One of the charges to the ASCE Committee on Continuing Professional Development (CCPD) is to develop and recommend policies, programs, and procedures for the continuing education of engineers. As a current CCPD member and past chairman, the writer has seen an upsurge into various home study courses and rumblings concerning various methods of delivery for home as well as remote‐site learning. This paper presents and extrapolates the trends in continuing education and discusses the most difficult problem associated with professional development, motivation. The role which ASCE should play is also discussed.

The writer developed and offered a senior elective course entitled “Ethics in Engineering Practice” over the past six years. Original problems and history were presented in a 1981 issue of Engineering Issues. Six years later, this paper recounts a summary of what was learned, the responses and ideas from the students, changes in student attitudes, and changes made in the course. It is presented as a guide to others who may be considering offering such a course to undergraduates.

Excellent students, an outstanding and dedicated faculty, and well‐equipped facilities are essential components of a quality civil engineering educational experience. Civil engineers are in great demand to address the challenges and opportunity of rebuilding our national infrastructure. It is important that outstanding men and women enter civil engineering programs of study. The quality of life of the nation rests in the hands and minds of the bright young people who accept the challenges and opportunities in civil engineering. The primary role of engineering faculty is to teach a diverse audience, including undergraduate and graduate students, research and academic peers, engineering practitioners, and the public. Civil engineering faculty must be at the forefront in their area of expertise through research and practical experience. There is a fine line between research and testing, and faculty must direct their talents to the pursuit of fundamental research. Technology transfer is essential so that the results of research which can improve the design and construction of facilities and projects are available to the engineering practitioner. Adequate facilities, modern equipment, and qualified clerical and technical staff personnel also are required to support a civil engineering education experience that will prepare graduates to meet the opportunities and challenges of the last decade of the twentieth century and of the twenty‐first century.

Although engineers usually labor anonymously as “their brother's keeper,” a survey on whistleblowing showed that 40% of practicing engineers preferred not to get involved when they saw questionable practices that might endanger public safety. Insulating themselves from such incidents when they are afraid that their professional judgement might be overruled, or failing to participate in legislative processes when technological missions are formulated, can initiate technical disasters. A number of omissions in professional behavior that have led to such catastrophies are cited, and remedies are suggested to minimize them in the future. Recommendations involve 6‐yr practice‐oriented engineering curricula, dual individual membership in national societies and a global unity organization, courts of professional opinion to preclude nontechnical interference, a change of the spelling of engineer to make it uniform worldwide, development of professional esprit de corps, and selection of Anonymous as the symbolic patron for the anonymous service engineers perform for all mankind.

The article analyzes the training needs of civil engineering students in construction methods and concludes that formal training in construction methods is vitally important for both students specializing in construction engineering and management and those specializing in design. Course objectives, contents and learning activities as implemented during the past three years at the Technion, IIT, are presented. Interface issues between this and the other technological courses (construction materials and equipment) are clarified. Difficulties that were faced in achieving the course objectives, particularly in the areas of communication, quality control, and the decision‐making process, and measures taken to overcome them are discussed. Steps taken to render the adjunct faculty teaching this course effective are also described.

Civil engineering departments in American universities show considerable uncertainty about the role of planning in an engineering context. Fiscal pressures and changes in practice have eroded support for planning as an integral part of the civil engineering curriculum. Yet, current problems in the field, such as groundwater contamination and infrastructure decay, have institutional and organizational components that could be brought into civil engineering by planning faculty. This paper argues that civil engineering should integrate organizational and institutional knowledge into its academic core, rather than assume that on‐the‐job experience and other disciplines can be relied upon to illuminate the nontechnical aspects of infrastructure problems.

The use of competitive bidding for engagement of engineering services continues to increase. A review of the current status of the practice with particular reference to public agencies is presented and analyzed. Both advantages and disadvantages of various methods used are discussed. The use of competitive bidding is detrimental to the quality of engineering services, and invariably results in an adversarial client relationship. Guidelines are provided for those instances where competitive bidding is the only method proposed for selection of the engineer. The engineer is cautioned that his relationship to the client will be adversarial and appropriate contact provisions are required.