Civil Engineering Recruiting and Mentoring Request from CEEM Head Dr. Kevin Lansey

Dear UA CE Friends and Alum,

I’m writing to ask your help to improve undergraduate Civil Engineering recruiting.  Although engineering enrollment at the UA is increasing, Civil Engineering is lagging after a significant drop in 2009-11.  Students did not see their opportunities in our field and this perception is difficult to change.  We are working on that by presenting real data, such as we have exceeded 80% placement of our grads in jobs or graduate school prior to graduation for the last two springs and future expectations from state and national need projections. 

In addition, we are looking to ‘sexy’ up our recruiting pitch to incoming largely undeclared students in the College-wide freshman engineering course.  We are allotted half a class period and will focus on exciting projects that our alums have designed/planned/constructed.   The goal is to instill excitement by demonstrating what you all have accomplished.  A secondary emphasis is how the project helped the community as this is becoming a significant priority of this generation of students.

As an example, Allan Ortega (M3 Engineering) designed the structural support system for “Her Secret is Patience” in Phoenix.  We included three slides of showing his photo and the artwork.  The project had an interesting connection back to determining wind loads that was easily understandable by freshman that was addressed in a fourth slide.   See http://civil.arizona.edu/recruitment-slides. 

My request is for you to take a few minutes and put together something on your work – a few slides and sufficient text so we can explain it to the group.  The design link like Allan’s isn’t necessary.  We’ll try to present a range of projects demonstrating the various CE areas.  Please send the slides to Engr-CEEMHead@email.arizona.edu. 

Additionally, we are seeking mentors to support senior design groups this academic year in their capstone design experience. To improve student experience and better prepare soon-to-be graduates for practice, we are looking for experienced CE's to meet regularly (weekly/bi-weekly) through the academic year to provide guidance on tasks and overall project direction. Teams will cover all CE aspects of a roadway/bridge project. We will need 12 mentors (two per team). Please contact Engr-CEEMHead@gmail.com if you are interested or have questions.

Thanks for your help and Bear Down,

Kevin