Bill and ted's excellent adventure: Lessons learned from eight years instruction on the CEBOK

This paper describes the development, instruction and assessment of an upper-division, undergraduate, 2-credit hour, required course designed around outcomes from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Body of Knowledge for Civil Engineers (CEBOK). The course is CE 4200, Professional Engineering Practice Issues, sequenced to be taken during the penultimate semester of a student's program of study in civil engineering at Texas Tech University. The course features six CEBOK outcomes: professional attitudes, professional responsibilities, teamwork and leadership, project management, critical thinking and problem solving, and social sciences. These outcomes were selected with consideration to Texas Tech University's 129-hour program in civil engineering, focusing on topics either not represented, indirectly represented, or otherwise underrepresented in the curriculum. Course development has been a work in progress, with academic influences and curriculum emphases affecting instructional design and learning activities. The lessons learned illustrate how the CE 4200 course can be used to shape and polish the civil engineering curriculum relative to satisfying ABET program accreditation requirements, introducing students to less-familiar topics that are essential to professional success, placing the students' education and learning within the framework of professional practice, and otherwise helping prepare civil engineering students for their professional careers.