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Implementation of Infrastructure Education Courses Across Multiple Institutions

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Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

June 29, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Developing Infrastructure Professionals

Tagged Division

Civil Engineering

Page Count

16

DOI

10.18260/p.25583

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/25583

Download Count

496

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Paper Authors

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Carol Haden Magnolia Consulting, LLC

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Dr. Carol Haden is a Principal Evaluator at Magnolia Consulting, LLC. She has served as evaluator for STEM education projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Arizona Department of Education, among others. Areas of expertise include evaluations of engineering education curricula and programs, informal education and outreach programs, STEM teacher development, and climate change education programs.

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Philip J. Parker P.E. University of Wisconsin - Platteville

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Philip Parker, Ph.D., P.E., is Program Coordinator for the Environmental Engineering program at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. He is co-author of the textbook "Introduction to Infrastructure" published in 2012 by Wiley. He has helped lead the recent efforts by the UW-Platteville Civil and Environmental Engineering department to revitalize their curriculum by adding a sophomore-level infrastructure course and integrating infrastructure content into upper level courses.

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Michael K Thompson University of Wisconsin - Platteville

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Dr. M. Keith Thompson is currently a professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Dr. Thompson received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from The University of Texas in Austin and his B.S. degree from North Carolina State University. He is a member of ASEE and ASCE. His research interests include concrete structures, bridge infrastructure, civil engineering curriculum reform, student retention, and advising. He is currently working on research related to integration of infrastructure issues into the civil engineering curriculum and the use of data analytics to improve student retention.

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Michael R. Penn University of Wisconsin - Platteville

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Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Lead author of the textbook, Introduction to Infrastructure: An Introduction to Civil and Environmental Engineering.

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Steven D Hart Virginia Military Institute

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Dr. Steven D. Hart, P.E. is an adjunct professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Virginia Military Institute, the Chief Engineer of Hart Engineering, LLC, and an aspiring gentleman farmer at Hart Burn Farm. His research areas of interest include infrastructure engineering, infrastructure education, infrastructure resilience and security, and grass-based sustainable agriculture.

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Matthew W Roberts Southern Utah University

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Dr. Roberts has been teaching structural engineering topics for 14 years. He recently joined the faculty in the Engineering and Technology department at Southern Utah University.

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Abstract

The Center for Infrastructure Transformation and Education (CIT-E) is made up of civil and environmental engineering programs seeking to improve the coverage of infrastructure content in their curricula. Through the CIT-E collaborative, infrastructure course materials created at two institutions have been made available to partner institutions across the country. Faculty members have integrated these course materials into new and existing civil and environmental engineering, and general studies courses. First time infrastructure course instructors are supported through mentoring from CIT-E faculty members who developed the materials and have experience with teaching an infrastructure course. Additionally, the CIT-E team is providing faculty development around designing an infrastructure course that incorporates active learning strategies through the use of the flipped classroom model.

The NSF-sponsored CIT-E project is being evaluated in many ways; this paper will report on aspects of the evaluation related to the usage patterns of the existing materials and on preliminary findings related to the CIT-E collaborative. Through faculty surveys and interviews, evaluators examined use of CIT-E course materials and also gathered feedback on the materials and on support for implementing an infrastructure course. Evaluators also examined successes and challenges for first time implementers, and looked at the impacts of participating in a community of practice around infrastructure education.

Formative evaluation findings indicated that participating in the CIT-E community is allowing instructors with a shared vision for infrastructure education to share ideas, collaborate on materials and course development and support one another in implementing new courses at their institutions. Instructors teaching an infrastructure course for the first time value having access to previously developed course materials to help them begin to plan and structure the course. CIT-E materials provide a course template that instructors can modify to best meet the needs of their student populations and geographic regions. Instructors are modifying materials to incorporate local current issues in infrastructure to make them geographically relevant. The paper concludes with successes, challenges and lessons learned related to creating a community of practice around infrastructure education.

Haden, C., & Parker, P. J., & Thompson, M. K., & Penn, M. R., & Hart, S. D., & Roberts, M. W. (2016, June), Implementation of Infrastructure Education Courses Across Multiple Institutions Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.25583

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2016 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015