I’VE LONG THOUGHT that the most fun job on campus is that of the civil engineering student adviser. Imagine the conversations. Student: “What can I do with a civil engineering degree?” Adviser: “Pull your chair closer. This is going to take a while.”

Lots. You can do lots.

You could design skyscrapers. Manage air traffic. Plan urban spaces. And on and on.

In these pages you’ll meet civil engineering alums doin these exact jobs, along with an alum in public service and a grad who conceived the ingenious structure of our beloved McNamara Alumni Center, where I type these words. These are all alums who are having a profound influence in their communities. They’re invisible heroes. But not invisible to us.

We’re also taking you inside the remarkable building where these alums studied. If you’ve never seen the civil engineering building, you’re in for a treat. It’s an architectural marvel—at once both elegant and utilitarian, funky and conventional.

A world-class civil engineering education is more important now than ever. STEM skills are in high demand, you may have heard. The world is evolving at the speed of technology and employers need grads who can keep up.

And right now, there aren’t enough of them. In a recent study from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), 51 percent of engineering firms report turning down work due to staffing shortages. The ACEC also reports that more engineers are retiring or leaving the workforce than entering it—a disparity than only promises to grow as the population ages. The industry’s solutions may be currently studying at 500 Pillsbury Drive Southeast.

Of course, civil engineering is just one field in which the U is shaping tomorrow. Stroll around campus . . . you may find the 2029 head of a Fortune 500 company walking into the Carlson School for a management class. A 2031 executive director of a nonprofit strolling into the Humphrey School of Public Affairs for a budgeting class. The manager of a 2034 major league baseball team taking swings at Siebert Field. Anything is possible with a University of Minnesota education.

Ask Dan Wilson. He played baseball at the University in the late 1980s, under the tutelage of legendary coach John Anderson. Wilson made it to the big leagues, playing 14 seasons—a remarkably durable tenure for a catcher. And now he’s on his way toward a legendary coaching career of his own as manager of the Seattle Mariners, who were eight outs away from the World Series last year.

There are magical futures being molded here at the U. If you keep your eyes open, you can see them. And if you’re lucky, you can collect stories about them. Which is what I do. Come to think of it, a student adviser in the civil engineering department has only the second most fun job on campus. I have the first.

Adam Wahlberg (M.P.A. '16) can be reached at wahl0172@umn.edu.

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