CENE 150 Civil and Environmental Engineering for a Sustainable Future

Your assignment specifies that you need to develop a video having a historical perspective in the form of a case study and that a modern day case study report is used to make a comparison to modern times.

In that case, there are a lot of topics you WON'T want to choose, because many topics are not written about in case studies. For example, you probably won't find an engineering case study about:

• marshmallow peeps
• Wilfred Brimley
• how to tend sheep

Instead, your topic must include:

1. Decisions and solutions made by civil and environmental engineers
2. The well-being of the environment or public health
3. The impact or influence on society, culture, public policy, or the economy

If your topic is a single word or simple phrase, it's probably too broad, like these topics:

• climate change
• the Eiffel Tower
• bridges

When topics are too broad like this, your writing ends up turning into a long definition. Instead, topics should investigate or analyze something. 

Sometimes it's hard to get from a broad topic to a research question that investigates something. To get started, think about your topic in these terms:

• Who is involved or affected?
• What problem would you like to resolve? Or, what is a possible solution?
• When is this topic relevant? Right now, or more historical?
• Where (geographically) is the topic relevant?
• How did it happen?

Your topic doesn't need to be stated as a question. It could be a statement or hypothesis to find evidence for - or against.

It's possible to choose a topic that's so narrow, obscure, or weird that NO information sources exist on it - or, at least no case studies. For example:

• What percentage of commercial airline crashes was traced to negligent maintenance during the ten years immediately preceding and following deregulation of the airline industry?

That example demonstrates another problem: the answer would simply be a percentage, and you wouldn't be able to stretch that into an essay. 

You may need to do a preliminary search on your topic to make sure you can actually find a case study about it. As long as you start the assignment early enough, you should be able to find a topic and a case study no problem!