Implementing A Civil Engineering Program At The National Military Academy Of Afghanistan
- Conference
- Location
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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Publication Date
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June 22, 2008
- Start Date
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June 22, 2008
- End Date
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June 25, 2008
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Civil Engineering
- Page Count
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12
- Page Numbers
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13.705.1 - 13.705.12
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--3679
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/3679
- Download Count
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651
Paper Authors
Stephen Ressler United States Military Academy
Colonel Stephen Ressler is Professor and Head of the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) at West Point. He earned a B.S. degree from USMA in 1979, a Master of Science in Civil Engineering degree from Lehigh University in 1989, and a Ph.D. from Lehigh in 1991. An active duty Army officer, he has served in a variety of military engineering assignments around the world. He has been a member of the USMA faculty for 16 years, teaching courses in engineering mechanics, structural engineering, construction, and professional practice.
Richard Gash United States Military Academy
Major Richard Gash, P.E. is an instructor in the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy (USMA), West Point. He graduated from the USMA in 1996, earning a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering. He has since earned Master of Science Degrees in Geophysics from the University of Missouri, Rolla and Earthquake Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. As an active duty Army officer he has served in a variety of military assignments around the world including Iraq and Afghanistan. During the summer of 2007 he served as a member of the Combined Security Transition Command's Implementation and Support team at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan.
C. Conley
Chris Conley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy. He earned a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Massachusetts (1978), and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from Cornell University (1980, 1983). He has served as a Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, a Senior Research Associate at Cornell University, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. In his 13 years on the USMA faculty he has taught a variety of courses in the civil and mechanical engineering programs, and has collaborated on research with Army laboratory personnel.
Scott Hamilton United States Military Academy
Lieutenant Colonel Scott Hamilton is currently the Senior Advisor and Team Chief at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan in Kabul Afghanistan . He earned a B.S. degree from USMA, and Master of Science degrees in Civil Engineering and Engineering Management from Stanford University in 1994. An active duty Army officer, he has served in a variety of military engineering assignments around the world and is a registered professional Engineer in California. He has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the U.S. Military Academy (USMA), West Point for 7.5 years, teaching courses in engineering mechanics, structural analysis and Home Brewing.
Farid Momand Kabul University
Farid Ahmad Momand holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Kabul University in Kabul, Afghanistan. He has served as an Assistant Professor (Pohialay) at Kabul University for two years, an adjunct instructor at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan for one semester, and a practicing structural engineer for 14 months at United Infrastructure Projects, a private company. He is currently enrolled in the master’s degree program in civil engineering at Ohio University, under the auspices of the Afghan Merit Scholars Program.
Qaium Fekrat Kabul University
Abdul Qaium Fekrat holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Kabul University in Kabul, Afghanistan. He has served as an Assistant Professor (Pohialay) at Kabul University for two years, an adjunct instructor at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan for one semester, and a practicing mechanical engineer for two years in the International Organization for Migration and at United Infrastructure Projects, a private company. He is currently enrolled in the master’s degree program in mechanical engineering at Ohio University, under the auspices of the Afghan Merit Scholars Program.
Aziz Gulistani Kabul University
Aziz Ahmad Gulistani holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Kabul University in Kabul, Afghanistan. He has served as an Assistant Professor (Pohialay) at Kabul University for one year, an adjunct instructor at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan for one semester, and a practicing design engineer for eighteen months at 18 months at the Amu Construction Company. He is currently enrolled in the master’s degree program in civil engineering at Ohio University, under the auspices of the Afghan Merit Scholars Program.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
Implementing a Civil Engineering Program at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan
This paper describes the ongoing implementation of a civil engineering program at the newly created National Military Academy of Afghanistan (NMAA) in Kabul. We begin with a brief summary of our respective roles in the project and the current status of program development. We present an interim assessment of the project in the following areas: • Faculty Qualifications and Training • Curriculum Development Process • Course Design Process • Course Implementation • Student Learning Outcomes
We conclude with an overview of future plans for this project and a summary of the challenges the institution must overcome in order to succeed.
Background
The authors have participated in the development of NMAA in a variety of roles. Conley and Ressler deployed to Afghanistan on military orders from January to April 2007, with the mission to design the NMAA civil engineering program. Upon arrival in Afghanistan, their first major task was to hire four faculty members who would teach the first two courses in the new program, starting in March 2007. Fekrat, Gulistani, and Momand were three of these initial faculty hires. All three are Afghan assistant professors at Kabul University, hired as adjunct instructors at the NMAA. It was necessary to hire adjuncts for this first year of the new program, because there were no military officers in the Afghan National Army with adequate background to teach college-level engineering.
Working in collaboration with the Dean of Engineering Faculty at Kabul University, Conley, Ressler, Fekrat, and Momand developed the 16-course civil engineering curriculum shown in Figure 1 below. In this graphic, the first column shows the eight academic semesters constituting the four-year NMAA curriculum. The courses offered in each semester are listed across each corresponding row. The dark horizontal bands preceding each pair of semesters represent military training periods. These periods would correspond to summers at a U.S. institution; however, at the NMAA they actually occur in the February-March timeframe, as Afghan educational institutions use the Islamic calendar as the basis for their school year. The courses highlighted in yellow represent the 16-course civil engineering major. All remaining courses constitute a common core curriculum taken by all NMAA cadets. CE301 (Introduction to Engineering Mechanics and Design) and CE302 (Construction Management) serve as a two- course core engineering sequence taken by all cadets, as well as being part of the civil engineering major. The core curriculum includes nine courses that also serve as prerequisites for the civil engineering major—Pre-Calculus, Calculus I and II, Statistics, Chemistry, Physics I and II, Information Technology, and Information Systems.
Ressler, S., & Gash, R., & Conley, C., & Hamilton, S., & Momand, F., & Fekrat, Q., & Gulistani, A. (2008, June), Implementing A Civil Engineering Program At The National Military Academy Of Afghanistan Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--3679
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