From Disciplinary to Multidisciplinary Programs: Educational Outcomes, BOK's, and Accreditation.

Over the last several decades, and in response to a variety of drivers, departments of civil engineering at universities across the United States have expanded and many now support multiple degrees. Over the same time period, ABET's Engineering Criteria 2000 introduced outcomes-based assessment to the accreditation process for engineering degree programs1. In today's environment, many departments of civil engineering face the challenges of: (a) supporting multiple, interdisciplinary degree programs, (b) updating and keeping their programs current with ASCE's latest Body of Knowledge (BOK) and (c) managing the continuous assessment and improvement activities associated with ABET accreditation. We believe that civil engineering departments will continue to evolve into multi-disciplinary, sustainable infrastructure programs, and that a new vision for a multi-disciplinary BOK is needed. While a complete vision for a new multi-discipline BOK is beyond the scope of this work, some characteristics of such a vision are developed and presented. This paper presents a case study from The University of Alabama Civil Engineering Department from 2005 through 2015. During this period, the department and its programs were expanded and transformed. Among the most important lessons we learned were: (1) design definitions vary across disciplines and departments need to explicitly develop design guidelines across all programs offered, (2) significant efficiency can be gained by developing one set of Program Education Objectives and Outcomes encompassing all programs offered, and (3) capstone design classes will need much attention to detail if a single class is for multiple degree programs [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]