As published in the June 2025 issue of STRUCTURE magazine
You’re the structural engineer designing a new multi-story condominium on the Pacific coast. The architect wants clear, unobstructed views of the ocean, high ceilings, and a rooftop pool. The developer wants to maximize the number of sellable units and minimize costs. Your design needs to support the architect’s vision at a cost that works for the developer. And, of course, you need to design the building to withstand an earthquake.
Does this sound familiar? This is essentially the problem statement Schaefer team members give students in junior high school participating in the firm’s Makers+Shakers program. Students use K’nex to design their condo towers and test them on a homemade shake table. They get exposed to load path, resonance, torsional irregularities, and mass and stiffness irregularities. They learn to design with constraints and deal with competing objectives. But most importantly, they get exposure to the structural engineers leading the program, and the creativity + technical acumen necessary in our industry.
Makers+Shakers taps into the tangible aspects of ‘build and break’ structural engineering projects that students love and adds a dynamic component more engaging than static load tests.
The Growing Need for Civil Engineers
There is a sizable gap between the expected demand for civil engineers and the number of civil engineers entering the workforce. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting nearly 23,000 civil engineer job openings each year on average for the rest of this decade. But, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 15,051 bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering were awarded in 2021.
How do we bridge the gap? The team at Schaefer believes we can make a difference by sharing our passion with students and introducing a potential career path they may not be familiar with. Age matters – our program is built for seventh and eighth graders for a reason. Many undergraduate engineering programs have math and science prerequisites beyond high school graduation requirements, so we need to meet students when they still have time to plan their high school courses accordingly.
If students don’t see civil or structural engineering as a potential accessible and rewarding profession before high school, they may not have sufficient exposure to the math and science classes required to even apply to a college engineering program.
