Creation of a Co-Terminal BS/MS Civil Engineering Degree Program

A civil engineering department at a small teaching-focused polytechnic university recently overhauled its undergraduate program to develop a practice-focused, co-terminal, bachelor’s/master’s degree program. The department, staffed with five faculty members, has instructed an average enrollment of 126 students for the past two years. The faculty created a program that allows freshmen to enter at college algebra, expands technical elective offerings for both BS and BS/MS students, allows students to graduate with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in five years, and can be offered with minimal adjunct faculty. The new program supports the university’s hands-on practice-oriented mission and allows for the first degree program of its kind in the region to provide students with a graduate experience that satisfies the M/30 path to licensure proposed in the ASCE Policy Statement 465 and supported by the NCEES Model Law. The program structure and content was informed by the ASCE Body of Knowledge, ABET requirements, recent changes to the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, similar co-terminal programs at others schools, faculty background and university general education requirements. This paper provides a review of BS/MS programs, outlines the previous and current civil engineering degree programs at the institution, describes the process of crafting the new program and discusses the benefits and challenges of such a program for a small faculty body.