Attracting and Retaining Undergraduates to Engineer the Built Environment through Instructional & Technological Innovation

土木和环境工程学科在发展和维护物质基础设施方面发挥着关键作用，因此在改善地球可居住性和可持续利用资源的任何战略中也发挥着关键作用。这些学科所涵盖的主题的广度，以及理解它们在物理、化学、生态、社会和经济背景下的相互作用的需要，对本科课程的设计构成了挑战。传统的、顺序的、以技能为基础的本科课程成功地培养了一批工程师骨干，他们设计和建造了可靠的物理基础设施，而这些基础设施几乎被社会视为理所当然。然而，随着基础设施的老化，需要更换，以及作为副产品产生的意想不到的环境和社会问题，“工程师抨击”在社会的许多领域并不罕见。重新设计美国20万亿美元的实体基础设施现在被认为是一项重大挑战。与此同时，本科入学人数一直在下降，女性和其他少数族裔的入学率落后于预期。对这种情况的普遍反应是，本科工程课程不能充分提供所需的广度和深度，特别是考虑到人文、文科和基础科学的要求。因此，硕士学位被提议作为入门级专业学位，并且正在探索和实施BS-MS联合学位，课程硕士学位等各种机制。虽然这一结论和由此产生的方向在传统教育模式中可能是不可避免的，但尚不清楚它们是否构成了将工程师培养为分析师和“主集成商”的最佳回应，或者是为满足管理复杂和不断变化的系统的需求提供解决方案的领导者。对学生的采访显示：(1)对CEE科目有浓厚的兴趣，但缺乏大学入学水平的工程师角色知识；(2)前两年很少接触工程；(3)一种毕业后对劳动力准备不足的感觉，这通常归因于抽象的教学方法，侧重于与单元过程相关的一般原则，综合应用有限。第二项对学生在第二年有专业选择的学校的本科生保留率有负面影响。一个制度性的回应是强调设计内容，并在课程中引入顶点课程或综合课程。然而，这些措施通常只在初级/高级班级中采用。通过哥伦比亚大学土木工程系、工程力学系和地球与环境工程系与哥伦比亚大学新媒体教学与学习中心的合作，本文提出了一种新的教学方法和课程的开发，以系统地解决上述问题。新课程以前三年的一系列课程为基础，通过案例研究模式，逐步让学生接触到各种区域性和全国性的CEE问题。这些课程，旨在为所有专业的学生提供技术素养，将采用系统方法。随着学生升入高年级，所建议的课程将逐渐专业化，为学生提供在理解问题的大背景下探索子系统的机会。我们的目标是呈现一种数据驱动的、以问题为中心的学习方法，这种方法整合了同时进行的科学和人文课程的材料，并强调课程中大多数课程之间的相互联系。子系统之间在不同时间框架内的空间相互作用将被明确，并用于激励应用经验和理论方法来设计、分析和管理各个部分和整体。信息和计算机技术将广泛用于开发虚拟现实平台，该平台将在整个课程中使用。除了重新开发的课程，这个开放式模拟平台的开发和课堂介绍的工作原型场景代表了本提案的主要成果。空间显式模拟器将各种相互作用的基础设施和环境组件（如游戏《模拟城市》）结合在一起，将被用作介绍广泛问题背景的工具，并将案例研究带入生活。学生团队将使用它来探索历史数据，以及针对一系列问题（例如自然和环境危害）的政策和结构性措施对基础设施、环境和相互作用的社会系统的长期功能的影响。除了用不同的问题和设置来练习系统外，学生还将使用高级编程语言开发和添加系统的功能模块。关键子系统组件或进程的内部工作将可用于独立指令。与现有数值模型、地理信息系统和统计分析包的交互将被视为设计的一部分。第一年引入的案例研究可能会继续成为后续年份更详细分析的基础。寻求国家科学基金会支持CEE案例研究和教育模拟/游戏平台的发展。前两年开设的三门课程的教材将使用提议的奖助金和配合基金来开发。有SIMgames开发经验的工业合作者被招募为顾问，帮助设计和实现开放建模平台。在拨款下编制的材料将提供给工程教育界，并将对传授和保留给学生的材料、技能和知识的变化进行正式评估。

The disciplines of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) play a critical role in the development and maintenance of physical infrastructure and hence in any strategy for improving planetary habitability and sustainable use of resources. The breadth of topics covered by these disciplines and the need to understand their interactions in a physical, chemical, ecological, social and economic context pose challenges for the design of an undergraduate curriculum. The traditional, sequential, skill based undergraduate curriculum has successfully trained a cadre of engineers who have designed and built reliable physical infrastructure that society takes almost for granted. However, "engineer bashing" is not uncommon in many segments of society as this infrastructure ages, needs replacement, and unanticipated environmental and social problems created as a byproduct come to the fore. Re-engineering the $20 trillion US physical infrastructure is now recognized as a major challenge. At the same time, undergraduate CEE enrollments have been declining, and retention of women and other minorities lag expectations.A prevailing response to this situation is that an undergraduate engineering program cannot adequately provide the breadth and depth of coverage needed, particularly given the humanities, liberal arts and basic science requirements. Consequently, the MS is being proposed as the entry level professional degree and various mechanisms for combined BS-MS degrees, coursework only MS degrees and the like are being explored and implemented. While this conclusion and the resulting direction may be inevitable in the traditional education model, it is unclear that they constitute the best response for educating engineers as analysts and as "master integrator", or leaders in providing solutions for meeting the needs of managing a complex and changing system.Interviews with students reveal: (1) a strong interest in the CEE subject matter, but a lack of knowledge at the college entrance level of the engineer's role; (2) little exposure to engineering in the first two years; and (3) a sense of ill-preparedness for the work force on graduation that is often ascribed to instructional methods that are abstract, focused on general principles related to unit processes, with limited integrative application. The second item contributes negatively to undergraduate retention at schools where the student has a choice of major through the second year. An institutional response is to emphasize design content, and introduce capstone or synthesis classes in the curriculum. However, these measures are typically adopted only in junior/senior classes.Through a partnership between Columbia University's Departments of Civil Engineering & Engineering Mechanics and Earth & Environmental Engineering and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning the development of a new instructional approach and curriculum to systematically address the issues raised above is proposed here. The new curriculum is anchored by a sequence of classes in the first three years that progressively expose the students to a variety of CEE problems of regional and national interest in a case study mode. These classes, designed to provide technological literacy to all majors, will use a issystems approachli. The proposed curriculum will be progressively specialized as one moves to the higher grades, offering a student the opportunity to explore a subsystem given an understanding of the larger context of the problem. The goal is to present a data driven, problem focused approach to learning that integrates material from concurrent science and humanities classes and emphasizes the interconnection between most classes in the curriculum. Spatial interactions between subsystems over different time frames will be made explicit and used to motivate the application of empirical as well as theoretical approaches to design, analysis and management of the pieces and the whole.Information and computer technology will be used extensively to develop a virtual reality platform that will be used throughout the curriculum. Beyond the redeveloped curriculum, the development of this open simulation platform and working prototype scenarios for classroom introduction represents the major deliverable of this proposal. Spatially explicit simulators that bring together a variety of interacting infrastructure and environmental components (as in the game SimCity) will be used as a vehicle to introduce the broad problem context, and to bring case studies to life. Student teams will use it to explore historical data, as well as the effects of both policy and structural measures for a range of problems (e.g., natural and environmental hazards) on the long term functioning of the infrastructure, the environment and interacting social systems. In addition to exercising the system with different problems and settings, students will develop and add functional modules to the system using a high-level programming language. The inner workings of key subsystem components or processes will be accessible for stand-alone instruction. Interaction with existing numerical models, Geographical Information Systems, and statistical analysis packages will be considered as part of the design. Case studies introduced in the first year may continue to be building blocks for more detailed analyses in subsequent years.NSF Support is sought for the development of CEE case studies and the educational simulation/gaming platform. Materials for three classes offered in the first two years will be developed using the proposed grant and matching funds. Industrial collaborators who have experience developing SIMgames have been recruited as consultants to help design and implement the open modeling platform. The materials developed under the grant will be made available to the engineering education community, and formal evaluations of changes in material, skills and knowledge imparted to and retained by students will be performed.