Interdisciplinary design: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Today’s students are faced with far different challenges upon graduation than those encountered in past years. One of the most significant of these challenges is the need to work within the framework of integrated project delivery where all disciplines work as a cohesive team to produce a project. In 2004, the Construction Management Department at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo,CA began teaching a three credit hour design/build course focused on integrated project delivery. That course, taught primarily to construction management students, has now evolved into a true interdisciplinary experience that is taught in a team environment by professors from the departments of Construction Management, Architecture, and Architectural Engineering. The challenges in creating and executing such a course are immense and fall into three major areas; institutional, logistical and pedagogical. This paper addresses these three challenge areas by discussing the specific issues, both good and bad, associated with this course and how they were addressed. It includes assessment data from the course and cites some areas for improvement. In addition, the paper provides a framework for the successful implementation of similar courses around the world

Interdisciplinary design: The saga continues

The College of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo is the only college in the nation that has departments of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Construction Management in the same college. The institution has a 60 year tradition of collaboration between the engineering, architecture and construction disciplines, particularly at the lower division level. To enhance this collaboration, the college committed to providing an upper division interdisciplinary experience to every student in the form of a project based, team oriented five unit studio that every student would take. This new course, launched in 2009, requires small teams of architecture, architectural engineering and construction students to complete the schematic level design of an actual building for a real client. While developing a college wide interdisciplinary course sounded simple in theory, it has proved to be much more challenging in practice. The course is in its second year and continues to offer new challenges that fall into three major areas: institutional, logistical and pedagogical. The paper describes how the challenges listed above have been overcome particularly concerning the role of the faculty in the course and the merging of very different department cultures. This paper reports on the progress of this course using survey assessment data and direct performance indicators. This same data provides valuable support to the 3 a-k ABET program criteria. Finally, the future of the course and the suggested improvements are highlighted

Preparing Students for the Environment of the Practice of Consulting Engineer

In the United States of America, the body of knowledge required for an individual to be allowed to take the engineering licensing examination, which on passing allows the individual to be in responsible charge of engineering projects, is usually defined by laws and regulations of each state. In California, the shortest path taken by most individuals is one where the individual graduates from an ABET accredited undergraduate program; passes the Engineer in Training (EIT) examination and works under the supervision of a licensed engineer for two years (one year if the individual has a Masters degree in relevant field). In order to better prepare the student to enter the practice of engineering, and thus give the student an immediate level of comfort with the real world environment, practical design needs to be directly incorporated into the teaching of design. This paper presents teaching methods used to teach undergraduate architectural engineering design courses, where the discipline of concentration is structural engineering. The format used exposes the students to instructors that are current consulting engineers and to courses that are modeled in line with the structural engineering profession. The theory, of construction materials (concrete, steel, masonry and timber) is covered for each material at element level in a lecture format. Design using the materials at a system level (building) is then taught in a laboratory format. In this later format, the students prepare complete construction documents (structural calculations, structural plans and structural specifications) for real projects using architectural plans. This “learn by doing” format has proven-over time-to prepare the students to the same environment that the students face after graduation. It is generally an accepted fact in the structural profession in California that, graduates from Architectural Engineering program (ARCE) at California Polytechnic State University (CAL POLY) “hit the ground running from day one”. This is attributed to the familiarity, of the design office environment, obtained during their undergraduate education. The familiarity is acquired through the design laboratories taught by design professionals

Researchers and practitioners: A dual track path to tenure that works

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has published the Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge (BOK) for the 21st Century and has produced a draft version of the follow-on BOK II, both which attempt to define the knowledge, skills and attitudes required of a civil engineer. A section of that document addresses who should teach this body of knowledge. It concludes that civil engineering faculty must be scholars, effective teachers, practitioners, and role models. In most universities, practitioners are included on the faculty as adjunct professors. They are paid less and are not viewed as full-fledged partners. The Architectural Engineering program at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo is one of the few exceptions where practitioners with a master’s degree in structural engineering, a structural engineering license, and a decade or more of experience in industry have an equal path to tenure. This paper cites the advantages and disadvantages of this program and addresses the most often expressed concerns for this alternative. Such issues as the professional development and scholarship components of the tenure process, the role of consulting, the integration of practitioners into the faculty, the value of their contacts to industry, and the types of classes the practitioners teach are all addressed. The purpose is to describe a model that other universities may wish to consider as the profession debates the CE faculty of the future

Interdisciplinary capstone design: Architects, structural engineers, and construction managers

The College of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo is the only college in the nation that has departments of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, Construction Management and Landscape Architecture in the same college. The institution has a 60 year tradition of collaboration between the engineering, architecture and construction disciplines, particularly at the lower division level. To enhance this collaboration, the college committed to providing an upper division, interdisciplinary experience to every student in the form of a project based, team oriented five unit studio laboratory that every student would take. The course is now in its third year and requires small teams of architecture, engineering, construction and landscape architecture students to complete the schematic level design of an actual building for a real client. The challenges in creating and executing such a course fall into three major areas: institutional, logistical and pedagogical. Institutional issues include university support and concurrence from four different department heads. Logistical issues range from finding open time within the four schedules to offer the course and securing physical locations for small and large group meeting areas to the seemingly mundane tasks of ensuring all students are in the correct location and finding common times for the instructors to meet. Pedagogically, the course needs a unified and integrated approach that must be agreed to and implemented by all professors. Traditionally professors work as individuals and team teaching of this magnitude is a paradigm shift that requires significant time, a flexible mindset and a commitment to collaborate. This paper reports on the progress of this course using survey assessment data and direct performance indicators. These same data provide valuable support to the 3 a-k ABET program criteria. The variety of projects undertaken to date illustrates the flexibility of this course. The paper describes how the challenges listed above have been overcome particularly concerning the role of the faculty in the course and the merging of very different department cultures. Finally, the future of the course and the suggested improvements are highlighted

Interdisciplinary design - Forming and evaluating teams

The College of Architecture and Environmental Design at California Polytechnic State University has offered an upper division, interdisciplinary experience for every student in the form of a project based, team oriented five unit studio laboratory. The course is now in its fifth year and requires small teams of architecture, engineering and construction students to complete the schematic level design of an actual building for a real client. The quality of the projects and student deliverables has been outstanding and students are clearly meeting the objective to prepare an integrated building design. The other course objective is to function as a member of an interdisciplinary team, which is more difficult to quantify. This paper focuses on the selection and assessment of teams in this course. Various personality and skills assessments are completed and used in the formations of teams. Assessment data on team performance are presented and future actions for this project are discussed

Teaching the Design: Timber Shear Walls and Developing Student Engineering Judgement and Intuition Through a Hands-on Experience

Engineering judgement and intuition are vital characteristic of the design profession. Engineering judgement and intuition are developed through experience. This experience is gained by designing a building (working with industry disciplines and the owner); analyzing the building (calculations); being part of the construction process (constructability), and walking through the final product (end user). Teaching design means, in part, developing engineering judgement and intuition. This may best be accomplished by incorporating active learning experiences. For timber and masonry buildings, the shear wall is the lateral resisting system of choice. A hands-on experience has been developed as a simple exercise in constructing shear walls and then assessing the shear walls under a lateral load. More specifically, in qualitative terms, the idea of wall rigidity is explored; actual construction experience is gained (for many students it is a first time experience in rough framing construction); the behavior and limitations of different wall sheathing is observed directly; insight is gained for code restrictions of different sheathing materials; and system behaviors such as overturning is directly observed. As a strategy for developing students engineering judgment and intuition, this paper will give a detailed account of the hands-on shear wall exercise. Other educators are encouraged to implement, building upon, or transfer to other topics, the information contained within. The students are upper level classmen in a timber and masonry design studio (9 hours per week of meeting time on a quarter system) of an architectural engineering program with an emphasis on structural engineering. The authors are licensed structural engineers with over 65 years of practicing experience, who have returned to academia. The authors believe, from their direct background and experience, that it is important, for design, to begin giving the students non-traditional text book and calculation experiences. Giving the students a non-traditional experience, prior to graduation, is the emphasis of this paper

Capstone Projects: Integrating Industry through Student Leadership

Capstone projects provide a unique opportunity for developing student leadership skills while integrating industry partners. While models for including industry partners in capstone projects have been discussed in prior literature, these models focus on faculty leadership in developing industry partnerships. This paper describes a capstone project model that encourages student, not faculty, leadership in engaging industry partners. Factors that influence successful project teaming of students and industry partners are identified and described using case study examples. The successes and difficulties of integrating industry in capstone project via student leadership are explored