Texas State University has set its sights on creating a new civil engineering program that professor John Schemmel says would be unlike any other in the nation. Many civil engineering programs focus on the strength of infrastructure such as roads, bridges and sewer systems, but Texas State’s program would focus on what Schemmel calls “technologically enhanced infrastructure.” As part of the program, the university would build a laboratory in which researchers would place devices inside infrastructure to test the ability to monitor a structure’s life cycle, giving municipalities the necessary data to intervene before a bridge collapses or a road cracks. “We build the structure and put the devices in the structure, and then we keep monitoring the structure over its life,” Schemmel said. “When some signal comes to us that says, ‘Hey there is some pending failure,’ we are able to intervene before the thing actually does fail and keep the quality of the life up and then the whole thing lasts longer.” The proposed program will go before the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and, if approved, the first classes would begin in fall 2019, Schemmel said. “Our civil engineering program will be one-of-a-kind,” Schemmel said. A recently completed preliminary master plan for Texas State’s Science, Technology and Advanced Research, or STAR, Park, where the infrastructure lab would be located, calls for dense growth on the 58-acre site. In addition to the infrastructure research lab, the master plan calls for construction of a new multitenant space that could house businesses that have “graduated” out of the park’s technology incubator. STAR Park Executive Director Steve Frayser said if plans are approved, construction will likely begin by late 2018. Since opening in November 2012, companies at the park have brought $1.2 million in research back to the university, Frayser said. The companies at STAR Park have hired nine Texas State graduates to full-time positions, and they employ interns and student workers from the university, he said. Collectively the companies have received $32 million in equity and joint venture funding. Frayser said he sees the engineering program as a complement to the research being performed at the park. “We shouldn’t just be building a standard street,” he said. “We ought to be doing sensors and analytical data development of how to do predictive analysis for infrastructure. All of that needs to be tied in with where we’re headed as a university and as a society.”