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Global and Societal Impact of Civil Engineering: Connecting Rural Students with
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Conference Paper · September 2004

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 33. International Symposium IGIP / IEEE / ASEE 2004, September 27-30, Fribourg, Switzerland

Global and Societal Impact of Civil Engineering:

Connecting Rural Students with the World
A. E. Surovek, J. N. Karlin
Civil and Environmental Engineering, Industrial Engineering
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, USA
surovek@sdsmt.edu, jkarlin@sdsmt.edu

Abstract— While providing a global perspective on the impact of

Engineering is always a challenge in a traditional engineering curriculum,
it becomes an even greater challenge at a engineering and science
specialty institution with a predominantly regional student body. At
South Dakota Tech, awareness of global issues and options is complicated
by the facts that much of the student body hails from rural areas and
small towns, and there are significantly less opportunities for social
science and liberal arts related experiences than offered at comprehensive
universities.

In order to increase student awareness of the global and societal impact

they can impart as professional engineers, a lecture and small discussion
series was developed at South Dakota Tech entitled, “Societal and Global
Impact of Civil Engineering.” While initially developed for Civil
Engineering students, many of the lecture topics and overall themes were
universally applicable to all Engineering disciplines. The format included
a one hour lecture open to campus and a smaller discussion group with
the main speaker that was incorporated into the Senior Professions class
in Civil Engineering.

In all of the lectures, emphasis was placed on how the global themes
directly affected residents of South Dakota and the surrounding region to
emphasize the relevance of the topics both globally and locally.

Keywords- ABET, global and societal impact, formative assessment, engineering curricula

1. INTRODUCTION
ABET 2000 criteria set forth new guidelines and provided challenges to engineering
curricula, particularly with respect to assessment of outcomes and development of
“soft” skills in engineers. In particular, ABET outcome h requires that students must
be able to demonstrate, “the broad education necessary to understand the impact of
engineering solutions in a global and societal context [1].” For many programs, this
created a need to develop course content specific to this outcome; or as Felder and
Brent state, “the work of equipping students with the attributes specified in [ABET]
program outcomes must be done at the individual course level [2].”
Providing a global perspective of engineering is always a challenge in a traditional
engineering curriculum; however, it becomes an even greater challenge at an
institution with a predominantly regional student body. At South Dakota Tech,
helping students develop an awareness of global issues and options is complicated
by the fact that much of the student body hails from rural areas and small towns.

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 33. International Symposium IGIP / IEEE / ASEE 2004, September 27-30, Fribourg, Switzerland

Many of these students have little experience outside of the region surrounding
South Dakota, and even fewer have traveled outside of the United States.
South Dakota Tech is an engineering and science specialty school with an
enrollment of approximately 2500 students. Liberal arts and social science curricula
are offered to support science and technology majors, but are limited in scope,
particularly when compared to those offered at comprehensive universities. The
lack of a major area of study in humanities or social sciences further reduces the
opportunities for students to obtain a global perspective on the potential impact of
their chosen careers; limited resources are available to these departments for the
types of campus activities that might be available at a comprehensive university (e.g.
seminars, workshops).
This paper describes a lecture series undertaken as a pilot program in the Civil and
Environmental Engineering Department (CEE) at South Dakota Tech with expertise
in assessment provided by the Industrial Engineering (IE) Department. The primary
purpose of the lecture series was to expose students to experts and topics in
engineering (with an emphasis on the Civil Engineering discipline) to which they
would not normally have access in their curricula. While seminar courses are
successfully used elsewhere to meet multiple ABET goals [3], this pilot program
attempts to impact mainly ABET h through a less structured set of experiences.

2. PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT
Two components were developed to address the goals of the program: a general
lecture open to the entire campus and a classroom component for seniors in CEE.
The two components were designed to provide a general exposure to societal and
global issues for the undergraduate CEE students and a more focused, discussion
based experience for the seniors. Students who expressed a specific interest in a
given topic but were not enrolled in the affected senior course were invited to
participate in the classroom component.

2.1. Lecture Component

Four lectures were presented over the course of the semester related to the overall
the overall theme “Societal and Global Impact of Civil Engineering.”. An important
facet of developing the lectures was collaboration with the presenters to ensure that
the topics were general enough to be of interest to a broad audience. The primary
lecture audience consisted of undergraduates in CEE; additional participants
included graduate students in CEE, undergraduates in other science and engineering
disciplines, faculty, and guests from the community.
Four lecturers from varying backgrounds were asked to participate in the program; 3
were structural engineers with diverse research interests and 1 was a nuclear
engineer and lawyer currently involved in governmental affairs. The lecturers were
chosen based on their technical expertise and broad experience in areas related to the
goals of the lecture series. For this series, topics included:

The Impact of a National Research Collaborative (NEES)

Engineering and Public Policy

Earthquake Engineering: Lessons Learned in the Aftermath

International Cooperation in Engineering

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 33. International Symposium IGIP / IEEE / ASEE 2004, September 27-30, Fribourg, Switzerland

In addition to the overall topics above, the lectures addressed topics including
professional preparation and registration (domestically and internationally),
specification and code development, working with governmental agencies, and the
economic impact of engineering and research. In each instance, the lecturer was
asked to specifically address how the topic related to South Dakota and the region
from which students of South Dakota Tech typically hail.
While the lectures were open to campus, student participation was encouraged
through three mechanisms: required attendance for seniors in the professions class;
encouraged attendance, either for class credit or extra credit in other CEE classes;
and free pizza. The support of the entire CEE faculty was highly successful in
maximizing impact of the lectures. On average, over 85 students were in attendance
for each lecture; the CEE program at South Dakota Tech has approximately 135
undergraduate and 50 graduate students.
Selection of the invited speakers was of utmost importance to the success of the
program. First and foremost, the speakers needed to be viewed by the students as
experts in both their given field as well as having significant experience in the
broader impact of engineering on a national or global level. Speakers were
specifically chosen based on known criteria for good teaching, including knowledge
of subject matter, competence, preparation, ability to relate topics to real life,
enthusiasm, and interpersonal skills [4].
In addition, the success of the program was affected by interaction between the
coordinating faculty member and the speakers in order to ensure that: 1) the topics
were of general interest to a student audience with varying degrees of educational
experience and interests, 2) the body of the speech was at a technical level
appropriate for the students, 3) the lectures showed relevance to South Dakota and
the surrounding region, 4) the topics were suited to the overall program theme, and
5) the speakers were qualified to speak informally on a large range of topics during
the classroom component of the program. Three of the speakers were selected by
the coordinating faculty member based on personal knowledge of their backgrounds,
expertise, and speaking ability. One of the speakers was chosen in collaboration
with the local chapter of the South Dakota Engineering Society in conjunction with
activities during the Engineers’ Week. Coordination with the guest speakers prior to
their visits proved to be the most important factor in the success of the program.

2.2. Classroom Component

A required course in the CEE curriculum is CEE 463: Civil Engineering Professions,
offered only in the Spring semester to graduating seniors. The course emphasis is on
current civil engineering topics with particularly professional, personal, and ethical
development. The class meets once a week.
The lecture series was incorporated into the professions class in the form of an
interactive discussion with the guest lecturer. Students were given reading material
on the lecture topic the week prior to the lectures, and the classroom discussion
occurred after the general lectures. The interactive format allowed students to ask
questions relating to both the lecture topics as well as professional issues directly
affecting them as they prepared for graduation.

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 33. International Symposium IGIP / IEEE / ASEE 2004, September 27-30, Fribourg, Switzerland

Since the discussion was driven by the students themselves, they were able to key in
on the most relevant aspects of the material to the students’ chosen career paths.
Students were able to personalize the information in this manner, thus allowing for
greater ownership of the process by the students. In addition, for those seniors in the
major area of the speaker, this discussion could be more technical and discipline
specific than appropriate for the general lecture. In a few instances, students with a
specific interest in the speaker’s area of expertise were provided with one-on-one
time to address highly specific questions.

3. ASSESSMENT OF THE PROGRAM

As a pilot program, the seminar series had two objectives:
• Increase the students’ understanding of their role as an engineer in global
and societal issues; and
• Determine if, as a mechanism, the seminar series is worth pursuing as a
regular feature of the Civil and Environmental Engineering curriculum with
potential portability to other engineering programs.

To discern the level to which the seminar series met these goals, a formative
evaluation was conducted. This evaluation consisted of a pre-survey and a post-
survey given to the members of the senior professions course as well as a brief
survey conducted at the conclusion of each lecture in the series that was completed
by all in attendance. Among other questions, the pre-survey and post-survey listed a
series of statements connecting the civil engineering students to social and global
responsibility. The students marked their agreement with the statements on a scale
of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The pre-survey demonstrated that the
students felt they already had a nominal confidence in their understanding of their
role as a civil engineer in the larger society. There was, however, some increase in
their confidence after participating the seminar series. Table I summarizes the
questions and the mean data from the surveys.

TABLE I. STUDENT CONFIDENCE QUESTIONS FROM THE SENIOR PROFESSIONS COURSE

Statement Pre-Survey Post-Survey

As a civil engineer, I can describe how my work
4.55 4.52
contributes to society.
I can explain how my senior design project impacts the
4.39 4.30
society in which I live.
I have taken other classes that require me to consider how
3.66 3.81
civil engineers impact the larger society.
For any given project in my work as a civil engineer, I can
identify sources where the global and societal impacts of 3.62 4.00
my project are discussed.
I can identify the appropriate governmental regulatory
bodies and general policies concerning the global and 3.21 3.63
societal impact of my work as a civil engineer.

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 33. International Symposium IGIP / IEEE / ASEE 2004, September 27-30, Fribourg, Switzerland

Using the same 1 to 5 scale, the seniors in the Professions course were asked, in the
post-survey, to rate the degree to which they agreed with statements reflecting the
individual speakers’ aid in increasing the students’ understanding of global and
societal issues, as summarized in Table II. It is useful to note that the second
speaker, who received the least positive evaluations from the students, was the
speaker about whom the coordinating faculty member had the least personal
knowledge and with whom she had the least pre-visit interaction.

TABLE II. SENIOR PROFESSIONS CLASS ATTITUDES TOWARD PILOT PROJECT VALUE

Speaker
Statement
One Two Three Four
This speaker’s presentation increased my
understanding of global and societal 3.81 3.61 4.08 4.44
issues.
This speaker’s classroom discussion was
4.00 3.78 3.96 4.33
a valuable addition to the lecture.

Over 150 individual students, six percent of South Dakota Tech’s student
population, attended at least one of the four lectures. The evaluation instrument
given at the end of each lecture was coded to separate the seniors in the professions
course from the general audience. The speakers received generally positive
evaluations, though, as already noted, the speaker who spent the least time in
communication with the coordinating faculty member again received the least
positive set of responses. Table III summarizes the mean response toward the four
speakers from the seniors in the Professions course; Table IV summarizes the same
questions including results from the non-members of the Professions course.

TABLE III. MEAN RESPONSES FROM THE PROFESSIONS COURSE STUDENTS

Speaker
Statement
One Two Three Four
I would like to hear this speakers give
4.18 3.56 4.05 4.00
another talk.
I would like to learn more about this
4.14 3.50 4.14 3.95
subject.
I would be interested in hearing this
4.27 3.44 3.91 4.10
speaker on another topic.
Number of Surveys Returned 22 18 22 20

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 33. International Symposium IGIP / IEEE / ASEE 2004, September 27-30, Fribourg, Switzerland

TABLE IV. MEAN RESPONSES FROM THE OVERALL AUDIENCE

Speaker
Statement
One Two Three Four
I would like to hear this speakers give
4.13 3.64 4.18 4.36
another talk.
I would like to learn more about this
3.99 3.62 4.13 4.19
subject.
I would be interested in hearing this
4.16 3.47 4.02 4.32
speaker on another topic.
Number of Surveys Returned 58 45 46 47

4. CONLUSION
While not conclusive, the formative survey results, as well as qualitative survey
comments and personal comments from students, faculty, administration and the
community, indicate that the seminar series was beneficial in addressing ABET
outcome h and is worthy of continuation. Efforts are underway to secure long-term
funding for the seminar series as well as to develop a more structured classroom
component. Additionally, a longitudinal study of the students’ global and societal
awareness is under development. This longitudinal study will allow better
assessment of the students’ attitudes over their entire college career. The added
dimension of phenomenological component will assist in determining which
elements of the seminar series are the most vital for potential future portability.

REFERENCES
[1] ABET Board of Directors. “Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs.” November 1, 2003.
http://www.abet.org/images/Criteria/E001%2004-05%20EAC%20Criteria%2011-20-03.pdf
(Internet Document)
[2] Felder, Richard M. and Brent, Rebecca. “Designing and Teaching Courses to Satisfy the ABET
Engineering Criteria.” Journal of Engineering Education, American Society for Engineering
Education, v. 92, No. 1, January 2003: 7-25.
[3] Manseur, Rachid. “An ABET-based seminar course” Proceedings - Frontiers in Education
Conference, v. 2, 2003: F1E1-F1E4.
[4] Stice, James E. “A First Step towards Improved Teaching.” Engineering Education, American
Society for Engineering Education v. 66, No. 5, February 1976: 394 – 398.

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