Preparing Community College Students for Civil Engineering Profession through Design and Evaluation of a Three-Story Steel Plate Shear Wall

Future earthquake disaster prevention and preparation require that young professional civil engineers are trained and recruited into the next generation workforce for the purpose of public safety.Community colleges serve as the gateway to higher education for large numbers of students in the U.S., especially Hispanic and low-income students.Preparing community college students for their future civil engineering profession is of great significance to our society.In summer 2013, four sophomore civil engineering community college students participated in a ten-week summer research internship program at the School of Engineering of San Francisco State University.Supported by the NASA CIPAIR (Curriculum Improvements and Partnership Award for the Integration of Research) program, the four students were advised to use commonly used structural engineering design specifications and seismic provisions to design a three-story steel plate shear wall.Design tools and software applications such as Excel, MathCAD and SAP2000 were used by the students to achieve an economical and efficient structural design.This research internship program allows for the development of project management, time management and teamwork skills, thus helping strengthen students' knowledge of