2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Bridging to an Uncertain Future: Active Learning for Holistic Attitudes in Pre-College Civil Engineering (Evaluation)

Presented at Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE) Technical Session 15: Interdisciplinary and Integrated Approaches to STEM Learning

With continuously evolving civil engineering technology and design objectives, developing skills that prepare students for an uncertain future is essential (Evaluation). This work examines the effectiveness of learning activities designed for a one-week summer course with 2 cohorts and 65 students during Summer 2025. The course aimed to (i) cultivate holistic attitudes in pre-college students while introducing them to civil engineering and (ii) promote an engineering mindset and increase motivation to study civil engineering in college. To achieve these goals, all course activities used engineering context as a platform to develop holistic attitudes, including creativity, adaptability, applicability, and professional skills. However, some course activities focused more on developing holistic attitudes, while others focused more on covering technical content. Students also completed a team final project designing and presenting a bridge connecting two cities. This project highlighted the importance of civil engineering to society, the interdisciplinary nature of the field, and encouraged students to apply their developed holistic attitudes and technical knowledge. To evaluate the success of the course in meeting the established objectives, students answered an anonymous feedback questionnaire and pre- and post-course surveys. Descriptive results suggest gains across all attitudes, strongest for applicability. Wilcoxon tests compared pre- and post-course surveys. Results suggest positive impacts on student confidence in problem-solving and applying learned knowledge. Additionally, the quantitative analysis indicates statistically significant improvement in stated student understanding of civil engineering relevance. On the other hand, the results suggest no statistically significant impact of the course on stated student motivation to practice engineering and to study civil engineering in college. The findings indicate that a compact summer course utilizing active learning components and a team-based project can strengthen holistic attitudes in pre-college learners. Study limitations included the weeklong period with each cohort and only having one iteration of the course. These limited the volume of content that could be covered and did not provide the instructors with the opportunity to improve the course with additional iterations. Future work will focus on increasing civil engineering outreach to pre-college students and developing improved methodologies to better foster student motivation to study civil engineering.

Authors

Bruno Cesar Krause Moras http://orcid.org/0009-0003-1243-1238 Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE) [biography]

Bruno Cesar Krause Moras is a Ph.D. candidate in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Purdue University and is also pursuing a certificate in Engineering Education at the same institution. He serves in leadership roles in various student organizations, is an active member of the ASEE, ASCE, and Tau Beta Pi, and has received several awards for teaching and mentoring. His research focuses on addressing critical challenges to foster sustainable and efficient transportation.
Kaitlyn Kondos Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE) [biography]

Kaitlyn Kondos is a Ph.D. student in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Purdue University. Her research interests include the behavior of structural steel and steel-plate composite (SC) systems, with an emphasis on their performance under seismic loading.
Hyewon Seo Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE) [biography]

Hyewon Hailey Seo is a Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at Purdue University, concentrating in construction engineering. She specializes in construction safety and advanced work packaging. Her research focuses on the neuro-ergonomic assessment of exoskeleton use in construction and the data-driven evaluation of ergonomic interventions. She also served as the lead graduate student on Construction Industry Institute (CII) Research Team 405, investigating how to leverage organizational culture for AWP success. She earned both her M.S. and B.S. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from South Korea.
Dr. Omar Faruqe Hamim http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-0976-7940 Purdue University – West Lafayette (College of Engineering) [biography]

Omar Faruqe Hamim is a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Purdue University. His research lies at the intersection of transportation systems, electric mobility, geospatial analytics, and cybersecurity, with a strong emphasis on advancing infrastructure planning for next generation mobility. His career vision is to promote sustainable and resilient transportation systems by integrating behavioral insights, geospatial models, and secure infrastructure planning, contributing to both academia and practice.
Manuel Salmeron http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7262-7652 Purdue University [biography]

Manuel Salmerón is currently a 4th year PhD student in Structural Engineering at Purdue University, under the supervision of Prof. Shirley J. Dyke. He received a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a M.Sc. in Structural Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His research interests include cyber-physical testing, stochastic modeling of degradation phenomena, and the development of decision-making tools for socio-technical systems.
Geoffrey H Graff Purdue University – West Lafayette (College of Engineering) [biography]

Geoff Graff (RA, NCARB, LEED AP BD+C, Assoc. DBIA) is a Senior Lecturer in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Purdue University. As an architect and educator, his professional work, design research, and instruction focus on embracing the design-construction interface to effectively and sustainably develop projects, practices, and professionals. In recent years, this has included direction of the Lyles School's HS Summer course offering. Prior to joining Purdue, he taught at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, and as part of establishing a new architecture program at South Dakota State University.

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