Civil and environmental engineers design, plan and construct infrastructure systems including buildings, bridges, highways, airports, tunnels, pipelines, channels, waste-water systems, waste site, remediation systems, power generating plants, manufacturing facilities, dams and harbors. These infrastructure systems are key to sustaining human development and activities, and civil and environmental engineers must consider technical as well as economic, environmental, aesthetic and social aspects.

Many projects are sufficiently large and complex that civil and environmental engineers seldom work alone, but usually are part of an interdisciplinary team, and so benefit from a broad-based education.

The Civil and Environmental Engineering department offers several areas of specialization including: Construction Engineering and Management, Environmental Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic and Hydrological Engineering, Materials and Highway Engineering, and Structural Engineering. For more information on these fields, please go here.

Students who do well in their undergraduate program are encouraged to consider graduate work and may take some of their electives in preparation for graduate study. The Sequential Graduate/ Undergraduate Study (SGUS) programs available in this department are described here.

Information and assistance regarding fellowships and assistantships for graduate studies may be obtained in the Academic Services Office of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Facilities

The Civil and Environmental Engineering departmental offices are in the George Granger Brown Building on the North Campus. The G. G. Brown Building houses several state-of-the-art research and teaching laboratories in the area of construction engineering and management structures and materials, hydraulics and soil mechanics.

The Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Building and the west wing of the Engineering Research Building house the laboratories for environmental and water resources engineering. Equipment is available for physical and biological studies, analytical determinations, and data analyses in environmental science as well as in water-quality engineering.

Accreditation

This program is accredited for the degree B.S.E. in Civil Engineering by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), 111 Market Place, Suite 1050, Baltimore, MD 21202-4012, telephone (410) 347-7700.