هندسة مدنية
For his undergraduate career, Dodds attended the University of Memphis Herff College of Engineering where he studied civil engineering. After attaining his Bachelor of Science (1973), he would leave Memphis and enroll at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. At Illinois, he would go on to receive a Master of Science in civil engineering (1975) and eventually a doctorate of philosophy in Civil engineering (1978).