Does Structural Engineering Need to Be More Specialized. 22

[Ron247]

The premise of this thread is whether Structural Engineering needs to break away from Civil Engineering like many other Engineering disciplines (Electrical ,Mechanical etc.) have over the years. If your only desirable path is Structures, should you have to spend to much time on non-structural classes? I did not enroll in CE and later decided I want to be an SE, I wanted structures from day 1. For me, yes it is time to break from Civil Engineering. Looking at the really old "roots" of Civil Engineering, to me, it is obvious it is time to create our own curriculum.

Now, that is my opinion. Please when responding, state whether you are an academic versus practitioner ( or both), a BS, MS or PhD etc. Give us an idea of your background. I am a MS practitioner. I am an old geezer who tries to stay in touch with new educational concepts but tends to fail at the new concepts.

If you are not a structural or civil engineer, please bear that in mind if you choose to respond. I am concerned about the path new structural engineers are traveling compared to the path I am about to retire from. I am not looking for an argument, I am looking for some insight. In recent years, potential SEs have asked me questions, that I have no good solid answers for.

 

[FreddyNurk]

I have no declared interest in this argument, but I will note that this argument has been considered previously in Australia, such that Structural is considered a separate category for registration / chartered status. It did cause a few issues in terms of the more experienced engineers who were registered as Civil, being the only relevant category available at the time, but is now generally accepted. I cannot comment on what this may mean for educational pathways.

 

[mtu1972]

Ron I entirely agree with this premise. I am a retired practitioner who always wanted to be a structural engineer. I first declared it as a Junior in high school to the Rotary Club, even though I probably did not fully understand what the requirements were.

I got my BSCE in 1972 and a poor job market kept me in school working on my MS for another year and a half. Completed all of the coursework. My master’s project (non thesis option) got waylaid when the mainframe computer was being replaced and my FEA punch cards were no longer functioning as intended. I pulled the plug and went to work. All the advanced structural courses helped me throughout my career.

Twenty seven years later I started a distance learning MS program and finished it in 2006. It had always bothered me that I had not completed it back then.

Electives will still be available, so one can take soils, foundations, etc. that are structurally related and avoid wasting time on topics we aren’t interested in. Believe me, I hated many of them.

That should also allow for some advanced structural option courses to be completed.

gjc

 

[GeoEnvGuy]

I do not think structural should be it's own specialization out of Civil. I believe the other courses which get packed into civil need to be removed and replaced with a focus on soils and structural. If I am looking to hire a new graduate to be a structural EIT there coursework resume will include hydrology, wastewater treatment, roads and urban transportation systems. None of the above from the u of Toronto civil undergraduate program are relevant to a new EIT.

From my experience as a consultant what I find in the new EITs straight from school is the lack of common sense, knowing the building code even exists, how to approach the problem, what info the they need to get, what tools they need to use, how to use software and how to write a report. I find new EITs are good at being spoonfed one step at a time not having any understanding of what the next steps are until after about 3-5 times before any progress is made. Now if I were to get a specialized structural EIT straight from school I would not expect any substantial improvement in how they would approach the problem.

 

[NorthCivil]

I'm a mid 30's structural with a bachelor's degree only. I don't think there is the resource or capacity at the Universities, at least in Canada, to break up the civil program, even if it would be better. Also, I'm not convinced it is required. Engineering school teaches people how to learn and how to think like engineers. The particular courses are not overly important IMO. I've worked with structural engineers with mechanical and chem eng bachelor degrees who picked things up enough for the particular field of structural.


The reality is, school will never teach you even a fraction of what you will need to know as a practicing engineer. So, School should teach you how learn (and learn quickly and efficiently). This is why tech diploma grads are probably more useful than an engineer if both compared on graduation day. Techs will be able to call up beam sizes quicker using the tables and codes they were taught at school. But an engineering grad, while not well versed in the practical parts, will understand, or have the capacity to understand, why the tables were written as they are.


If anything, I would be in favour of more rigourous maths being required of young engineers, more software/programing courses, and especially, more English language courses! Engineers these days cannot speak, read, or write well enough.


I will say though that I have the fortune of working with a bunch of 24ish year old grads who impress me. In fact, I honestly don't think I was as smart or mature when I was their age.

 

[phamENG]

I'm in my early 30's, BS practitioner (3 credit hours away from finishing my Master's in Civil Engineering, about 90% structural and 10% soils coursework), licensed. I enlisted in the military out of high school, and while waiting the summer after graduation to ship out to basic, I worked with a small GC in west central Florida swinging a sledge hammer for $10/hour. I fell in love, and got in trouble for spending too much time figuring out how the buildings had been put together and not enough taking them apart. I sat down with a retired SE from my church and discussed the profession and was hooked. I wished I'd signed for the SEABEES, but playing with nuclear reactors was fun enough while it lasted. I left the Navy went straight to school with the same goal that had been playing in the back of my mind for 6 years - become a Structural Engineer.

I would say the answer splits two ways depending on your goals as an SE:

Do you want to build bridges, or do you want to build buildings? If you want to build bridges, I think the current curriculum is solid. Studying hydraulics/hydrology helps you understand the fluid loading on a bridge pier. Studying transportation helps you understand the road layout that your bridge will carry. Studying environmental helps you grasp the impact of your structure on the ecosystem along the river/stream where it's being built. Of course there are aspects of these courses that have nothing to do with bridges, but the insight into the background of the other Civil Engineers you'll be working with would, I think, make you a better member of the team.

Do you want to build buildings? The current CE curriculum is a pretty big waste. Sure, the getting of the degree will ideally teach you how to learn what you need, but that really only works if you're properly motivated to do it yourself or your university has a strong mentor-ship culture where the faculty is fully engaged in your success (this just isn't feasible at a lot of larger state schools, at least not early on before the classes have been culled and it's needed the most). I've heard tell of an interesting program called Architectural Engineering, which prepares students for building design by exposing them to architectural concepts, electrical concepts, mechanical concepts, structural concepts, etc. Then the students can specialize in one of the areas. This way, you could have a structural engineer that is sufficiently well versed in all aspects of designing a building (much as a CE based SE could be with a bridge as stated above) to integrate into a team more quickly. Of course they still need the requisite OJT, but their educational background is a little more tuned to what they'll be doing. I could be way off base on this one - anybody have additional knowledge of these types of programs? I know they're still few and pretty far between.

 

[mtu1972]

phamENG - great point regarding bridges vs buildings. I hadn’t thought of it as my focus was always on buildings. Took bridge design classes in both graduate programs, but never had to put it into practice.

Reviewed my BS transcript and see the following courses I never used: Surveying (12 credits); Sanitary (3); Fluid Mechanics (4); Hydrology (3); Intro to Thermodynamics (3); Transportation (3); and Hydraulic Engineering (3).

The Fluid Mech. and Thermo classes were from the ME Dept. and were intended to give us Civil’s some insight into other disciplines.

I will admit that some Surveying training is probably warranted, but three terms of four credit classes was way too much. Other than the terminology used, I already knew most of it from coordinate geometry.


Somewhat related story - During second job, the VP of engineering stops by to tell me they just interviewed a MTU CE Senior with only one “B”, but doubts he’d accept an offer because he’ll have so many options. Well he did come to work there and was seated next to me. After getting to know him, I asked what course he got the B in. Turned out it was Transportation. Even I got an A in it. I asked what happened. He said he hated the Professor, had 100% going into final, and knew that he could not get less than a B. So he put his name on the final and turned it in.

gjc

 

[phamENG]

Wow - 12 hours of surveying is a lot, even for a Civil/Land Development Engineer. I have found my 3 hour surveying class useful on small projects where some surveying information is needed, but hiring a surveyor isn't warranted. I had access to a Cleveland Rod and a level, so it was rarely a problem to grab a few "rough" elevations or determining angles for layouts while gathering other data on site.

Fluid Mechanics and Hydraulics have also come in handy on a few industrial jobs - when the piping engineer gives you a blank stare when you ask for support and restraint reactions it's nice to be able to run them yourself.

 

[MrHershey]

I think the track when I was in school was a nice spot. There were seven areas to civil and environmental engineering: Structures, Construction Management, Geotechnical, Transportation, Construction Materials, Water Resources, Environmental. I had to take the introductory course for five of the seven and then pick one secondary to go with my primary focus of structures. In the secondary I had to take the introductory course plus two more (as opposed to the 4-5 more I had to take for structures). That was all at Bachelor's level. Then Master's degrees are usually nearly 100% structural coursework with maybe one or two electives if the student has extra time (most don't).

I think that's a good set up because you focus on structural and add knowledge in a complementary area (mine was construction, perhaps geotechnical may have also been useful). Perhaps you could reduce required introductory courses to four. I took structures, construction, geotechnical, transporation, and materials. I took no water resources or hydrology coursework and no environmental coursework. As a buildings guy, the only real fluff I thought I had in civil courses was maybe transportation, but even that helped on a traffic loading question or two on the SE exam.

The reality is, school will never teach you even a fraction of what you will need to know as a practicing engineer. So, School should teach you how learn (and learn quickly and efficiently). This is why tech diploma grads are probably more useful than an engineer if both compared on graduation day. Techs will be able to call up beam sizes quicker using the tables and codes they were taught at school. But an engineering grad, while not well versed in the practical parts, will understand, or have the capacity to understand, why the tables were written as they are.


If anything, I would be in favour of more rigourous maths being required of young engineers, more software/programing courses, and especially, more English language courses! Engineers these days cannot speak, read, or write well enough.

Agreed. Fortunately not seeing any here, but I've seen some threads where engineers advocate eliminating some of the general education/humanities courses. I'm vehemently opposed to this. It's extremely important that engineers are well-educated outside of engineering. We need to recognize that there's a large world outside of engineering that we need to interact with and we do that by becoming more well-rounded, not less. Most of the people I interact with outside of my company and ALL of my clients are not structural engineers.

 

[phamENG]

Agree with you, MrHershey. I've also heard the call for reducing liberal arts and humanities (by my own civil engineering professors at times). If you want to skip that kind of stuff, go to a vocational school and pick up a trade. As engineers, we have to communicate across professions at a high level, so the "soft skills" that are typically refined in those arts and humanities classes are invaluable if you want to go beyond sitting in a cubicle crunching numbers and writing technical instructions to a machine operator.

 

[Celt83]

anybody have additional knowledge of these types of programs?

I'm a product of an Architectural Engineering program, Bachelors of Architectural Engineering - Structural. Mine was a 5-year (min. 168 credit) curriculum. First 3 years involved courses in Architecture inclusive of Studio work, Drawing production and reading, Structural, Mechanical, Electrical, Construction Management and Lighting all the courses included review and application of building codes. Along with the general first year engineering courses in those subjects there were courses focused solely on the design of systems for buildings. 4th year you selected a specialty and the final 2 years involved coursework specific to the specialty and the 5th year included a year long "thesis" project, more like a bit more in-depth capstone project vs a master's level thesis, where you were tasked with taking an existing building and reviewing the gravity and lateral systems and then redesigning with another structural system.

For the structural path there were quite a few of my bachelor courses that were masters level civil courses.

There are a few of these programs around the US and from my limited research when I was applying for them 18 years ago they all had similar coursework.

I think the biggest separators over the Civ Eng path was the focus on reading and applying the various codes, drawing reading and production, and trimmed out the utilities portion of the Civil Program to allow for the more focused coursework on your chosen specialty.

Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

 

[phamENG]

Thanks, Celt. That's similar to what I've heard about it elsewhere. It would be nice if more such programs could be developed. One website says there are only 27 of them in the US. Working in building design, I can see tremendous value in that kind of coursework.

 

[Celt83]

I will say they are a great program if you already know you want to do building design and are really set up for those students. When I went thru my education it would have been a decent struggle to transition into the program after your 1st year. I am a certainly bit biased though.

To me they are a bit more of a vocational education and aim to have you be ready to be able to arrive at a design firm and know how to start a code based design and then document it. Over various new hires from in and out of those programs, the folks who went thru an AE program typically are able to jump in while some others needed a couple months of getting familiar with how to draft/document and the various material and building codes. We're also an office where the engineers are expected to both design and draft with AutoCAD and Revit.

Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

 

[phamENG]

Sounds like the vocational side of it was made up for in the credit requirements. My university only requires 130 hours for the BSCE. You can do a lot of extra stuff in 38 hours worth of classes. Did you still have the standard arts and humanities and theoretical study of engineering mechanics, etc.?

 

[Celt83]

yes we still had humanities and engineering mechanics, etc. I went to a state school so that came with some extra gen ed requirements as well, in fact I kick myself a bit now because with another semester I could have likely received a minor in both engineering mechanics and architecture, but I was young and ready to get to work.

The material specific classes for steel, concrete, masonry, and wood focused a bit more on design of those elements per the applicable code or standard so didn't get to in depth on things like lateral torsional buckling beyond what is said in Chapter F of AISC.


Open Source Structural Applications:

https://github.com/buddyd16/Structural-Engineering

 

[phamENG]

You didn't miss much. Our steel design course was the same way. We got the fundamentals of stability, but not much. Not until my masters did we start really diving deeper.

 

[glass99]

I think that the civil program is basically fine as is. The first couple of years are general anyway (math, chemistry etc), and you have some flexibility to choose a specialty in the last years. Also, engineers by personality tend to hyperfocus to their own detriment, and a little more generalism is healthy.

I am a practitioner with a BS.

 

[DrZoidberWoop]

I would definitely like to see more specialization. If only so that we can play catch-up in America. I spent a lot of time overseas for grad school, and the undergraduate structural engineering curriculum at a top university was almost equivalent to the masters degree in America. I was pretty dumbfounded when I observed the advanced topics they studied. I think it has to do with curriculum specialization and the expectation of advanced math and technological literacy straight from secondary school. The American civil engineering degree has devolved to being just an expensive stepping stone to taking the FE exam, not so much being a competent engineer. Practitioner w/ Master's degree. Quit Ph.D. for financial reasons.

 

[MotorCity]

The answer to this usually falls along party lines....those with an SE license argue it does need to be more specialized, those without an SE license argue it does not need to be more specialized

 

[phamENG]

MotorCity - I'm not sure it's quite so clear cut as that. The question was geared more toward education and the classes we have to take to get a CE degree that are never used (at least by those of us in the building design side of things).

To look at it from the license perspective, though, there is still a difference. When I took my PE, I had to take the Civil - Structural exam. Fortunately, there wasn't much "fluff" on there - much of the Civil morning portion was geared toward more practical construction engineering problems and engineering economics, but there were a handful of open channel flow, traffic curves, and the like. There were also questions about vehicular bridges. (I call it fluff because I haven't used it since the course where I first learned it, and I'm not likely to use it again in a professional capacity.) The alternative, of course, was the 16 hour SE. A few years prior, however, there was a third option. A PE exam for just structural was offered. It was an 8 hour exam, both morning and afternoon portions were nothing but structural design and construction. Sadly, it was discontinued.

So I'd say it's possible to specialize the field beginning with education, and then provide a separate PE exam for those not getting an SE. After all, somebody practicing in northern Alabama where seismic is pretty calm, winds are relatively light, snow isn't bad, and there aren't many sky scrapers probably doesn't need to go for the full SE. But having a more concentrated background in structures could still benefit them and their clients.