-8695
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