Civil Engineers are Ingenious Again ...
This summer, several of us faculty met and discussed about the Vision, Mission and Educational Objectives of our Civil Engineering Department. It is always exciting to look back at the origins, to look for a future direction, to assess where we are and to envision where we would like to be: 10, 15, 20 years from now.
And yes, we even went back to the meaning of the word ENGINEER ... which has its origins in the Latin word INGENIUM, meaning “innate quality, especially mental power, hence a clever invention.” This is why in many foreign languages "engineer" starts with an "i", e.g.: ingeniero (Spanish), ingénieur (French), ingenieur (German) and the list goes on. So in our process of searching for a vision, we first rediscovered the meaning of the word engineer: INGENIOUS. How would you like to study Civil Ingenuity instead of Civil Engineering?
The next step was to formulate a mission and educational objectives - the things that we would like you, our students, to master once you graduate from the program. Meeting after meeting we narrowed down the list of objectives and agreed on a mission statement. I will only reproduce the mission statement here for you:
"To meet the challenges of an evolving society, we provide a practice-oriented civil engineering education that fosters personal, professional and social responsibility; technical excellence and creativity; and effective communication, teamwork and leadership"
However, one thing was still on the table for discussion: our vision. After several other meetings and constructive debates, the faculty agreed on a simple, ambitious and, in my opinion, noble vision. To provide you, our students, with:
Not number 2, not number 3, the best. Are we there yet? No, but that's where we want to be. Let's all get our "i"'s back and be ingenious again!
And yes, we even went back to the meaning of the word ENGINEER ... which has its origins in the Latin word INGENIUM, meaning “innate quality, especially mental power, hence a clever invention.” This is why in many foreign languages "engineer" starts with an "i", e.g.: ingeniero (Spanish), ingénieur (French), ingenieur (German) and the list goes on. So in our process of searching for a vision, we first rediscovered the meaning of the word engineer: INGENIOUS. How would you like to study Civil Ingenuity instead of Civil Engineering?
The next step was to formulate a mission and educational objectives - the things that we would like you, our students, to master once you graduate from the program. Meeting after meeting we narrowed down the list of objectives and agreed on a mission statement. I will only reproduce the mission statement here for you:
"To meet the challenges of an evolving society, we provide a practice-oriented civil engineering education that fosters personal, professional and social responsibility; technical excellence and creativity; and effective communication, teamwork and leadership"
However, one thing was still on the table for discussion: our vision. After several other meetings and constructive debates, the faculty agreed on a simple, ambitious and, in my opinion, noble vision. To provide you, our students, with:
THE BEST CIVIL ENGINEERING LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Not number 2, not number 3, the best. Are we there yet? No, but that's where we want to be. Let's all get our "i"'s back and be ingenious again!
Excellent recap. I think we should think of how to get engineers to start putting Egr. in front of our names just like doctors put Dr., so that engineers are recognized in the society on a daily basis. Most people do not know, but after fire-fighters engineers where first on the 9-11 ground zero site after the attack. They had to make very important decission that impacted the safety of first responders and those who might have still be alive.
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