Life-Long Learning in Water Resources Professional Education

The outcomes criteria of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) mandate that new graduates with a degree in civil engineering must demonstrate a proficiency to engage in life-long learning. Many Civil Engineering programs have redesigned their curricula to meet this objective. In teaching hydrology, there are several ways in achieving this goal. These include exposure to the details of hydrologic engineering design through field trips to completed and on-going projects; and, through guest lectures in class by practicing hydrologic engineers. Another approach is to exploit the potential of letting undergraduates take advantage of resources that are available to them in the public data bases. This paper outlines how the tools for life-long learning are incorporated in an upper-level undergraduate course in hydrology. Synchronized with the sequence of topics in the traditional engineering hydrology course, the collection and analysis of geographic and hydrologic information from external sources are inter-woven in the syllabus. The topics range from using federal web sites to explain the importance of hydrology in sustainable engineering, the delineation of watershed boundaries through extraction of GIS information from federal and state sources and the access of watershed information from web sites to download rainfall and runoff data to validate runoff prediction models. These resources continually evolve and water resources professionals will need to keep up-to-date after they leave the campus. In-class experience with examples will be presented.