2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

“We are not going to be engineers; Why are we learning this?” is a question that probably every professor teaching a structural design course to Construction Management (CM) students must have had to answer at least on one occasion. When taken at face value, this question may seem to have some merit to it as one may also ask: how does learning how to evaluate the lateral-torsional buckling capacity of a steel beam benefit a future construction manager? But when the issue is examined more carefully, it becomes very evident that the coverage of structural design concepts is essential for developing a solid understanding of structural behavior, which is a must-have for construction professionals. In this paper, the author enumerates the benefits of covering structural behavior concepts in CM programs, investigates the levels of coverage of these concepts in select programs based on published information, and identifies some of the challenges that may come in the way of CM students gaining an adequate understanding of structural behavior. Some learning and instructional techniques for overcoming these challenges are also presented. The author also conducted a survey among a number of students to assess their learning expectations from a structural behavior and design related course and the adequacy of some of the instructional methods that were used. The results of the survey are presented throughout the paper and a list of topics for the adequate coverage of structural concepts to construction management students is proposed.