Course descriptions

The mission of the civil engineering program is to graduate broadly educated, technically competent individuals prepared for professional careers or advanced studies. Our faculty and staff work to provide an educational experience that offers graduates a high level of professional competence, and an environment conducive to scholarship and critical thinking.

Opportunities for leadership and team-building skills are abundant throughout our curriculum. Students develop problem solving and decision making skills. We teach contemporary and practice-oriented methods for solving engineering problems, and integrate opportunities to develop communication and interpersonal skills as well. Our program is the only one in the nation in which the history and ethics of our profession are taught by real historians and philosophers instead of the “course in a box” approach.

We have established a comprehensive capstone design class with the involvement of practitioners, industry and government agencies in addition to interdepartmental majors collaborating in designing real-world civil infrastructures. Our design studio is the envy of many civil engineering programs. Both hardware and software are fully funded or heavily sponsored by numerous firms. In addition, our program is one of a handful offering real-life surveying experience.