THE LOSS OF WIT IN ENGINEERING CAREERS. THE ENGINEER "THINKER"

The modern IT tools have brought notable improvements and speed in calculations and methods used in engineering careers, but the price we are paying is the blind faith in those results, to the detriment of the engineer "thinker." It is our belief that this component of "genius" has been lost greatly in the teaching of Civil Engineering.

This article wants to show a new way of viewing the creative work of the project, as the culmination of knowledge acquired during the studies. For this end, we develop a series of innovative tools in the teaching of Civil Engineering, which allows focus, from the beginning, the way of dealing the project creation in a wide aspect, and seek to open the student's mind to more than numerical checks.

Finally, the results obtained in the “final grade project”, supervised by the application of these tools during the last few years, are exposed and compared to the challenges and vision of the engineer, which several American and European universities advocate.

In resume, we try to give ideas and means to recover in Civil Engineering Schools the affection for the “well made” project, the “well analyzed” project, and the contribution of real constructive solutions, developing in students the capacity for creation and innovation, the adaptation to work in multicultural environments, the sensitivity to adjust to economic and social changes, and the skills for public communication.