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Session 2793

Retention Through History

Robert Hamilton

Boise State University

Abstract

Civil Engineering has a long history of which most of our baccalaureate graduates are completely ignorant. Upon occasion a student may be aware of projects or people that are local in nature. Beyond this students seem to feel engineering has always been here with little or no development over the years.

Since much of the theory currently in use in the civil engineering profession was developed in the twentieth century older members of the profession have had the advantage of learning the craft either directly from those who created it, or by reading articles by those same individuals. Current faculty are seeing students without an understanding of who we are and where the profession came from. It has recently been proposed by EdAC (the Education Activities Council of the American Society of Civil Engineers) that the ABET (the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc.) requirements for civil engineering in particular be amended to include the history and heritage of civil engineering, adding this to an already overcrowded curriculum.

Another problem facing programs today is the retention of students, especially in the first two years of their college education. It is in these years that we demand our students obtain the necessary mathematics, science and communications skills required to be successful, often with little or no contact with their major. Students despair seeing the long road ahead, and no apparent reason for taking these courses except that they were told to.

Procedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

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Hamilton, R. (2003, June), Retention Through History Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--11400