Development of Undergraduate Students’ Professional Skills

The development of engineering students’ professional skills has gained considerable national attention from Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, the National Academy of Engineering, ASCE, and other constituents. There is little debate that these professional skills are necessary. Engineering programs have tried many approaches to develop these skills in the undergraduate programs. Colorado State University (CSU) has developed a new approach modeled on the type of professional development that occurs in the professional environment. This new Professional Learning Institute (PLI) provides students with a broad array of workshops, presentations, and experiential opportunities addressing the areas of cross cultural communication and teamwork, innovation, leadership, ethics, and public service. This program introduces students to the concept of professional development through required extracurricular activities, includes minimum requirements along with requirements to earn certificates in specialty areas for motivated students. The majority of offerings in the PLI are presented by leaders from the engineering profession who have teamed with CSU to provide high quality programs for our students.     

Introducing Students to Professional Practice in Civil Engineering

This paper describes a module that was introduced into a civil engineering degree program with the help of professional engineers. The aim was to develop a bridge between the world of learning and professional practice by putting students in the role of consulting engineers working with industry to produce a feasible solution to a real inquiry from a client. The module is placed in context by comparing the goals of accredited civil engineering programs in the United Kingdom and America, by describing how it is linked to the degree program and by explaining the matrix developed to identify the skills the students needed to demonstrate their ability to practice as professional engineers. Details of the module are given with examples of student work and feedback.     

Information Technology in Civil Engineering Curriculum

The fast-moving world of information technology confronts the civil engineer with constant change. This creates challenges for educators and students because rapid change requires curricula to be flexible and educators to gain competency and access to new equipment and software. Whereas a decade ago, civil engineering educators debated how to teach “programming,” the picture is now much more complex. The paper reports on how information technologies are changing the practice of civil engineering and offers a new framework for integrating next-generation information technology into the civil engineering curriculum at the department level.     

Approach for Integrating Professional Practice Issues into Undergraduate Environmental Engineering Design Projects

According to C. L. Dym and P. Little, the complete design process includes identifying a need or problem, recognizing constraints, identifying and developing courses of action, testing potential courses of action, selecting optimum courses of action, preparing the documents required for the design, managing the overall process, communicating the design, construction, and testing. We have addressed these design considerations by linking design projects in our introductory physicochemical treatment processes course (EV401, taken by second-semester juniors) and our senior capstone design course (EV490, taken by second-semester seniors). The process developed and implemented addresses the integration of professional practice into design inexperience. We require our cadet students to communicate with their customers, an illustrator, and tradesmen, three forms of communication that are necessarily quite different from traditional student-professor exchanges. Also, students must design under constraints, this time not because of the closed nature of the project but rather because of “real world” resource constraints: time to complete the project, a limited budget to purchase materials and labor, availability of materials, ease of construction, and balancing competing projects (in other courses). The first attempt at implementing this engineering design learning model occurred during the spring of 2001 in EV401. Herein we assess the design and construction of one of two projects, oriented toward modification of a surface-water treatment plant model. Results suggest that iterative growth can occur and a more complete appreciation of the design process can result.     

Project Management Application for Engineering Program Accreditation Preparation

This paper presents guidelines for applying project management tools and techniques to the process of preparing for a program accreditation site visit. The premise of the paper is that the proven tools and techniques of project management are effective in managing all the steps required in accreditation preparation as well as postvisit followups. The basic lesson offered by the paper’s approach is that accreditation preparation should not be turned into a last-minute crash project. Rather, proactive preparation steps should be instituted early to facilitate communication, cooperation, and coordination of the entire process. The guidelines provided in the paper are useful not only for program review, but also for continuous process and curriculum improvement. The paper cites two graduate program examples of Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. preparation at the Air Force Institute of Technology.     

Practical Summer Training in Civil and Construction Engineering for Cultivation of Professional Ability

The cultivation of professional ability for undergraduate civil and construction engineering students is very important to help them meet the challenges that await them in the fast changing world. This paper presents a thorough study of practical training in the field of civil and construction engineering. Based upon an extensive literature review of the practical training curriculum worldwide, questionnaires were provided to contractors, educators and students in Taiwan to assess problems in traditional summer practical training courses for civil and construction engineering in Taiwan. At the outset of the study, it was thought that the lack of available jobs for students might be related solely to the economy but the findings indicated that the reasons were more complex ranging from concerns about liability for students working in construction sites to traditional cultural concerns about whether apprentices should be paid. The Delphi method was used to study the problems that were identified, relating to planning, execution, evaluation, and development of the existing practical training programs. A refined and improved summer practical training curriculum is proposed for civil and construction engineering education in Taiwan based upon the findings. Although the survey related to practical training programs for engineering students was conducted in Taiwan, the results might vary in other countries. The procedures used, and results obtained may be valuable resources and have a potential use for other countries. What is certain is that practical training can play an important role in readying engineering students for the work place in any location and making the practical training as effective and as safe as possible should be a universal goal.     

加强《程控交换原理》课程教学改革促进专业建设

通信工程专业是我校新开专业,几年来,根据专业建设的需要,我们对其专业基础课“程控交换原理”从教学内容、教学方法和实践教学等多个方面进行了改革与实践,取得了较为显著的成效,并对今后课程的发展提出了建设性的意见和设想。     

关联规则在信息管理与信息系统专业课程设置上的应用

现行的教育管理系统中积存大量的学生历史数据,传统的数据分析工具对这些数据的应用存在很大的不足,利用关联规则算法对信息管理与信息系统专业学生的历年各科学习成绩进行关联规则挖掘,从而在一定程度上确定各个课程在该专业上的重要性,为信息管理与信息系统专业的教学计划修订提供一定的建设意见。