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.

 

[mtu1972]

I never worked in states that required the SE license, but was registered as a PE in 7 states.

My problem with the education in my BSCE and the 1.5 years of graduate CE structural classes was how much I didn’t know. Yes my classes taught me analysis tools and the design of steel, concrete, and timber. But I did not know how much I did not know!

My first job was with a structural consultant working on architectural projects. I knew little of the terminology, i.e. girts, purlins, etc. I did not know anything about masonry design, or architectural requirements. This was before the modern technology so I continued learning by buying books on specific subjects and had done so throughout my career.

Once I got registered - Continuing Education was required; and so met that criteria for the last 35 years of my working life. That became easier with the internet toward the end.

gjc

 

[phamENG]

That's a good point, mtu. A lot of students (and the practitioners hiring them) seem to think a BSCE should be akin to a vocational or technical degree, where you come out and start producing day one. Though I think that opinion is held widely, and not just in the engineering community. More effort should go into disabusing people of that idea and helping them realize that college is more about learning how to learn than what you learn, and by focusing in CE (and further in structures), you are simply learning how to learn about Civil and Structural Engineering. If you can manage to retain a bunch of the raw data, so much the better for you.

 

[Ingenuity]

I graduated in the mid-80's with a B. Engineering (Structural). The course had 48 courses and was a Co-Op program. All students took identical classes for the first 50% of the degree course and the second 50% of the course students stayed with Civil or went Structural. Those who went structural did not have to take open-channel flow, construction management, traffic engineering etc. Structural students had both compulsory courses and subject electives like advanced matrix analysis, FE analysis, indeterminate prestressed concrete analysis and design, geotechnical/soil, measurement of structural behavior (lab), etc. We also did a thesis - bound, original work, but less than what a Master's thesis would entail.

This course, with a structural emphasis, is no longer available today,

Both the structural emphasis and the Co-Op course helped me tremendously in my early career (project responsibility and earnings), and when I look at today's recent graduates some current coursework syllabus [for example: no course in prestressed concrete] are to the detriment of the graduate, without sufficient specialization, and therefore miss opportunities, or are ill-prepared for their pending employment/career.

 

[MrHershey]

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

I have an SE. School should not be significantly more specialized than it is now, at least for the tract I went through.

That's a good point, mtu. A lot of students (and the practitioners hiring them) seem to think a BSCE should be akin to a vocational or technical degree, where you come out and start producing day one. Though I think that opinion is held widely, and not just in the engineering community. More effort should go into disabusing people of that idea and helping them realize that college is more about learning how to learn than what you learn, and by focusing in CE (and further in structures), you are simply learning how to learn about Civil and Structural Engineering. If you can manage to retain a bunch of the raw data, so much the better for you.

Very much agree with this. And to be fair, a lot of people coming out are useful on day one but only in the narrow band they learned about in school.

If practitioners are that concerned with getting someone who can walk in and be real productive immediately, hire people with 1-2 years of experience. They cost about the same as new grads and in theory can give you what you want. Leaves more fresh grads for me.

 

[IRstuff]

Internships, at least in computer science, can change that dynamic. In many cases, the summer internship before senior year is essentially a two-month probationary and on-the-job learning period, with a view to getting an full-time offer after graduation.

We've done similar things with EE and ME interns, offering them full time jobs after their internships end, since we now know their work habits, have trained them on tools and design processes, and they've done some design work.

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[CWB1]

I cant fault an engineering grad for believing they can individually contribute the first day, many senior engineers seem to have the same belief about niches they've never worked in.

I'm not qualified to comment on CE/SE education, however one possibly relevant observation from the outside looking in - IME the mechanical product development world is very uniform between companies as far as tools, process, and documentation so its fairly easy for new but experienced engineers to start contributing. I haven't been in many CE/SE offices however it seems like every one is pretty drastically different in terms of how they run. Not sure if that's a matter of the difference in average company size or if its education, but it just seems rather strange to me.

 

[Ron247]

I recall some of my classes I have rarely or never used similar to what mtu1972 listed. Surveying (3 hrs), Sanitary (3), Water Quality (3), Transportation (3), 2 different Fluids at 3 hrs each and a choice of Thermodynamics or Electric Circuits (3). The Thermo or Circuits may not be to give us insight into other fields, it may be to help CEs pass the EIT. CEs are at a distinct disadvantage because both of those we did not need but both are on the EIT. So they require CEs to take at least one of them.

But even if I could substitute these CE courses for something more structural in nature and even if they allowed me to substitute my Humanities for structural courses, I also had the problem that there was not always that many other courses offered. So even with an extra 30 hours to use, some courses I could have used were either non-existent or only offered every other semester due to enrollment. Cold-formed and masonry are 2 good examples of courses I have not seen offered at most curriculums unless there was a Guru on the subject teaching at that university.

 

[glass99]

@Ron247: As a facade structural engineer I use thermodynamics for calculating energy performance and glass thermal stresses. We are constantly surveying sites or asking for site data. I have used fluids for aerodynamic studies including some relatively flexible structures of my own design and two forensic studies of wind induced vibration problems. When I worked as a bridge structural engineer, transportation was useful (albeit indirectly). I have not done any sanitary or water quality work, and electrical circuits only come up very infrequently, but who knows what the future holds!

 

[phamENG]

glass99 - what about the swanky glass conference room walls you can fog/clear with the flip of a switch? I could see those being used in an exterior application. Several downtown offices in my area on the first floor, and you can pull up a chair and watch meetings if you were so inclined. That sort of thing in a facade could have its benefits.

 

[glass99]

@phameng: yes, its called electrochromic glass! It's got a lot of potential in hot climates for solar control too.

So actually just last week I was figuring out what a "dry contact" was bc we are want to shut down some actuated doors in high winds and we need to get the weather station to talk to the security system. In my world its called "being a swiss army knife". In some ways there is an argument for adding a year to college so you can cover more of this stuff.

 

[Ron247]

glass99, are you meaning there is an argument for adding a year to college for a SE or CE degree to cover the items you have noted? Most of the items you are noting seem more like a mechanical engineering pursuit than a CE. While you obviously must use these in your field, I have never needed them for basic structures.

 

[IRstuff]

Electrochromic glass is neat, but so expensive; the cheapest I found was about $90/sq. meter.

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[phamENG]

glass99 - sounds interesting. I've recently found myself in a "multi-discipline engineering" role and I'm thanking my lucky stars for some of the extra classes (though most of what I need is more mechanical, so a lot of the extra CE courses are even less valuable to me now - at least until we need to cut a new road through the facility!). And while I take your point, I have to concede Ron247's. Probably not needed for your average (or even and advanced) structural engineer. Sounds like a graduate degree or certificate would be more the thing for what you're talking about.

 

[glass99]

@phamENG: you mentioned in another thread that you were asked by your boss to look at some rotating equipment of some kind. Definitely not traditional structures, but solid application of first principles.

My old firm was a traditional movable bridge firm, so all the structural engineers needed to know about trunnions and wire rope to some extent.

@Ron247: I actually did seriously consider extending my CE degree into a fifth year to take some ME and architecture classes. At the time (the late 90's) I believed the future belonged to automation in architectural construction processes. In retrospect I think I was right about the future, but glad I didn't waste the year bc the first principles have been enough.

Also: I personally have always felt that traditional engineering practice was a little too conservative for its own good. Say for example the slow takeup of CLT or TMD's and other structural technologies - a broader view academically I think is healthy.

 

[skeletron]

Practicing engineer with a BSc in Civil Engineering. Year 1 was a general year. Year 2 was the beginning of a broader specialization (MecE, EE, ChemE, CivE, etc.). Year 3 you continue specializing by taking two design fields with three levels of courses and an additional design class that you take the to Level II. Year 4 you finish it all off. The benefits of humanities and electives are understated in making a "well rounded" professional; I'll die on that hill.

To respond to the original question: I don't believe structural needs to be separated from civil in a way that focuses the student at an undergraduate level. The graduate programs available are sufficient to do that academic work. Rather than overhauling the undergraduate system, make the graduate degree more accessible. It's really not these days. Too many universities weigh competitive academic records heavier than practical experience, and it's unfortunate.

Focusing a student too early in their career really puts the blinders on them. And civil engineering is such an integrated field that it is important to have an general awareness of the construction works you are involved in. There are so many other skills (drafting, writing, statistics, calculus, etc) that a student needs to grasp before understanding advanced concepts of structures. I could see myself being interested in listening to "yield lines" and "fracture mechanics" and "steel plate shear walls" in undergraduate lectures, but I don't believe that you can conceivably understand the application of those topics without practical or further academic experience. And, to be honest, my jobs have involved way more interpretation of reports, reviewing of drafting, and directing construction methods than the specialized topics.

Agreed. Undergraduates are under prepared entering into their first jobs. I know I was. But I think structures, or any engineering for that matter, fundamentally relies upon mentorship in practice.

I really admire the ambition of young students to jump right into the deep end getting those letters behind their name. However, fundamentally I think the the acceleration of that route is flawed and misses a lot of the nuance that makes a genuinely well-informed and confident engineer.

 

[BUGGAR]

Yes, into Structural Marine, Structural Buildings, Structural Dams, etc, etc.

 

[glass99]

@skeletron: agreed about the humanities. People become engineers so they can avoid dealing with people, but turns out you can't.

 

[IRstuff]

Don't know what makes you SE and CE types so SPECIAL; almost all engineers are underprepared for their eventual careers. I was EE, but am not now, so technically, almost ALL of my EE training was wasted, although I had to brush up on Fourier transforms this week.

And if the statistics are to be believed, a huge percentage of degreed engineers aren't even doing engineering. Moreover, specialization implies foreknowledge of what you want to do for the rest of your life, and many don't even know that until AFTER they start working. My last ophthalmologist was a degreed ME, who didn't change careers until he was in his thirties.

College is only intended to prepare you to learn more, by giving you the tools, skills, and basic background, such as at least vaguely remembering that you even learned Fourier transforms in college.

While there may be subjects you could have learned in college, but were steered away from; there are disciplines where there wasn't even the rudiments of the physics in existence when I was in college; metamaterials, weak value measurements, metasurfaces, etc. have only been in the literature for the last 20 or 30 years. We're still trying to work out the theory to support quantum gyroscopes and accelerometers.

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[geotechengineer1]

I've often thought the same thing about geotechnical engineering. If you took out some of the other civil courses you could do a 4 year degree including all of the course-based content from a master's program in geotechnical engineering. I'm expecting that within my life time at a minimum a course based master's degree will be a requirement for licensure as a P.E. as a geotechnical or structural engineer in most jurisdictions.

On the other hand, does anyone actually know what they want to practice as an engineer as 1st year or 2nd year student? With the odd exception essentially everyone I know had no idea. With the benefit of hindsight I can confidently say a 4 year geotechnical engineering degree including the course content from the master's program would have been hugely beneficial to my degree, and I likely would have skipped doing co-op / internship jobs in transportation, municipal and state governments, environmnetal sampling, and just focused on geotechnical jobs. But, I didn't know I wanted to be a geotechnical engineer until my last co-op job was geotechnical focused and it was only through muddling through different courses and jobs that I finally found what I liked.

 

[mtu1972]

Geotech... I may have been one of the exceptions. As a junior in HS I told the rotary club that I wanted to be a structural engineer. Third generation CE, but first in structural. Grew up 6 miles from MTU and we were always told that was where we were going to college.

Grandpa always said, “If it was a barber college, we’d all be cutting hair right now”.

Dad and Grandpa were with Michigan highway department. One uncle was a professor with a focus on hydraulics, dams, etc. The other uncle taught in the 2-year technology department.

After first 1.5 years I considered switching to be a Math/Physics teacher. The Statics and Strength of Materials classes convinced me to stay on track. During Sr. year, only 3 (Cliff, Tony, and I) of 109 CE’s took the structural options.

gjc