2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Civil engineering (CE) is a broad field with a wide variety of subdisciplines. This work explores first year CE students’ knowledge of the field of CE and interest in each of four subdisciplines (geotechnical, structural, transportation, and water resources) that form the CE program at [UNIVERSITY REDACTED]. Despite the breadth of the field, student interest in the civil engineering program at [UNIVERSITY REDACTED] has historically seemed to lean heavily towards the subdiscipline of structural engineering over the other subdisciplines covered in the program. The suspected trend towards structural engineering is not only observed in conversations with students but also in observations of elective course selections. This work seeks to confirm or deny the presence of this trend by surveying first-year civil engineering students prior to and after completion of a civil engineering specific introductory engineering course. A mixed methods analysis of survey data from first year CE students prior to and after completion of a CE specific introductory course is presented to shed light on incoming student’s prior knowledge of the field of civil engineering as well as how students’ subdiscipline interests change from before to after completing the introductory course. The outcome of this work is in support of continued development of introductory civil engineering curriculum for first year students as well as the recruitment and retention of those students.