Preparing Community College Students for Civil Engineering Profession through Design and Evaluation of a Three-Story Steel Plate Shear Wall
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Future earthquake disaster prevention and preparation require that young professional civil engineers are trained and recruited into the next generation workforce for the purpose of public safety.Community colleges serve as the gateway to higher education for large numbers of students in the U.S., especially Hispanic and low-income students.Preparing community college students for their future civil engineering profession is of great significance to our society.In summer 2013, four sophomore civil engineering community college students participated in a ten-week summer research internship program at the School of Engineering of San Francisco State University.Supported by the NASA CIPAIR (Curriculum Improvements and Partnership Award for the Integration of Research) program, the four students were advised to use commonly used structural engineering design specifications and seismic provisions to design a three-story steel plate shear wall.Design tools and software applications such as Excel, MathCAD and SAP2000 were used by the students to achieve an economical and efficient structural design.This research internship program allows for the development of project management, time management and teamwork skills, thus helping strengthen students' knowledge of seismic design in civil engineering and prepare them for successful academic and professional careers.The internship program therefore provides valuable mentorship for community college students during their transition to a four-year college and their decision to pursue a civil engineering profession.
Authors: Agustin Robles, David Alvarez, Jasmine Flores, Cham Htun, Cheng Chen, James Enright, Amelito Enrique, Wenshen Pong, Hamid Shahnasser, Hao Jiang, Hamid Mahmoodi
Institutions: Cañada College, San Francisco State University
Language: English
Subfield: Architecture
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W6925423285