Cal Poly San Luis Obispo Visit

On October 1st and 2nd I visited visited Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for my third visit, the end of my first sabbatical trip. Thanks to the efforts of Al Estes (Dept. Head) I met all faculty currently teaching the design aspects of AE program and others as well. As at Wyoming and Boulder everyone was welcoming and helpful making my visit both productive and enjoyable. I could well understand why one faculty member explained why students don't complain if (as is the case for most) it takes longer to graduate than four years - "who wants to leave paradise?"

What did I learn?

About the Cal Poly Program

• It is proudly and very successfully a program devoted to producing structural engineers ready to go to work in the very demanding seismic environment of California
  
• Its graduates are highly sought after (I heard several times that firms say they'll hire only master's students except for Cal Poly undergraduates)
• Students get detailed, working-drawing-level, knowledge in Steel, Concrete, Masonry and Timber design through both analysis classes (lecture) and successor "lab" classes. These latter constitute the capstone design classes and are extraordinarily intense. They meet three times/week for three hours each session and only three credits (units).
• The total number of credits to graduate is 204 quarter-credits = 136 semester credits. Beyond a small number of construction management classes, architecture, and the required "general education" classes, all other classes are structural

• Teaching is emphasized as the primary role of faculty at both the university and department level
  
• The department has a separate tenure process for practitioner-background professors, not necessarily with a PhD.
• The faculty are nearly evenly split between practitioners and more analytic (PhD usually) individuals. There seems to be great respect for that mix, with a belief that the "tension" between the two is constructive.
• By the standards of other institutions teaching loads are extraordinarily high, with the lab courses being the most demanding.
• The faculty are (every one that I interviewed) personally committed to this approach, recognizing the demands, but valuing their environment and the results they see.
• There are some indications that the university-level atmosphere is changing and that more research demands are being placed on faculty without a corresponding decrease in teaching load or increase in research resources.

• Teaching Methods and Curriculum
  
• Faculty have a weekly meeting in which there is much communication.
• There is a strong curriculum committee that regularly reviews assessment material and provides inter-class coordination of material on an ongoing basis.
• There is a much use of models in classes to provide physical understanding of the theoretical principles.
• Faculty seem eager to experiment with variations in the curriculum, though keeping within the long established bounds of the curriculum. An example is the experiment with combining statics and mechanics in a two-course sequence that starts with three-dimensional vectors.
• The curriculum is extremely responsive to industry priorities. These are received through a formal advisory council as well as industry visits and informal communications.
• One faculty member expressed a fear that this verged on a "trade school" approach, but only one.
• Faculty recognize that there are multiple systems in a building, but on the whole feel that MEP (which is unrepresented in the curriculum) can be handled with relatively minor effort to make allowance for weights and duct clearances. If ABET criteria changed to require more explicit inclusion that would cause significant problems for the curriculum, perhaps even prompting a departure from the list of AE schools.
• The department is starting a Master's program, in significant part because of the directions being set by ASCE.
• BIM is being included in the curriculum, in large part because industry believes it is necessary, but no one seemed to think it would make much difference in the other aspects of the curriculum.
• Because the department is located in a school with Architecture there is collaboration with them, but relations with the Civil Engineering program appear to be distant.

• Students
  
• It's highly competitive to enter (about 1 in 8 are admitted)
• About 80% of the graduates go to work in structural firms - a much higher percentage than from at my previous institutions.
• Students I viewed in classes were eager, questioning and often humorous. Their interactions with professors were both respectful and demanding.
• They have an extremely strong student organization (SEAOC) that sponsors both professional and social events regularly. In particular they organize and run a highly regarded "forum" in February that is both a job fair and a gathering place for about sixty firms.
• An AEI chapter may be formed to join forces with SEAOC.

• Observations
  
• As is probably obvious from my comments I was greatly impressed with the detail of the program, the dedication and the teaching approaches of the faculty, and the constructive balance of practitioner-background and theory-background faculty.
• I heard some concern expressed that students weren't being led to explore the creative possibilities of their discipline because of the strong practical emphasis.
• I also heard some desires to increase the working relationship with the other members of their college, Architecture and Construction Management.
• It seems a shame that there appears to be a gulf between this program and their colleagues in Civil Engineering.

About my Sabbatical Project

• I'm inclined to look more carefully at the relationship between overall institution mission and the character of the faculty and goals of the AE program.
• I'm reinforced in my belief that the face-to-face meetings bring to light relationships that I would never understand strictly from the survey results.

University of Colorado at Boulder - Second Visit

On September 29th and 30th I visited visited Boulder (after a lovely weekend in the mountains) for my second visit. Thanks to the efforts of Joann Silverstein (Dept. Head) and Moncef Krarti I met many if not all of the faculty critical to the design aspects of AE program and quite a few others as well. As at Wyoming everyone was welcoming and helpful - exactly what I would have hoped for. One person even returned from a case of food poisoning.

Four faculty had completed my survey (http://tinyurl.com/5vr2gt) in advance and everyone else promised to complete it soon after the visit.

What did I learn?

About the UC Boulder AE Program

• The AE Program is contained within a department that also includes Civil, Environmental engineering, Construction Engineering and Management (CEM)
• All the faculty I interviewed were proud of the program, though many had specific issues that they'd like to improve.
• The AE undergraduates are slightly more than 1/2 of the department's 500+ undergraduates
• Of the department's 41 full-time faculty four are "senior instructors" (non-tenure-track)
  
  
  
  • The role of "Senior Instructors" is strong in the AE program - particularly in design and practical knowledge.
  • The faculty who identify themselves primarily as "ArchE" (AE) appear to be about four or five
  • The structures and CEM courses are identical for all department students with unified enrollment
  • Senior faculty assist younger faculty in an explicit mentoring program
   
• Research and graduate studies are a major emphasis for the faculty
  
  
  
  • There is a strong graduate program at both the masters and PhD level in all the areas.
    
    
    
    • Structures students receive a Civil degree.
    • Mechanical graduate students are identified as pursuing "Building Science" studies
     
• AE Undergraduates have a choice of five "tracks" - more than most programs
  
  
  
  • Structure
  • Mechanical
  • Lighting
  • Construction Engineering and Management
  • AE General
   
• Careers students undertake on receiving the BS are approximately:
  
  
  
  • Construction related 50%
    
    
    
    • I heard many theories about why this is so popular including the ability of the instructors, and the appeal of the outdoors life
     
  • Structural design 25%
    
    
    
    • (with many being high-end residential
     
  • Mechanical design 15%
    
    
    
    • Several faculty felt this was too low and were seeking ways to increase this choice.
     
  • Lighting design 10%
   
• A BS/MS program exists for strong students
  
  
  
  • It is fairly small, at least for AE's (<10/year I believe)
   
• Faculty views of the mutability of the curriculum are varied
  
  
  
  • Some faculty described continuing experiment - with particular changes cited
  • Others described it as essentially unchanging over the last 15 years
   
• The program has an extraordinary teaching tool available, the ITLL building. It is heavily instrumented and designed for visual presentation of its building systems
  
  
  
  • It is heavily used in the courses of the first two years
  • No faculty mentioned it as being a resource in the upper years.
   
• Faculty do use the campus facilities staff in their courses more generally
  
  
  
  • I heard several mentions of tours and cooperation with the facilities staff
  
  
  
  
• The capstone design courses are different for Civil and AE students
  
  
  
  • The AE capstone design begins with an architectural studio in the fall semester, followed in the spring semester by a building systems capstone in which the design from the fall is the basis.
  • The department is currently expecting to reduce the architectural design credits for the senior fall course from six to three.
   
• BIM does not appear to be heavily used or emphasized at the moment

• Lighting design has been a traditional strength of the department
  
  
  
  • A new generation of faculty is taking over with a strong interest in sustainable practices, including more efficient lighting and daylighting design 
   
• The department is graced by the presence of Geotech engineer Bernard Amadei, founder of Engineers Without Borders
  
  
  
  • I had the opportunity to hear him speak with the seniors. If I were a graduating senior I'd have wanted to sign up.
   
• The Boulder campus is extraordinarily beautiful, right at the edge of the Front Range of the Rockies.
  

• The Engineering Center is a handsome complex of buildings.
  
  
  
  • In a classic design paradox, the buildings require complex circulation paths and make expansion difficult.
    

About the Sabbatical Project

• Many of the faculty were interested in what I have learned
  
  
  
  • They're eager to see the results of the study and believe they may be important
  • They recognize lack of knowledge of other schools, even those close by
   
• Again there was a lack of clear agreement on a definition of AE Design
  
  
  
  • Many ingredients were mentioned repeatedly
  • In the interviews there wasn't much discussion of teaching or assessment methods (which may be the responsibility of the interviewer) 
   

• It's clear, as expected, that the personal visits and interviews will increase survey response rate
  
  
  
  • I emphasized to many "non-AE" faculty that their views mattered as well.

AEI Denver Conference Reflections

State of AEI

• I'm highly sympathetic to the organizers of the conference.  They depend on what's submitted for their technical content and clearly have made great efforts to increase the breadth and depth of the conference topics. Nonetheless, AEI exists, as the founder of the Institute reminded us at the awards luncheon, to bring together all those involved in the design of buildings.  My observation is that we have a long way to go towards that ideal, however much has been accomplished in its first decade. 
• I'd argue that Architectural Engineering's central charge is to consider the interactions between the disciplines, often shortened to "integrating" them.  However, the great majority of the presentations that  I scanned in the proceedings or viewed in the two days were single-discipline in nature.  They are certainly additions to the literature, but I suspect that many of them would be more widely accepted if presented in the literature of those specific disciplines. 
• There were indeed some in the design area, particularly those relating to BIM, that would appear to cross disciplinary lines, but they were a significant minority.
• One noticeable problem was speakers not appearing for their scheduled sessions, to the obvious surprise of the session moderators.  In one session I attended only one of four scheduled appeared (fortunately the speaker easily expanded his worthwhile if obviously oft-repeated BIM

Academic Council

• The academic council was the highlight of the conference (other than my Drexel students winning second place in the paper competition).  It was an opportunity to meet the folks who to this point were only voices on the phone.
• We had three hours of worthwhile discussion and elected Jay Puckett of Wyoming the next chair.  Having just spent time with him I'm quite sure he'll do a splendid job.

Conference Logistics

• The AEI/ASCE staff running the conference did a good job dealing with the vagaries of the convention and people like me who lost their name tag.
• To me it's ironic to hold an AEI conference in as splendid a climate as Denver's in hotel having a completely sealed environment.  That the HVAC control system in my room didn't work properly was no help.