The distinctiveness of civil engineering in engineering systems thinking and in new models in engineering education

ABSTRACT

A revolution in engineering education is coming, but is civil engineering ready? Students learn differently from how they did a few generations ago and the rapid pace of technology change means that the goals of education need to change as well as the method. New engineering degree programmes are arising, and though they aspire to teach a new generation of interdisciplinary engineers, they do not seem to have been developed with civil engineers in mind. While the need for improvements in systems thinking by engineering students is acknowledged by various organisations, the uniqueness of a civil engineering response to the systems challenge is not recognised. Civil engineering education is distinct because of the large scale of the artefacts that need to be created by students, because the scope of civil engineering employment is broader, and because its need in terms of systems thinking is more than project management. The conclusions are that (1) civil engineering education needs rapid and major change, (2) a unique focus on systems is needed in civil engineering education, and (3) civil engineering education needs to follow a distinctive path from the forms that the revolution is currently taking.

KEYWORDS:

• Systems
• engineering education
• new models in engineering education
• Olin college
• constructionarium

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for the thorough and kind copy-editing of Janet Bray.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).