Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

Message from the Chair, Fall 2006

When this newsletter reaches your mailbox we’ll have just con­cluded yet another fall term—which historically represents our 288th academic semester! Throughout the years, we’ve generated nearly 10,000 graduates, the majority of which are current ISU Alumni Association members. In fact, this outstanding legacy’s success dates to the university’s first graduating class in 1862, to which we contributed four of the first 26 alums.

Extending beyond the significance of these remarkable numbers, and notwithstanding the fact our construction engineering program is the country’s largest, our department’s foremost consideration remains that of educational quality. Simply put, we take great pride in producing outstanding engineers, and we shall assuredly retain this primary focus and commitment.

Of course, we’ll certainly continue to celebrate the individual achievements of our students and faculty. Within just the past year our student Associated General Contractors of America organization again earned a best-in-the-country ranking, plus we’ve had three faculty—Shauna Hallmark, Max L. Porter, and David White—receive major awards (see page 11 for more on Hallmark and Porter, and visit www.ccee.iastate.edu for more on White’s national award). Additionally, two of our ConE professors were selected for prestigious service positions—Ed Jaselskis for a one-year National Science Foundation program management appointment in Washington, DC, and Chuck Jahren as the new ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management editor).

External recognition of our department’s educational quality also is validated by the success our graduates enjoy during their Iowa State Career Fair interview efforts, where employers aggressively compete to draw CCEE prospects. In truth, more than one-third of the employers at this fall’s event—the largest engineering career fair in the nation—came to hire our CCEE students!

Intent on further enhancing this academic quality, you also can rest assured that our faculty routinely assess new opportunities to improve our course offerings, and our capstone classes have drawn particular attention as they represent the pinnacle of undergraduate learning. In preparation for our ABET accreditation evaluation, we conducted an extensive capstone assessment last spring that drew highly constructive input from more than 150 alumni. For those of you who contributed, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve made a number of beneficial program revisions and are planning several more. Most importantly, we’ve strengthened our entire capstone course lineup, and added a completely new design-build project experience to provide collaborative CE and ConE student interaction. This plan retains the core strength of each prior capstone offering while also investing uniformity to both curriculums via the new 2-plus-3 credit hour capstone course format.

And yet another aspect is that we’ve launched creative discussions with the ISU Department of Architecture to determine how we might raise this collaborative experience yet another notch by mixing in their own capstone classes. Our fingers are crossed as to the eventual success of this value-added element.

In closing this positive update for 2006, we send our best wishes for health and happiness during the coming year!