All six members of the senior class in UALR’s civil and construction engineering program have passed the American Institute of Constructor’s (AIC) Associate Constructor (AC) exam on the first try.

This marks the first time every senior in the civil and construction engineering program passed the exam on the first attempt.

The eight-hour exam is administered nationwide only twice per year.

With 378 students out of 788 passing nationwide, the national pass rate on the March 2015 administration was 48 percent, according to Associate Professor Nickolas Jovanovic of the Department of Construction Management and Civil and Construction Engineering.

“This achievement suggests that the construction courses at UALR are preparing students to meet and exceed national standards,” said Jovanovic.

“It demonstrates that the entire senior class of civil and construction engineering students is very well prepared to make the transition from college to the workplace or graduate school,” he said.

The names of the six members of the senior class, along with their internship employers, are:

• Sarah Brown, McCarthy Building Companies

• Joshua Hendricks, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

• Angela Matika, Prospect Steel

• Whitney Montague, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

• Esteban Rodriguez, Crossland Construction, and CDI Contractors

• Essie Whitmore, Entergy Arkansas Nuclear One, and CDI Contractors

In addition, these six seniors have been working with structural engineers at Cromwell Architects Engineers and CDI Contractors every other week since last August on their senior design project, “Seismic Retrofit Feasibility Study for the American Red Cross Facility in Little Rock, Arkansas.”

Upon graduation, the students will be eligible to apply for AIC’s Associate Constructor certification, which will identify them as professionally competent because of verifiable skills and knowledge levels, according to the AIC website.

The civil and construction engineering program, housed in the Department of Construction Management & Civil and Construction Engineering within UALR’s Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology, is the only program of its kind in the U.S.

It prepares students to be both civil engineers and construction engineers in a single degree program, said Jovanovic.

In addition to completing a rigorous 128-hour curriculum, students in the civil and construction engineering program must also complete three professional requirements in order to graduate:

• Pass the Associate Constructor (AC) nationwide exam
• Pass the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) nationwide exam
• Obtain at least 800 hours of engineering or construction-related work experience