Assistance and Advocacy for CIEN 550

To whom it may concern:

To whom it may concern:

We, the below signed persons, write this letter in an effort to seek guidance and advocacy as undergraduate students, Civil Engineering students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. As students enrolled in the Transportation Design course CIEN 550, we have spent the entire Spring 2016 semester struggling to gain clarity and understanding in this particular course. During this time, each of us has attempted to contact our instructor, Ali Samieadel, for assistance and our concerns consistently remain unanswered or rebuffed. When students address concerning matters in class, Mr. Samieadel either refers us to our book or the course lecture slides to gain clarity, however; as we have explained to him on several occasions, simply reading a book or a PowerPoint slide fails to adequately teach us how to design transportation structures. In addition, as students attempt to grasp the material and ask questions in that regard, Mr. Samieadel seemingly gets frustrated with our inquisitions, as he is unable to adequately and accurately answer our concerns. While we are certain Ali does his very best to be present and productive during our class time, and instruct his students to the best of his ability, the reality of the matter is that we are not learning the material; we are not learning the techniques and principles articulated in our syllabus for understanding transportation and highway design; a ultimately, we are not learning the material that is supported by a Civil Engineering Bachelors degree. Although one would anticipate our understanding of the course material to be demonstrated in our assignments, homework and projects, this is sadly not the case. When we are assigned and submit assignments, we often find that there is a great deal of inconsistency in the grading, that some students are deducted points while others with the same answers are given full credit for the work completed, even when the work marked incorrect is proven to be correct. We have also noticed that when points are deducted, there is no explanation as to why they were marked off or of the work done incorrectly. If we inquire about these deductions we are not offered an explanation, we are simply told by Ali that he “does not grade the homework”. Such inconsistency has been demonstrated in our test grading as well. In fact, we were assigned a roadway design project almost two months ago, which we have all worked on gradually since that time. In that time, we have sought further instruction in an attempt to complete the assignment correctly, however, we have found that we are still unsure how to accurately perform the tasks associated with the project and we have also been instructed incorrectly. When we have brought these concerns to Ali’s attention, he has told us to refer to our textbook for clarity and to move forward with our design with the incorrect work completed. In essence, this project has turned into a series of trial and error, which has lead to nothing concrete and comprehensive. This project has made us feel like test subjects or guinea pigs, whose successes and failures are entirely accidental. Naturally this has frustrated our class because we continue to fail to learn the material properly. We each have varying comprehension of the course design project, which is worth a substantial amount of our course grade, class assignments, and most especially, the foundation and principles of transportation and highway design. Dr. Fini has been undoubtedly helpful in mediated our concerns and offering help to get us through the semester, and for that, we are grateful. However, we are earnestly seeking your guidance and would like to schedule an in person meeting to offer a better explanation of our cause. In essence, we are the future engineers that will enter the work force as representatives of this institution and we cannot do so confidently because knowing that their are clear inadequacies in our education, such as those we continue to experience from this course. We do hope this letter finds you well and we thank you for your consideration and assistance in advance.