International Conference on Engineering Education August 18--21, 2002, Manchester, U.K.

Columbia University's Departments of Civil Engineering & Engineering Mechanics and Earth & Environmental Engineering and Center for New Media Teaching and Learning have recently partnered to develop instructional and technological innovations to develop reflective practitioners of engineering that are prepared for the engineering tasks of the 21 century. The partnership has begun a series of initiatives to develop a working prototype, called OPTIMUS, that simulates urban scenarios by integrating a three-dimensional interface of urban environments with underlying databases and models that represent components or systems within these environments. The prototype will become the central feature of a redesigned undergraduate curriculum that exposes students to the issues and variables of the built environment early in their undergraduate experience. The new curriculum is anchored by a sequence of classes in the first three years that progressively expose the students to a variety of civil & environmental engineering problems of regional and national interest in a case study mode. The proposed curriculum will be progressively specialized as one moves to the higher grades, offering a student the opportunity to explore a subsystem given an understanding of the larger context of the problem. The expectation is that this early exposure to the context of civil & environmental engineering problems will: (a) motivate students to enter and complete programs of instruction, (b) deepen student appreciation of the fundamental theories of mathematics and mechanics, and (c) better prepare students to analyze complex, multidisciplinary problems.