FORUM: Balancing basics and applications in teaching environmental and water resources engineering

This short forum suggest that engineering practitioners, asked about what they expect out of a fresh engineer immediately after their graduation in terms of on-job skills and technical training, prefer that an engineer be able to hit the road and run without too much on-job training. It suggests that engineering undergraduate curricula need to have a good balance in offering both basics and applications to satisfy students who may enter a professional career right away or elect to pursue their graduate studies. The challenges to this are briefly considered.