Where Do Undergraduate Civil Engineering Students Fit In within Interdisciplinary Design Experiences?

Abstract

Civil engineering projects inherently require the contribution of many sub-disciplines within engineering. However, current civil engineering undergraduate curricula include limited opportunities for civil engineering students to participate in interdisciplinary design experiences that involve students or topics from other engineering programs (mechanical, electrical, computer, chemical, and/or biomedical). Some challenges to interdisciplinary work for civil engineering students include limitations in available curriculum time, perceived lack of certain background knowledge, and difference in student skill sets between disciplines. This paper is a first step exploration of the performance of undergraduate civil engineering students in comparison to other engineering students in interdisciplinary design experiences facilitated by the authors. An evaluation of freshman level civil engineering student participation and performance within an international, interdisciplinary poverty reliefbased project offered through Ohio Northern University’s (ONU) second semester Introduction to Engineering is presented. The performance and participation of civil engineering students in immersive interdisciplinary design experiences offered to students at ONU and Bucknell University is also explored from an instructor observation point of view. Finally, this paper also explores a limited set of data from senior civil engineering students at Ohio Northern who participated in interdisciplinary capstone design experiences. Student performance evaluations and instructor observations are reported.