Assessment of the Introductory Transportation Engineering Course and the General Transportation Engineering Curriculum

This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies and can be found at: http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/154702.aspx.Transportation engineering is a critical subdiscipline of the civil engineering profession as indicated by its inclusion on the Fundamentals of Engineering Examination, its overlap with other specialty areas of civil engineering, and as recognized by the Transportation Research Board, Institute of Transportation Engineers, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. With increasing transportation workforce needs, low numbers of students entering the ‘pipeline’, and limited hours within undergraduate civil engineering programs, it is important to ensure civil engineering students receive adequate preparation and exposure to career opportunities in the transportation engineering field. As such, investigations into the status of transportation engineering within civil engineering programs and specifically the introductory transportation engineering course are essential for understanding the implications to the profession. This paper presents a review of relevant literature and findings from a new survey of ABET-accredited civil engineering programs that yielded 84 responses. The survey indicates that 88 percent of responding programs teach an introductory course in transportation engineering, and 79 percent require it in their undergraduate programs. There is significant variation in the structure of the introductory course (number of credit hours, lab requirements, etc.), and common responses regarding improvements that could be made include adding labs, requiring a second course, and broadening course content. In addition, nearly 15 percent of instructors teaching the introductory course did not have a primary focus in transportation engineering. This finding should be investigated further, given that this course may be an undergraduate civil engineering student’s only exposure to the profession