Investigating the Future of Transportation Engineering Education

This Research student poster paper discusses an investigation into the future of transportation engineering education. The transportation engineering field has a history of rapid change that coincides with the evolution of technology. As such, there is a need to prepare the transportation engineering students of today for the careers that will be available to them in the future. While there are numerous graduate transportation engineering programs in the United States, there is little research being conducted on the education given at this level. Currently, the majority of research on transportation engineering education is focused on the undergraduate level, specifically, on the average introductory course and capstone design course. The investigation presented here is therefore targeted toward transportation engineering graduate curricula at the master's level. We aim to answer the following questions: How will employment opportunities for transportation engineers evolve in the coming 5-10 years? How will the work that transportation engineers perform on a day-to-day basis evolve in the coming 510 years, both in private-sector and public-sector organizations? What topics should graduate-level transportation engineering curricula include in the future, such that the students develop the skills to be successful in the transportation sector of the next 5-10 years? Our investigation consists of in-depth one on one interviews with a range of academics involved in the teaching of graduate level transportation engineering courses and practitioners working in the field who have participated in the hiring of transportation engineers. We will be asking questions about the current and future needs of the field and the professionals within it. We will then compare the responses to current transportation engineering graduate programs' learning outcomes. This comparison will allow us to make recommendations 14 changes to established programs and to inform the creation of future programs.