Creativity and Innovation as Part of the Civil Engineering BOK

This paper contends that the imminent review of the Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge (CEBOK) should include consideration of adding explicit treatment of creativity and innovation knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs). Some reasons offered for this change are: maintaining U.S. global leadership, enhancing national security, stimulating organizational vitality, enjoying the satisfaction of doing what has not been done, and practicing effective stewardship with the superior abilities of engineering students to enable them to achieve even more professional success and significance. The paper explores whether or not creativity/innovation are already adequately included or implicit in the CEBOK, already addressed by ABET, already in CE education programs, and/or already in the Engineer Intern experience. The conclusion is largely negative, that is, the CEBOK and ABET give minimal attention to creativity/innovation; creativity/innovation receive minimal to moderate emphasis in most undergraduate CE programs and when they do it is mostly in the last year; and, while there is considerable talk in the CE practice world about creativity/innovation, there is very little commitment to it including during engineering internships. The paper then turns to ways to strengthen the presence of creativity/innovation in the CEBOK. Options explored include a new outcome and a creativity/innovation theme. Finally, the discussion offers some tactics for fitting creativity/innovation into an already full curriculum and a strategy that would incorporate many of those tactics. All of the preceding is offered with the hope that it will stimulate thinking about creativity/innovation as ASCE moves toward the next CEBOK, or amendments to the existing version.