Positioning the Civil Engineering Department to move into the top 20 programs in the country is an ambitious but achievable goal. Reaching this goal will require a significant effort from the faculty and significant resources from the university and its alumni and friends.
Auburn's Civil Engineering Department must have a greater impact on the profession of civil engineering through research, teaching and outreach in order to gain the recognition required to attain a top twenty ranking. The key to having a greater impact on the profession of Civil Engineering is to increase the size of the research and graduate programs and to make steady improvements in the quality of all aspects of Civil Engineering at Auburn.
Moving forward requires an evaluation of how the size of Auburn's programs compare to the size of top 20 schools and the development of targets for the future sizes of the programs. These targets are based on benchmarking with civil engineering programs that are in the top 20 according to U.S. News & World Report. Benchmarking data were obtained from Engineering News-Record. A summary table is attached.
Data in the attached table indicate that the average performance of the existing civil engineering faculty group (Grad. / F-T Fac.) is very competitive with schools in the top 20. Increasing Auburn Civil Engineering graduate enrollment by 1 student per faculty member (approximately 20 students total) will place the performance of Auburn faculty above seven of the top 20 schools listed. Data in the attached table indicate that Auburn's 22 undergraduates per full-time faculty member are excessive. The most critical step to moving Auburn's Civil Engineering program into the top 20 is adding faculty. Adding faculty will allow the size of the undergraduate program to be managed so faculty have more time for research. This along with the numbers of graduate students and research dollars associated with a larger faculty will allow Auburn to compete with top 20 schools on an absolute basis.
Civil engineering undergraduate enrollment at Auburn in the fall 2002 and spring 2003 was 474 and 422, respectively. Efforts are underway to improve the quality of the undergraduate program. These efforts are predicted to result in an average enrollment of 400. Top 20 programs typically have low student to faculty ratios. Using the largest of these ratios of 15, a target of 27 full-time faculty was established based on the target size of the undergraduate program. Top 20 programs average approximately 5 graduate students per faculty member. At a target faculty of 27, 5 graduate students per faculty member results in a target graduate enrollment of approximately 140. Auburn's COE goal for 2008 is a graduate enrollment of 30 percent PhD students which results in a target of 40 for Civil Engineering.
Auburn's Civil Engineering Department has a talented group of 19 faculty in seven specialty areas as follows: Construction Engineering and Management (1), Environmental (5), Geotechnical (2), Hydraulics/Hydrology (2), Pavements and Construction Materials (2), Structures (4), and Transportation (3). Searches are underway to fill a vacant position in the Structures area and to fill a new position in the Transportation Construction area. In the past five years the department has been strengthened by significant support from the Transportation Peak of Excellence. A total of four faculty positions have been added in three of the seven specialty areas. By spring 2004, there will be 21 civil engineering faculty which is comparable to the number of faculty in the early 1990's.
In the next five years, this planned growth will continue so that the targets stated above can be achieved. The numbers of faculty planned for each specialty area are: Construction Engineering and Management (2), Environmental (6), Geotechnical (3), Hydraulics/Hydrology (3), Pavements and Construction Materials (3), Structures (6), and Transportation (4). These numbers of faculty in each specialty area will allow the members of each area greater opportunity to pursue research by buying out of teaching load. Also, this faculty makeup builds on existing strengths in the department.
