Determining the Content of the First Course in Transportation Engineering
Publication: Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 132, Issue 3
Abstract
Transportation engineering constitutes a required portion of the civil engineering curriculum at over three-fourths of undergraduate civil engineering programs in the United States. The input of practicing transportation engineers is a critical source of information in determining the content of the first course in transportation engineering. A new survey was conducted in which respondents ranked 31 potential course topics by importance. The results are compared to a similar survey conducted before to determine which topics have increased in importance, which have become less critical to cover, and which continue to remain of high priority. Topics such as traffic safety and traffic flow characteristics are of considerably higher priority today than ago, while topics such as geometric design of highways and highway capacity studies continue to be of great importance. Preparation for follow-up and graduate coursework, for the Fundamentals of Engineering and Professional Engineer examinations, and issues of local setting are also considerations in determining the content of the first course in transportation engineering.
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Acknowledgments
The writer would like to thank Asha Sharma for assisting in the tabulation of survey responses and Robert L. Vecellio and several anonymous reviewers for their suggestions to improve this paper.
References
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 132 • Issue 3 • July 2006
Pages: 200 - 203
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Mar 1, 2005
Accepted: Aug 10, 2005
Published online: Jul 1, 2006
Published in print: Jul 2006
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