Geotechnical Engineering Education: The State of the Practice in 2011

The current state of geotechnical engineering education in the United States is examined in this paper. K-12 outreach efforts, undergraduate and graduate education, continuing education opportunities, faculty demographics, the influence of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the challenges and changes facing geotechnical engineering education are examined. Several sources of data were used to develop this paper including results from a survey to members of the United States Universities Council on Engineering Education and Research (USUCGER), results from an informal survey provided to practitioners, university websites, and published literature. The K-12 outreach efforts appear to have been successful as enrollments in civil engineering have demonstrated strong growth over the past decade. Nearly all (93%) accredited civil engineering programs require soil mechanics and most (83%) require soil mechanics laboratory. Geotechnical engineers comprise 11% of the civil engineering faculty and about three quarters of all programs have two or fewer geotechnical engineering faculty members. Geotechnical engineering faculty are supportive of ASCE's Policy Statement 465 and The Body of Knowledge. The key challenges facing geotechnical engineering education are falling credit-hour requirements for the attainment of a bachelor's degree, time and resources needed to support laboratories, effectively incorporating complex topics into classes, and balancing the importance of hands-on practical experience with ever-increasing research demands.