The right skills for the jobEngineering in the Community (CEE 3090) debuted in the spring 2025 semester, offering students hands-on experience designing and building infrastructure that benefits local communities. The course was meant to teach students not only the skills to create infrastructure, but also the interpersonal skills needed to be successful in public projects.“As an engineer, you will be called upon many times during your career to help your community with technical needs, such as advising a local government or non-profit organization,” Trautmann wrote in the course description. “This course will introduce you to that part of engineering in which hard and soft skills merge, where you are the expert to whom those in your community turn for help.”That’s exactly what happened in the fall of 2024 when the Dryden Rail Trail Task Force turned to Trautmann and his students for help. As the group explored how to expand the trail east to Route 366, it encountered a major obstacle: A section of the trail had washed away, leaving a steep, impassable gap 16 feet deep and 45 feet wide.The Dryden Rail Trail bridge thus became the first bridge to be designed by the students of the Engineering in the Community course.