Environmental Engineering Graduate Program

Environmental Engineering addresses the development of strategies to control anthropogenic emissions of pollutants to the atmosphere, waterways, and terrestrial environment; the remediation of polluted natural systems; the design of technologies to treat waste; fire safety; noise suppression; energy efficiency; and the evaluation of contaminant fate in urban environments. Environmental engineering issues are now an important component in the development of many engineering technologies and consequently are an important aspect of an engineering education. The discipline itself is interdisciplinary and requires a curriculum that provides students with an understanding of fundamentals in air- and water-quality sciences, contaminant fate and transport, and design concepts for pollutant emission control and treatment. To avoid the development of environmental engineering solutions which only transform one form of pollution to another, modern engineering education programs must require exposure and familiarity with a greater number of subjects than ever before.

Environmental engineers with an interdisciplinary background are particularly sought to address the complex infrastructure needs of today's society, where they must be able to communicate with teams of scientists and engineers from different disciplines. Environmental engineering graduates who meet this description can expect to remain in strong demand in the private and public employment sectors, and their range of career opportunities is highly diverse. Examples of career fields and activities include the development of new technologies to genetically engineer microorganisms for waste treatment, design of combustion and control processes that minimize pollutant emissions and maximize energy efficiency, resolution of complex pollutant transport processes in naturally heterogeneous systems, development of new physical-chemical treatment approaches, and characterization of pollutant transformation mechanisms in natural systems.

Curricular and research subjects of interest in Environmental Engineering include environmental air and water chemistry, environmental microbiology, combustion technologies, aerosol science, transport phenomena, reactor theory, unit operations and systems design, mathematical modeling, energy systems, soil physics, fluid mechanics, hydrology, and meteorology. Interdisciplinary research endeavors commonly bridge many of these different subjects and a current focus is maintained on new and emerging technologies. Curriculum objectives have also been set to maintain a balance between the depth and breadth of program scope for each student.

Programs of study leading to the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering are offered.