Co-op Student Programs

The demand for increasingly efficient, safe and technologically advanced transportation in the U.S. has produced a demand for specialized transportation engineers.

How can employers find potential quality transportation engineers? How can students decide on transportation with so many other competing civil engineering options? How can universities produce graduates educated in specialized niches of transportation engineering?

The co-op student is one possible solution.

Characteristic of today’s tight job market, experienced engineers are difficult to find and as a result, many firms are relying on recent graduates to fill vacant positions. Whether the incoming engineering graduates can meet the increasing demand for civil and, more specifically, transportation engineers is dependent on more than the credentials provided by a bachelor’s degree. Educated in civil engineering programs, transportation engineers generally receive little undergraduate trans- portation education.

Cooperative education programs can provide transportation employers with the opportunity to recruit and train the engineers entering the marketplace, while tapping into an inexpensive work force.

Presented through the authors’ personal experiences with co-op programs, this article looks at the role of cooperative education in producing experienced employees fresh out of college.

Meet the authors

Kim Dietrich Elam, P.E., is employed as a transportation engineer with Gannett Fleming Inc., a multi-discipline engineering firm headquartered in Harrisburg, Pa. Kim is a project manager responsible for traffic impact analyses, traffic signal design and traffic engineering projects in the Denver, Colo., office.

Lorie K. Mittendorf, P.E., is employed as a transportation engineer with the Ohio DOT where she is a consultant project manager with the District 4 office in Ravenna, Ohio.

Addressing the problem

Between 1986 and 1996, the number of civil engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded in the U.S. increased 31%, according to “Science and Engineering Degrees: 1966-96,” published by the National Science Foundation. However, according to the Occupational Handbook, 2000-01 Edition, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of civil engineers is expected to increase as much as 35% between 1998 and 2008. Therefore, the demand for civil engineers may exceed the supply of graduates and available hires, resulting in a continuation of the current competitive staffing environment within civil engineering.

How do transportation employers in- crease their share of the civil engineering labor pool? How do they reach electrical and mechanical engineers that would be ideal for intelligent transportation systems?

Not all universities offer an engineering curriculum. Of those schools that offer civil engineering, many offer an introduction to transportation engineering but no further specific design courses in transportation. An introductory transportation engineering course solicits student interest in transportation, and additional design courses allow students to become educated about transportation engineering and help them to decide whether to pursue a career in that field.

Co-op education programs

According to the National Commission for Cooperative Education’s website (www.co-op.edu), “Cooperative education is a structured educational strategy integrating classroom studies with learning through productive work experiences in a field related to a student’s academic or career goals. It provides progressive experiences in integrating theory and practice. Co-op is a partnership among students, educational institutions and employers, with specified responsibilities for each party.

As of July 2000, only 25% of the 209 Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology Inc. (ABET) accredited colleges that offer civil engineering had a co-op program that met ABET’s “Engineering Accreditation Commission Criteria for 1999.” The University of Cincinnati (UC), where both Kim and Lorie earned their bachelor of science degrees in civil engineering, was one of the 25%.

Authors’ experience

Kim and Lorie earned their bachelor of science degrees in civil engineering at the UC College of Engineering in 1994, where participation in the cooperative education program is mandatory for all engineering students.

UC operates on a quarter system, 10 weeks per quarter. Engineering students alternate between taking full-time class quarters and working full-time co-op quarters year-round, extending a typical four-year program to five years.

Typically, a student will apply and interview for a co-op position following a complete freshman year of course work and then, for the next three years, the student alternates between working and class quarters, followed by a complete senior year of coursework only.

Co-op employers specify for which disciplines they are hiring, allowing transportation employers the opportunity to attract electrical or mechanical, in addition to civil, engineering students, if desired. Students are required to work for the same employer for two consecutive terms and must complete a minimum of four co-op quarters. Most engineering students complete six or seven.

Kim’s experience

Raised by a construction superintendent, Kim aspired to design and build buildings. Her co-op job search included interviews with a construction company, a municipal agency and a transportation consulting firm, and she planned to take a co-op position with the construction company.

However, her interview with the transportation firm went well—she learned that they designed roads, which sounded interesting, and the office environment was one she would enjoy. She accepted an offer from Pflum, Klausmeier & Gehrum (now known as Pflum, Klausmeier & Gehrum Consultants Inc.), a transportation consulting firm.

At PKG, Kim was assigned to a mentor, an engineering intern, who assigned her project tasks and provided valuable training on those tasks. Her mentor also had worked as a co-op at PKG and took a full-time position there upon graduating from UC.

Kim had taken the required one-quarter AutoCAD course at UC, in which basic commands were taught through assignments such as creating lock screw details and isometric drawings. It was Kim’s mentor who taught her how to use coordinate geometry software and AutoCAD to create roadway alignments and cross-sections, a precursor to UC’s highway engineering senior level capstone class in which coordinated geometry software and AutoCAD were used to develop roadway plans.

During her co-op experience, Kim learned valuable transportation engineering skills, such as collecting traffic counts, conducting license plate surveys, performing traffic signal warrant analyses, designing signal poles and spanwire configurations, calculating earthwork and seeding quantities, designing driveway vertical profiles and writing deed descriptions using coordinate geometry software.

In addition to these engineering skills, Kim also gained valuable workplace skills such as how to conduct meetings with clients/agencies/ reviewers/utility company representatives and business etiquette. Kim also gained confidence in her ability to make engineering decisions and learned when she needed assistance with those decisions.

Lorie’s experience

Lorie transferred to UC upon graduating from a community college, where she had earned an associate of science degree.

Lorie knew she would need a job to help pay for her bachelor’s degree education, and upon researching colleges she found that UC’s engineering degree included a mandatory co-op program. She felt this would be a great way to earn some money and possibly be introduced to future prospective employers.

After several interviews, one with a construction firm, another with a county engineer’s office, Lorie accepted a job offer from the Ohio DOT. At the time, she was undecided on which specialty track to follow, but her experience at ODOT greatly influenced her choice.

First, she worked in District 12 production, then District 8 construction, maintenance and traffic. By working for a large agency, Lorie was able to move to different departments while staying with the same employer. Her experience introduced her to plan production. During Lorie’s first co-op quarter, she performed manual drafting and checked quantities, which was commensurate with her level of experience at the time. She had only done manual drafting on shop drawings while attending community college, so this work demonstrated to her the composition of a plan set.

Lorie’s time in the field while in the construction department showed her how the plans and standards were used. Her main tasks consisted of inspection work during retaining wall construction, paving operations and checking as-built quantities. She saw first hand how engineering judgment was used on site to make decisions by working with the field engineers.

By her third co-op quarter, she had taken more civil engineering courses. Lorie worked in maintenance for two quarters wherein she worked in miscellaneous projects and was able to produce two-lane resurfacing plans with guidance from the staff engineers. This required field work, drafting and some basic roadway design.

During this time she learned to use AutoCAD, which she had not previously used in her academic work, to produce plan sheets.

Her final two co-op quarters were in traffic. She learned about and helped to produce studies, traffic control plans and maintenance-of-traffic plans. Lorie also learned about dealing with other public agencies and citizens by working with the public liaison engineer.

Each quarter in class gave her more knowledge to bring to the job. Each co-op quarter taught her to use what she had learned in the classroom. Working with transportation engineers showed what the workplace would actually be like and how to work with other employees to complete a project.

Summary

During the next decade, the demand for civil engineers may exceed the supply of graduates and available hires, resulting in a continuation of the current competitive staffing environment within civil engineering. Transportation engineering is just one of several disciplines within civil engineering competing for specialized undergraduate credit hours and for graduates entering the workplace. In addition, not all schools have a curriculum that effectively produces transportation engineers from the available pool of civil, electrical and mechanical engineers.

Cooperative education can be a successful tool in introducing engineering students to the transportation engineering field and providing specialty transportation engineering education, as demonstrated by Kim’s and Lorie’s experiences at UC.     TME