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Starting a Construction Engineering Program at Marquette University
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Federle, Mark O. |
| Copyright Year | 2013 |
| Abstract | Marquette University decided to start a Construction Engineering and Management program during the 2007 academic year. An endowed chair, titled the McShane Chair in Construction Engineering and Management, was funded by Jim and Kelly McShane to run the program. After a national search, Mark Federle, an executive with a large construction firm and previous academic experience at Iowa State University, was hired to start the program. The first class of students were enrolled in the fall of 2008. This paper will present the opportunities/challenges in starting a Construction Engineering and Management program. Lessons learned, comparisons to other programs, and other pertinent information will be shared. The program will be undergoing an ABET evaluation during the fall of 2012, if successful it will result in Marquette University having one of less than 15 such programs across the country. To this time, there have been twelve graduates from the program. Introduction The impetus for the establishment of the Construction Engineering and Management Program (CEMA) at Marquette came from the alumni. The college has a significant number of prominent alumni now working in Construction and Engineering Management. Over the years, from various conversations with these alumni we learned that the industry and our alumni wanted Marquette University to start a CEMA program at Marquette. The college conducted a marketing and feasibility study and determined that a CEMA program would be a sound investment for Marquette. In the fall of 2006, the college received a $5 million gift from two of its alumni, Jim and Kelly McShane, to endow a named Chair in CEMA entitled McShane Chair in Construction Engineering and Management. With this gift in hand, in the fall of 2006, the Civil Engineering department chair prepared a proposal for the Provost to start a new program which was accepted. Subsequently a national search began to hire the McShane chair in Construction Engineering and Management, and an industrial advisory board was assembled to advise the new program on all aspects of its activities. The Chair search was successful and at the end of 2007, the college hired Dr. Mark Federle to run the new program. He arrived in April 2008. The program was started in the fall of 2008, accepting both entering freshmen and returning sophomores into the program. During the fall of 2008, with the advice of the Construction Engineering and Management Advisory Council, a technical elective was replaced with a required course Construction Materials and Methods (CEMA 3860). Additionally, changes in the 2011 Math sequence for the Civil Engineering program resulted in the faculty voting to match those changes within the Construction Engineering program. This paper will present the opportunities/challenges in starting a Construction Engineering and Management program. Lessons learned, comparisons to other programs, and other pertinent P ge 23081.2 information will be shared. The program underwent an ABET evaluation during the fall of 2012 – if successful that would result in Marquette University having one of less than 15 such programs across the country. To this point there have been 14 graduates from the program. Within this paper, these topics will be reviewed: Developing a program in a Jesuit University Creating buy-in/enthusiasm amongst the industry during a downturn Managing prerequisite requirements Establishing meaningful Senior Design Experiences Maintaining degree requirements Developing a program in a Jesuit University One of the first challenges that had to be addressed in creating a new program was balancing the degree requirements that a Construction Engineering and Management program has relative to the ABET curricular requirements and those that are required by our University. Marquette University has a Common Core of Studies that each student is required to complete (as described in our bulletin): The Core Courses Each knowledge area in the common core provides an essential part of an integrated set of ideas, intellectual approaches, and values. As these courses are completed, a student will be able to see more and more of the “big picture,” that is, the way the approaches of different intellectual disciplines can be brought together to address human problems. Through the courses in the Core, the foundation for a well-rounded education that declares, “We are Marquette” has been established. Students start with courses in rhetoric (6 credits) and mathematical and logical reasoning (3 credits). Then they take basic theology, ethics and human nature courses (with need 6 credits of theology and 6 in ethics and human nature required). Students then add courses in science and nature, individual and social behavior, literature and performing arts, histories of cultures and societies, and diverse cultures (with three credits required in each area. Totals The Core of Common Studies is completed by taking: 6 credits of Rhetoric 3 credits of Mathematical Reasoning 3 credits of Literature and Performing Arts 3 credits of Histories of Cultures and Societies 3 credits of Science and Nature 3 credits of Individual and Social Behavior 3 credits of Diverse Cultures 6 credits of Theology 6 credits of Human Nature and Ethics 36 total credits Thus before beginning to address the ABET requirements there are 36 credit hours required (it should be noted that only 6 of those hours (3 credits of Mathematical Reasoning and 3 credits of Science and Nature) fit within an ABET General Criteria 5: Curriculum requirements. P ge 23081.3 These requirements are both a challenge and an opportunity; the Advisory Council for the program felt strongly that the common core of studies leads to a much more rounded education for engineering students. Because we had this starting point in creating our curriculum, the natural tension that is sometimes created in trying to fit as much technical content in as possible was simply eliminated (since there was nothing that could be done to change this University requirement it seemed much more readily accepted by the faculty and advisory council than this author has experienced at other universities). The Plan of Study for the original curriculum is shown below: Table 1 – Construction Engrg Curriculum 2009 P ge 23081.4 Creating buy-in/enthusiasm amongst the industry during a downturn One of the interesting challenges that developed within the first year of the program was the downturn in the Commercial Construction Market, by some accounts, dropping 28% during 2009 which created a number of challenges for the new program. The first challenge was in the recruitment of students; the growth of the program depends on parents and prospective students seeing construction as having strong job prospects, this was simply not the case in 2009 or 2010 (at least within this part of the country). Much of the student recruitment effort, therefore, focused on the expectation that the industry would have recovered before students entering the program had graduated. While that analysis somewhat helped in the recruitment of students, it had a negative impact on the ability of the students recruited to find co-op positions (which is a degree requirement unique to the Construction Engineering and Management program at Marquette University). It is important to note that there were several students who chose to switch their major from CEMA to another Engineering degree simply to avoid this co-op requirement that was seemingly impossible to meet for those students. The second challenge was helping students find placement in construction firms. Because most of the other engineering disciplines tended to have a few companies that hired broadly within the curriculum there was a need to help career services and the co-op placement office understand that most construction firms would likely only ever hire one or two students in any one academic year; they were much more accustomed to fostering a few significant relationships rather than having a broad based effort to provide as many opportunities as possible. A significant amount of effort in outreach to construction companies and associations was required. Because the student body is much more geographically dispersed than in typical construction programs, this required much more effort than was originally anticipated. Additionally, most construction firms had hiring freezes (at best) or reduction in forces that made job searching for the students significantly more challenging. Managing prerequisite requirements One of the early challenges that was created in starting a new program with several new courses was how to provide students with the opportunities to take courses as soon as possible without violating the prerequisites that had been established. In some cases these perquisites were less about the knowledge that would be gained in the earlier courses being used in subsequent courses and more about the need to create a lock-step process for student enrollment. In addition, the required co-op and the limited faculty meant that in all cases, the Construction Engineering and Management courses could only be offered one time per year. It has been determined that this will be an on-going problem. To satisfy ABET requirements and ensure that students are not taking courses out of sequence, Curriculum substitution forms must be completed by the students and signed off not only by the program chair, but also the department chair and the College Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs. This has resolved the challenge but has led to an increase in the amount of paperwork required during the advising process. Also, due to the differences between this program and the others in the College of Engineering, one of the more interesting challenges is fighting the student rumor mill that certainly is a more efficient and rapid communication channel than sending out advising emails. Students at M |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=civengin_fac |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://peer.asee.org/starting-a-construction-engineering-program-at-marquette-university.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.asee.org/public/conferences/20/papers/5747/download |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
