Building Student Teamwork with the Student Geo-Challenge

Teamwork is an essential part of engineering practice. The Geo-Challenge is a teambuilding competition for civil engineering students, and both teambuilding and competition are useful for preparing students for engineering practice. while university education focuses on technical skills taught in the classroom environment, very little emphasis is placed on teamwork, even though the need to foster teamwork skills within the future engineering work force is recognized. Extramural student competitions can supplement classroom teaching and are effective in providing these essential skills. This paper describes three Geo-Challenge competitions and their effectiveness in building student teamwork. The background and competition details are provided. Competing students were given postcompetition surveys, and a statistical review of the results shows the goals of the Geo-Challenge were met. Those goals, along with other lessons learned, are discussed.