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Developing a Body of Knowledge for Environmental Engineering Introduction

At the American Academy of Environmental Engineers (AAEE) Board of Trustees annual meeting in November 2005, a Body of Knowledge Development Working Group (BOKDWG) was created with the following charge:

“The Body of Knowledge Development Working Group is charged with defining the BOK needed to enter the practice of environmental engineering at the professional level in the 21st century taking into account other issues, including, but not limited to, the impact on certification, on the profession, on environmental engineering academic programs (undergraduate and graduate), and on accreditation of environmental engineering programs at the basic and advanced levels.”

A body of knowledge (BOK) provides the foundations that define a profession. The need for a BOK that aligns engineering curricula and early experiences with the professional demands of engineers has been recognized by many engineering disciplines in recent years. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recently published its second edition of a Civil Engineering BOK (ASCE 2008). The National Academy of Engineering’s Committee on Engineering Education considered the future of undergraduate engineering education in the United States (NAE 2005). The study was not limited to one or two disciplines of engineering but rather to all the diverse branches of engineering and from the broadest perspective. The Committee identified the need for a BOK that ensured the preparation of engineers for the demands the field will place upon engineers in a global economy.

The EnVE BOKDWG was populated by a diverse body of environmental engineers representing multiple employment areas and experience levels. While this effort was initiated by the AAEE, it is by no means exclusively an AAEE activity. The Environmental Engineering Body of Knowledge (EnVEBOK) is being developed through a series of teleconferences and face-to-face meetings. Stakeholder opinion will be collected through communication with groups with EnVEBOK interests through wide distribution of early drafts and updates at conferences and newsletters.

Face-to-face meetings are an important part of the EnVEBOK development effort. They provide an opportunity to focus on this effort without distraction for a longer period of time than teleconferences permit and to generate interactive discussion that is not possible by telephone. The first face-to-face meeting of the EnVEBOK working group was help in Tempe, AZ at the NSF-funded Foundations of Environmental Engineering Education meeting. A second meeting was held at Virginia Tech at the 2007 AEESP Research and Education Conference July 29, 2007 and the third face-to-face meeting was held on February 1, 2008 in Orlando, FL.

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Reinhart, D. (2008, June), Developing A Body Of Knowledge For Environmental Engineering Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--3159