About Civil and Environmental Engineering
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) is part of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, the engineering college at Carnegie Mellon University. CEE comprises of roughly 20 faculty, 12 staff, and approximately 85 full-time graduate students (47 PhD and 38 MS) and 35 undergraduates per class. Some of our faculty members have half time appointments with the School of Architecture, the CIT Dean's Office, and Engineering and Public Policy.
We offer an ABET accredited undergraduate program leading to a BS in Civil Engineering that features a core of fundamental courses in math, basic science, civil and environmental engineering science, and engineering design projects. Students in this program are offered the flexibility of six completely free electives in addition to two technical electives and eight humanities and social science/fine arts electives. Our students use this flexibility to take predefined minors or double majors in areas of interest to them, or to customize a set of courses that best fit their needs. The department offers a range of technical electives in different civil and environmental engineering sub disciplines, such as structural design, transportation engineering and geotechnical engineering, which are available to both juniors and seniors as well as graduate students. We also offer programs that lead to MS and PhD degrees. The graduate programs and research activities in the department are clustered into the following three areas:
- advanced infrastructure systems: planning, design, construction, and operation of built infrastructure, with emphasis on: 1) sensing and informatics for the construction, operation and maintenance phases of infrastructure systems; 2) new models, methods and tools for planning, design and project management; and 3) developing more sustainable processes and components used in the built infrastructure.
- mechanics, materials, and computing: modeling and large-scale computer simulation; with emphasis on mechanics of crystalline, granular, and amorphous materials; dislocation mechanics; phase transformations; atomistic simulation; electromechanics of 'smart' materials; engineering seismology, and earthquake engineering.
We have joint graduate programs with Architecture (our AECM MS and PhD Programs), Engineering and Public Policy (Joint PhD Program) and Business (MS/MBA Program).
Many of our research projects often take place within Carnegie Mellon research centers, especially the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems (ICES), the Steinbrenner Environmental Education and Research Institute (SEER), the Green Design Institute (GDI), the Center for Water Quality in Urban Environmental Systems (WaterQUEST), the Center for Sensed Critical Infrastructure Research (CenSCIR), the Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies (CAPS), the Center for Sustainable Engineering (CSE), the Western Pennsylvania Brownfields Center, and the Electricity Industry Center (CEIC). Similarly, considerable research is conducted in collaboration with industry or other universities.
We enjoy a very collegial and supportive community in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The faculty and staff are highly approachable and student-centered and the students are active contributors to their learning and that of their fellow classmates. The students have a broad range of interests and represent a diversity of countries and cultures. To help in maintaining this welcoming and collegial atmosphere in the department, we hold a number of fun, community building events for students and faculty throughout the academic year, such as a canoe trip in the fall, a ski trip in the winter and a trip to a Pirates baseball game in the spring. We also have active student chapters for ASCE and Chi Epsilon that arrange a number of activities for the CEE student body.
