Newsletter - Spring 2001 - Civil Engineering Department

HELP!

THE DEAN OF ENGINEERING HAS TARGETED THE CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT FOR ELIMINATION. IF THIS IS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN, OTHER PROGRAMS WILL SOON FOLLOW. PLEASE READ ON FOR BACKGROUND AND HOW YOU CAN HELP.

This newsletter has a different format than usual. It is exclusively dedicated to a discussion of the proposal brought forth by Dean of Engineering Robert Balmer to phase out the Civil Engineering program over the next three to five years, and our strategy for developing a response and counter-proposal. The newsletter will be sent to a diverse audience, including Civil Engineering students, alumni, and parents; Union College faculty and administrators, area engineering professionals, as well as the alumni of the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering programs. The first part of the newsletter presents a letter from the Civil Engineering Advisory Council, a group of alumni and practicing engineers who meet to review and assess the Civil Engineering program and make recommendations on where we should go in the future. Their letter will give you guidance as to how you can contribute directly to the effort. At the end of the newsletter are two letters from student representatives giving their interpretation of the situation and suggestions for assistance. The remainder of the newsletter is dedicated to a historical perspective of how the situation developed, the issues involved, and some of the risks inherent in the actions proposed by Dean Balmer which were not brought out in his briefing or in the GLEAN Team report.

We feel that we have a good chance of reversing this recommendation, providing we get adequate support from all our constituencies. You represent our most important constituencies. Together we can assure that the program gets farther down the path towards its second 150 years. We look forward to working closely with you to preserve the rich heritage of the Union College Civil Engineering program for the benefit of the present and future generations.

Historical Background

Civil Engineering at Union began in 1845. It is the oldest program at a liberal arts institution, and is one of the oldest of any type in the country. However, even before that, Union was graduating technically trained people who became the leading engineers of the time. For example, Squire Whipple, Class of 1830, developed the analysis methods still used today for determining the stresses in truss members. He had patented his Whipple Bowstring Truss before the official start of engineering at Union. From that time to the present Union has continued to graduate technically competent engineers who also have the advantage of a rich liberal arts background. Our graduates have excelled at communications, management, and leadership. The program was accredited in the first year of engineering accreditation, and has been continuously accredited since.

In talking with Gil Harlow and others who have been at Union for a long time, it seems that there has always been an uneasy alliance between the liberal arts and engineering. Both sides have been known to disparage the other in stereotypical fashion. Some on the `other side' of campus would just as soon see the elimination of engineering to provide resources to “elevate the intellectual atmosphere of the College.” However, we have many staunch supporters from the liberal arts. The fact remains that engineering has been, and continues to be, an important part of the College that lends much to its strength and uniqueness.

In the 1960s the enrollments in engineering and the liberal arts at Union were almost on the same footing. In the seventies, as the size of the College doubled and women were matriculated, engineering shrank to somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of the student population. At the same time, computer science emerged as a discipline and was introduced to Union by members of the Electrical Engineering Department. Thus it became attached to the Engineering Division of the College even though it is not an engineering discipline, and acts as a service department for the entire campus.

During the 1990s combined enrollments in engineering and computer science shrank further to somewhere between 16 and 20 percent of the student population. The actual percentages varied from year to year. The reasons for this decline are not readily apparent, because we maintained our quality of instruction and our graduates were well received by the professions. We did lag behind other schools in acquisition of state-of-the-art laboratory equipment. Such equipment adds little to the marginal quality of the student laboratory experience, but looks good for admissions tours and marketing. Our facilities are in dire need of renovation, although the Olin Building and some cosmetic enhancements in other buildings have helped the appearance. Another factor may be the lack of marketing and advertising support that engineering has received. However, a more important contributor has probably been the steady increase in tuition costs at Union, and the lack, until very recently, of any merit aid for highly qualified students. Even though there are many advantages to our programs, such as the liberal arts environment, close interaction with the faculty, opportunities for undergraduate research, the term abroad program, to name just a few, the economic bottom line is often the deciding factor.

It is no secret that engineering programs are expensive. Engineering faculty have to be paid more than liberal arts faculty because of market pressures. State-of-the-art laboratory equipment, facilities, and multi-media and computer laboratory classrooms are all very expensive, but necessary if we are to compete.

Now the College finds itself in an increasingly tight financial squeeze. Our endowment managers have not taken full advantage of the recent Bull market, and additions to the endowment have not kept up with advances made by our competitor institutions. Tuition cannot be increased fast enough to keep up with rising costs. Therefore, as is happening in corporate America, the President is pressuring Robert Balmer, Dean of Engineering to do more with less.

In the Fall of 2000, the President, using a donation from a member of the Board of Trustees, hired an outside consulting firm to provide suggestions about the future course of engineering at Union. This group consisted of business consultants, not engineers, and they freely admitted they had no qualifications to give recommendations on the technical aspects of engineering at Union. They saw themselves acting as facilitators to draw out of the faculty what the future of engineering at Union should be. They were known as the GLEAN Team. Dean Balmer was asked to form another group, the CORE Team, which would act as the focal point of the planning process at Union. For the CORE Team he selected himself, a Mechanical Engineering professor, an Electrical Engineering professor, the Dean of Faculty, the Chair of the Faculty Executive Committee, and the Associate Dean for Information Technology. When challenged by the Civil Engineering faculty as to why he didn't include a Civil Engineer on the CORE Team, Dean Balmer's response was that there wasn't room on the committee and he really didn't need to have CE represented.

The CORE Team traveled to California to meet with the GLEAN Team in October, and the GLEAN Team came to Union in December to interview all engineering faculty and selected other faculty. During the fall and winter Dean Balmer kept advising the Division that we needed to embrace this process and use it as a vehicle to meet our needs. He also said he was getting feedback from the President that the Board of Trustees thought engineering was too expensive, and that we needed to do something to make engineering unique and a beacon for the rest of the College to follow. The Civil Engineering faculty actively participated in several committees that Dean Balmer set up to complement the GLEAN and CORE Team activities.

In late December Dean Balmer sent a memo to the Engineering Division outlining his concept of “Converging Technologies for a Changing World” (CTCW) as a theme that would propel our engineering programs to excellence and provide an answer to the President's mandate. At this point no mention was made that Civil Engineering would not be a part of this effort, or that Dean Balmer thought Civil Engineering didn't fit into CTCW. It should also be noted that Dean Balmer's plan concentrated on engineering, rather than proposing changes that would benefit both engineering and the liberal arts.

On 3 January Dean Balmer met with the CE faculty and announced that he was under a great deal of pressure from the Board of Trustees, through the President, to get rid of Civil Engineering. This was the first inkling we had that Civil Engineering was being singled out for elimination. Dean Balmer assured us he was doing everything he could to save us, but that if we were to survive, we, independently, would have to come up with a proposal that would show we were unique and could fit into the CTCW theme. However, he couldn't, or wouldn't, give us any guidance as to what we had to do to meet his or the President's expectations. He also said that he had to have our results in two weeks so he could present them to the President.

We felt at the time that we were being set up to fail, but nonetheless we embarked on the task. With the help of our Advisory Council, we came up with a concept document that showed how Civil Engineering fit into the CTCW theme, and went beyond Dean Balmer's proposal to show how engineering and the liberal arts could be more effectively integrated together to strengthen the whole College, not just engineering. We got the plan to him before his two-week deadline. The plan was somewhat sketchy, and didn't contain specific course proposals, because we felt those were not appropriate at this stage.

We presented the plan to Dean Balmer and the Chairs of the other departments in the Division. In that meeting Dean Balmer stated that he felt we had done what we had to do in response to his directive. The Chairs wondered why we had done this in isolation without involving the rest of the Division. We tried to explain to them the ultimatum and time-frame Dean Balmer had put us under. The Chairs also wanted to see specific course proposals. Dean Balmer said he would present our plan to the President. We asked that a representative of the Civil Engineering Department be allowed to attend that meeting to explain our proposal and thinking. Dean Balmer said that wouldn't be necessary.

In response to the criticisms voiced at the meeting with Dean Balmer and the Chairs, and from other faculty who reviewed the initial report, we prepared a second document, Highlights of the New Curriculum Proposal: Civil Engineering for the 21^st Century. This contained the original proposal, along with goals and implementation strategies, along with a four-year listing of possible courses for the program. It remains very much a work in progress, but considering the time constraints we were put under, the CE plan produced an excellent framework that goes way beyond what Dean Balmer was proposing. A copy of this document has been placed on the web site: http://civil.union.edu/crisis.htm.

Our plan was never discussed at a Division meeting, and although Dean Balmer told us that the President received our plan, it is evident that Dean Balmer did not support us in his conversation with the President. In fact, it is doubtful that Dean Balmer even thoroughly read our document himself.

On Monday 5 March Dean Balmer and Christie Sorum, the Dean of Faculty and VP for Academic Affairs, called a meeting of all CE faculty. Dean Balmer basically ran the meeting. He started out by telling us that he had made a presentation to the Board of Trustees earlier in March about his "Converging Technology" program. In it he asked the Board to support his plan to phase out the CE program over the next few years to provide additional faculty resources to embrace CTCW. His reasoning for selecting Civil Engineering was that he felt it was least consistent with his vision of what CTCW should be at Union. Dean Balmer acknowledged that we have a strong program, but stated that doesn't matter at this point.

On Friday, 9 March, Dean Balmer distributed highlights of his presentation to the Board of Trustees. This document has been placed on the Web site: proposing. A copy of this document has been placed on the web site: http://civil.union.edu/crisis.htm for your review. On the same day he distributed copies of the final GLEAN Team report. The full text and illustrations of this report are available on the same web site. It is apparent that Dean Balmer had a great deal of influence in the preparation of this report.

On Saturday, 10 March, Dean Balmer spent almost two hours with the Civil Engineering Advisory Council presenting his plan and answering questions. Approximately 40 people were in attendance, including Civil Engineering regular and adjunct faculty and staff, the Advisory Council, students, and ASCE Student Chapter officers. A transcript of the meeting has been prepared and placed on the web site proposing. A copy of this document has been placed on the web site: http://civil.union.edu/crisis.htm for your review. Highlights of the important issues discussed are given in the next section.

Issues Brought up and Discussed at the 10 March Meeting

Dean Balmer is under pressure from President Hull to make engineering at Union unique. The President wants engineering to drive the rest of the campus towards excellence. However, the President will not give any additional resources to the engineering division to accomplish this goal, despite proposing twenty new faculty lines for the rest of the campus as part of his “Plan for Union.”

In partial answer to the President's mandate, Dean Balmer has come up with the concept that Union should embrace “Converging Technologies for a Changing World” as a theme. His definition of Converging Technologies is the marriage of new technologies with the various engineering and liberal arts disciplines to produce end products that will benefit society. The plan for this `theme' has been developed by Dean Balmer, in consultation with two engineering faculty, one from Mechanical and one from Electrical Engineering. He did not consult his Advisory Council, and did not include anyone from CE in his planning.

To free up the resources he claims he needs to implement CTCW, Dean Balmer has proposed eliminating the Civil Engineering program over a period of three to five years, and reallocating its faculty lines and resources. However, on closer examination it is revealed that he really intends to use the CE faculty lines to ease the pressures in Computer Science, and reduce the present dependence on adjuncts. Only an insignificant portion would go towards Converging Technologies.

Dean Balmer feels he should reduce the number of adjuncts hired. He thinks that if we rely too heavily on adjuncts we are no better than state schools where the tuition is a fraction of what it is at Union. Dean Balmer stated that adjuncts are not real faculty, and the students should have better. He doesn't accept the fact that in CE adjuncts are a valuable part of the educational experience of the students. He also fails to acknowledge that the situation in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering is somewhat different in that those departments use adjuncts as “fill-ins” to free up Union faculty to teach graduate courses.

Computer Science is presently a part of the engineering division, although it services the whole campus. Because of a lack of regular faculty, CS uses large number of adjuncts. The President is forcing Dean Balmer to meet the needs of the CS department through attrition in the Engineering Division, rather than allocating some of the 20 new lines to CS. Dean Balmer was asked if he had considered recommending moving Computer Science to Division III, because they would fit better there and would then be eligible to compete for some of the new faculty lines. He said he had brought it up, was told by the administration that it was not possible, so didn't pursue it. Upon further questioning he admitted that he should revisit that area.

The plan to phase out Civil Engineering is Dean Balmer's, and Dean Balmer's alone. He claims that CE is least consistent with where he wants to go. He has not consulted the faculty of the Division, nor his own Advisory Council about this decision. He admitted to the audience that he doubts that any faculty in the Division support him in this part of the plan.

When asked why he didn't consult with his own Advisory Council, Dean Balmer replied that he didn't think it would do any good, and that he had essentially abandoned the Advisory Council because they didn't meet his needs. Two members of Dean Balmer's Advisory Council who are also on the CE Advisory Council were in the room when this was said. They have a much different interpretation of why the Dean's Council is largely defunct. The CE Advisory Council members also questioned Dean Balmer on how he could make such an important decision without involving all of the affected and interested stakeholders. Dean Balmer had no answer for this.

Dean Balmer was asked why he felt CE didn't fit into his Converging Technology umbrella. He replied that CE was an end user of Converging Technologies (CT) rather than a developer. When pressed further, he admitted that we can't compete with the large research universities, that the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering programs at Union would never have the resources to be CT developers, so in the curriculum they too would be end users. Dean Balmer also acknowledged that because of the complexity of many CT applications, the curricular emphasis would be more of a survey.

A faculty member asked Dean Balmer why he didn't seriously consider the Civil Engineering curriculum proposal. Dean Balmer replied that it was too little too late, that the CE faculty had dragged their heels in getting anything to him, and that the report had gotten to him the day before he had to meet with the President. What he failed to mention was that we had met the two-week deadline he gave us at the 3 January meeting. It was quite evident from his reply that he had never intended to seriously support our proposal, and probably didn't even read it.

Dean Balmer also claimed that it is difficult to develop corporate sponsorship for CE programs because of the nature of the Civil Engineering profession. He hopes to leverage his Converging Technology theme into corporate sponsorship of ME and EE. However, it is unclear what form the sponsorship might take if we are not doing development work. His confidence must have been further eroded by two recent developments. On Monday, March 12^th, the Governor announced that the five SUNY agricultural/technical colleges will be transformed into four year programs that will offer “intensive bachelor's degrees tailored to the needs of high-tech industries.” Then on Tuesday, 13 March the Daily Gazette reported that RPI has received a $360 million gift to develop Centers for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, and Electronic Media and Performing Arts, among other advancements at the University.

The probabilities that the “Converging Technologies” theme will enhance the reputation of the Engineering Division and Union College, will attract more high school students, and will make our graduates more employable are deemed to be very low by the Civil Engineering Advisory Board members. The marginal value to the students does not seem significant. The problems with integrated math/physics were brought up, and the students present at the meeting said it has been a disaster. Their comment was “if you can't integrate math and physics, how are you going to integrate converging technologies?” The consensus of the CE Advisory Council is that the risks involved with implementing CTCW should be unacceptable to the College. Additional support for this stand will be sought from Alumni and others.

The students also brought up the point that the undergraduate curriculum should be strong in the basics, that some Converging Technology instruction would be good, but not at the expense of fundamentals, and that it is likely the Converging Technology topics will change faster than the faculty can keep up no matter how much effort they put into it. It was everyone's feeling that the Converging Technology topics would add little to a graduate's value as an engineer.

The CE Advisory Council feels that Convergent Technologies should not be used as a smoke screen to get rid of a strong program such as Civil Engineering, and that instead the true underlying issues of economic need should be addressed by Dean Balmer, the President, and the Board of Trustees.

Risks in Adopting “Converging Technologies for a Changing World”

Risks Involved in Eliminating Civil Engineering

What is Next?

The President and Trustees need to be informed that Dean Balmer's recommendation to phase out Civil Engineering is based on faulty and biased reasoning, justifies the action with incorrect and misleading statements, and obscures the true issues. The risks need to be made known to them, and they need to be asked why they would support such an ill-conceived plan.

The issues involved with Computer Science need to be divorced from the issues associated with engineering. CS serves the whole College, so should be supported from College-wide resources. The extra faculty the CS Department needs should come from the 20 faculty positions proposed in the “Plan for Union.”

If “Converging Technologies for a Changing World” is adopted, it should only be offered on a trial, pilot scale, without sacrificing any current programs or assets. If CTCW doesn't work, it could be abandoned without crippling the remaining programs. Should we get rid of a strong, proven, program to fund a risky experiment?

Union should be pursuing what it does best; quality undergraduate engineering education. We should not chase fads or put extra resources into faltering graduate programs. We should concentrate on technical proficiency, professionalism and ethics, and better integration with the liberal arts. To further strengthen the programs, we should put increased emphasis on large-scale project and program management. These concepts were described in the proposal presented to Dean Balmer by the CE faculty, students, and alumni. The concepts are applicable to all four programs, and could be developed easily with resources that Union already has. This would make Union truly unique, and with proper marketing would attract students to increase enrollments. The marketing should also showcase our current strengths, such as close interaction with the faculty, undergraduate research, foreign study experience, and community service projects.

The recent American Society of Civil Engineers Report on the Nation's Infrastructure points up the importance and relevance of the program proposed by Civil Engineering. The report can be reviewed at http://www.asce.org/reportcard/. Literally trillions of dollars are needed for infrastructure modernization and repair, recycling technology development, and environmental protection and remediation. Sustainable Civil Engineering infrastructure development increasingly requires converging numerous technologies, and seemingly unrelated disciplines and differing – biological, physical, and behavioral – left-brained, right-brained, and sometimes no-brained - approaches to problem solving. A prominent Civil Engineering alum has said “successful Civil Engineering in the public arena requires converging a lot of no-brained thinking into a consensus.” In all probability it will be a dramatic acceleration of these converging activities that will allow Civil Engineering to drive down the cost of catching up with the enormous backlog of unmet needs in all of our infrastructures, and in remediating contamination. Mechanical, electrical, and computer systems engineers will be involved in this effort, but they will also need to apply similar concepts to the corporate sector. The program outlined by the Civil Engineering plan will prepare graduates from all four Union engineering programs to deal with these issues.

We need your assistance in identifying good, current examples of civil engineering projects or programs that demonstrate the orchestration of several engineering disciplines and subdisciplines together with non-engineering disciplines, e.g., anthropology, telecommunications, medicine, political science, economics, finance, law, history, etc. Also, any input you can give on the CE curriculum plan would be appreciated. We will be updating the plan for presentation to the President and the Board of Trustees. You can view the draft document at http://civil.union.edu/crisis.htm.

The CE Advisory Council met on March 10, 2001 with the department's faculty, students and Dean Balmer to discuss the Dean's proposal to eliminate the civil engineering department. At the meeting Dean Balmer explained how the March 8th memorandum, written by the Glean Team, on the "Future of Engineering at Union" would impact the resources needed by the Division of Engineering. Dean Balmer has recommended a program based on "Converging Technologies in a Changing World". He believes that the only way to make engineering at Union a 'cutting edge' program is to implement his program. The Dean highlighted some areas he believes are good examples of converging technologies; such as; nanoengineering, mechatronics, and bio-technology. To implement the Converging Technologies program the resources used by the civil engineering department must be reallocated. Dean Balmer has chosen the civil engineering department for elimination since in his mind, civil engineering is the least consistent with his vision. A copy of the Glean Team report and a presentation made by the Dean to the Board of Trustees are available on the web at http://civil.union.edu/crisis.htm. Further background information can be found in the current Civil Engineering Department's newsletter.

The advisory council, students and faculty challenged the Dean's recommendation and were skeptical about the converging technology concept. We pointed out that the Dean's report was based on limited and out-of-date data and on limited input from others. As an example, no one from the civil engineering department was involved in the discussions the Dean had in developing the report nor does his own Core Team agree with the recommendation of eliminating the civil engineering department. However, as stated in the Glean Team report, the proposal does have the support of President Hull and Dean of Faculty Sorum. In order to better challenge the Dean's recommendation, the advisory council needs your help. We would like to compile examples and experiences that will confirm the problems with implementing an undergraduate engineering program based on converging technologies. We would like your opinions on whether a topic as diverse as 'converging technologies' is applicable in an undergraduate college like Union. The areas we would like feedback on include, but are certainly not limited to:

The advisory council has concluded that the probability of the Dean's program succeeding is unlikely. Even Dean Balmer acknowledged that his proposal involves significant risks. If the Dean's recommendations are implemented eliminating a program with a record of success for 156 years, we believe the more likely outcome will be the termination of all engineering at Union as opposed to improving the remaining departments.

This matter is both real and urgent. While a final decision has not yet been made, the board of trustees is scheduled to take up the issue at their meeting in June. Please review both our letter and the Glean Team report and give us your comments within the next 10 days. We also need suggestions on how to best inform the board of trustees about the real impact of the Dean's recommendations. If we act together, in a concerted effort, we can impact the process and preserve the civil engineering department at Union.

The advisory council was also concerned how the proposed elimination of the civil engineering department should be explained to students already admitted to the Class of 2005. If any of you are involved in the recruitment of admitted students, please contact the admissions department to obtain proper direction. We should all meet our ethical obligations to the admitted students for the Class of 2005.

Please feel free to contact me, or any member of the advisory council, with your input by sending an e-mail message to civil_engineering@union.edu. The department will make sure that your message is delivered to the correct person.

If you have read the preceding literature, you can understand the dire straits that face the Civil Engineering Department and the Engineering Division as a whole. Pressure is coming from the administration to solve the resource problem, and the only solution, which has been found by the Dean of Engineering, is the elimination of the CE department.

As current engineering students at Union College we want to let the alumni know that we are doing everything and anything possible to preserve the great tradition which has been passed down to us. Currently, there is a student “task force” working with Dean Balmer to create a new curriculum. This curriculum will better incorporate the liberal arts with our engineering departments. Additionally, letters to ASCE and NSPE have been drafted and will be sent out to the corresponding societies once the Spring Term begins on April 1, 2001.

We are also working on-campus, giving open forums with Dean Sorum, Dean Balmer and President Hull as frequently as possible. Students are making as many public announcements as feasible on WRUC and through the Concordiensis. Beginning next term we should even have a couple of articles for the Daily Gazette and for the Union College Magazine. The problem is we need additional support and backing.

This is where we come to you. Please make as many correspondences to the College as you can. Just remember “Shawshank Redemption,” where Andy Dufresne sends a letter a week until he gets the books, and then proceeds to send two a week afterwards. The administration is not likely to ignore all the pressure from alumni, especially coupled with the incessant work of the current students.

The last major impact that all of us can have is to let them understand how financially dependent the school is on our donations. We ask you, please, to pledge never to give donations to the school again if the Civil Engineering Department is eliminated, or simply pledge donations to the Gil Harlow Fund pending the continuation of the CE department. If anyone can secure some corporate funding, please notify Tom Jewell of any opportunities, it would advance our argument ten-fold. One selling point to any Project Management Firm, the proposed curriculum may have a distinct project management and larger picture emphasis.

The school has lost all comprehension of the importance of the Civil Engineering Department to its livelihood. It no longer sees CE as a part of the whole, but merely as an un-wanted blemish against the “beauty” of an all Liberal Arts College.

After One Hundred and Fifty Six years at Union College, the oldest Engineering Department may be forced to close its doors.

It has recently been announced to the Union College community that the restructuring of Division IV does not include Civil Engineering. Robert Balmer, Dean of Engineering, in his effort to create a new , exciting, and “unique” engineering school within a small Liberal Arts college, found that the Civil Department least fits into the future of the division as a whole. This future direction is called “Converging Technologies.” With buzzwords like “Nano-Technologies”, Dean Balmer has sold his plan to add an entirely fresh Engineering curriculum, and this high-risk endeavor will take effect following a decision by the Board of Trustees in June of this year.

Students presently enrolled in the Civil Engineering Department are obviously shocked by this verdict handed down to them. We feel betrayed by an administration that has no clear vision of the rich tradition or the future here at Union. Through several meetings with Dean Balmer and other Deans, we have been led to believe that, through careful study, Civil Engineering is the best candidate for expulsion from Division IV. But this cannot be the case. Out of the five programs in Division IV Civil and Mechanical Engineering are the only ones ranked in college review reports (8^th and 7^th). Students informally polled strongly agree that they have received an excellent education in this field of study. Those points aside, in January Civil Engineering had proposed a curriculum restructuring that included sweeping change within the department and an aggressive integration into other disciplines on campus; all at the request of Dean Balmer. When he failed to even read the proposal, an eviction letter was issued this month. Our department has bent over backwards to fit into the Dean's vision for Engineering at Union. Why, then, is Civil Engineering not a part of Union's future?

The Students of the Union College Civil Engineering Department, with overwhelming support from other Division IV departments, plan to do whatever it takes to save Union's oldest engineering program. Through aggressive discussion, we hope to show how the Civil Department can viably fit into the future of Engineering at Union and continue to make Division IV Union's most “unique” feature.

However, we need your help! Please take a moment to reflect upon your Union College Civil Engineering experience and the effect that the deletion of that program would have on you and/or Union's future. Please direct any and all comments or suggestions to: