Reinventing civil engineering education

Civil engineering, the oldest engineering discipline, is facing unprecedented challenges. The world we live in today is vastly different from that of fifty years ago. Information technology has become ubiquitous in our society, new technologies are emerging, and learning paradigms and cognitive psychology are pointing the way to more effective education. Students are searching for an educational experience that prepares them for a variety of jobs, yet the curriculum and educational paradigm for civil engineers remains virtually unchanged over the past half century. Civil engineering technicians are serving in positions that would have been filled by civil engineering graduates in the past, and other professionals are filling some executive positions that had been reserved for civil engineers. New civil engineering graduates have the lowest engineering starting salaries, and the civil engineer has the bottom median salary of all fields of engineering. The authors describe how there is a clarion call to recruit, retain and reward women, minorities and the physically challenged into the profession and argue that it is time to reinvent the educational system so that we can begin to educate tomorrow´s civil systems integrators.