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Creativity plays an important role in engineering problem solving, particularly when solving an ill-structured problem, and has been a topic of increasing research interest in recent years. Prior research on creativity has been conducted in problem solving settings, predominantly focusing on undergraduate engineering students, including how faculty can foster creativity in engineering students, how engineering faculty perceive their students’ creativity, and how to measure it. However, more work is needed to examine engineering faculty and practitioner perspectives on the role of creativity when they solve an engineering problem themselves. Since engineering students learn problem solving, at least initially, mainly from their professors, it is essential to understand how faculty perceive their own creativity in problem solving. Similarly, given that practitioners solve ill-structured engineering problems on a regular basis in the workplace and that most of the students go on to work in the engineering industry when they graduate and ultimately become practitioners, it is also important to explore practitioner perspectives on creativity in problem solving settings. As part of an ongoing NSF-funded study, this paper investigates how engineering faculty’s and practitioners’ creativity influences their problem solving processes, how their perspectives on creativity in a problem solving environment differ, and what factors impact their creativity. Five tenure-track faculty in civil engineering and five practitioners were interviewed after they solved an ill-structured engineering problem. Participants’ responses were transcribed and coded using initial coding. This paper discusses their responses to semi-structured interview questions. The findings suggest that faculty and practitioners feel more creative when they are familiar with the subject area of a problem. If they are aware of a particular solution that has been developed and used before or have access to resources to look them up, they may not necessarily embrace creativity. The findings indicated differences not only across faculty and practitioners but also within the faculty and practitioner participants. Similarities and differences between faculty and practitioners in creative problem solving and the themes emerged are discussed and recommendations for educators are provided. 

Workplace engineering problems are different from the problems that undergraduate engineering students typically encounter in most classroom settings. Students are most commonly given well-structured problems which have clear solution paths along with well-defined constraints and goals. This paper reports on research that examines how undergraduate engineering students perceived solving an ill-structured problem. Eighteen undergraduate civil engineering students were asked to solve an ill-structured engineering problem, and were interviewed after they completed solving the problem. This qualitative study is guided by the following research question: What factors do students perceive to influence their solving of an ill-structured civil engineering problem? Students’ responses to seven follow-up interview questions were transcribed and reviewed by research team members, which were used to develop codes and themes associated with these responses. Students’ transcripts were then coded following the developed codes. The analysis of data revealed that students were generally aware of the main positives and negatives of their proposed solutions to the ill-structured problem and reported that their creativity influenced their solutions and problem solving processes. Student responses also indicated that specific life events such as classes that they had taken, personal experiences, and exposure to other ill-structured problems during an internship helped them develop their proposed solution. Given students’ responses and overall findings, this supports creating learning environments for engineering students where they can support increasing their creativity and be more exposed to complex engineering problems. 

Solving open-ended complex problems is an essential part of being an engineer and one of the qualities needed in an engineering workplace. In order to help undergraduate engineering students develop such qualities and better prepare them for their future careers, this study is a preliminary effort to explore the problem solving approaches adopted by a student, faculty, and practicing engineer in civil engineering. As part of an ongoing NSF-funded study, this paper qualitatively investigates how three participants solve an ill-structured engineering problem. This study is guided by the following research question: What are the similarities and differences between a student, faculty, and practicing engineer in the approach to solve an ill-structured engineering problem? Verbal protocol analysis was used to answer this research question. Participants were asked to verbalize their response while they worked on the proposed problem. This paper includes a detailed analysis of the observed problem solving processes of the participants. Our preliminary findings indicate some distinct differences between the student, professor, and practicing engineer in their problem solving approaches. The student and practicing engineer used their prior knowledge to develop a solution, while the faculty did not make any connection to outside knowledge. It was also observed that the faculty and practicing engineer spent a great deal of time on feasibility and safety issues, whereas the student spent more time detailing the tool that would be used as their solution. Through additional data collection and analysis, we will better understand the similarities and differences between students, professionals, and faculty in terms of how they approach an ill-structured problem. This study will provide insights that will lead to the development of ways to better prepare engineering students to solve complex problems. 

Marine mussels use catechol‐rich interfacial mussel foot proteins (mfps) as primers that attach to mineral surfaces via hydrogen, metal coordination, electrostatic, ionic, or hydrophobic bonds, creating a secondary surface that promotes bonding to the bulk mfps. Inspired by this biological adhesive primer, it is shown that a ≈1 nm thick catecholic single‐molecule priming layer increases the adhesion strength of crosslinked polymethacrylate resin on mineral surfaces by up to an order of magnitude when compared with conventional primers such as noncatecholic silane‐ and phosphate‐based grafts. Molecular dynamics simulations confirm that catechol groups anchor to a variety of mineral surfaces and shed light on the binding mode of each molecule. Here, a ≈50% toughness enhancement is achieved in a stiff load‐bearing polymer network, demonstrating the utility of mussel‐inspired bonding for processing a wide range of polymeric interfaces, including structural, load‐bearing materials.