Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke

undergradstudents.why choose civil and environmental engineering?

Why choose CEE for a career?

Advancing civil and environmental engineering is both intellectually challenging and essential for sustaining and improving our quality of life. People who choose CEE as a career are people who are determined to make a difference in the world.

Civil and environmental engineers design, build and improve different types of structures. They control and manage the use of natural resources, and develop new technology to control and remediate pollution. Civil and environmental engineers are creative designers and inventors.

The need for civil engineers continually increases because growth in human populations and economic activities intensify the stresses humans place on Earth and on the infrastructure that they have put in place to support their activities.

The consequences of those stresses are increasingly evident. For example, environmental impacts range from changes in various elemental cycles in soil, atmosphere, and water bodies, habitat degradation, the hole in the ozone layer, to global warming). Problems associated with aging of urban infrastructure include bridge and highway deterioration, outdated water supply and waste management systems. New needs to protect the population have emerged from manmade threats such as biological and chemical terrorism, structural blast damage, and other homeland security issues as well as natural disasters such earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and forest fires. All these issues create a need for skilled civil and environmental engineers.

Civil and environmental engineers play a key role to play in addressing these issues by advancing our knowledge in such diverse areas as solid mechanics, environmental fluid dynamics, structural dynamics and adaptivity, smart materials technology, and molecular biology, among many others.

Furthermore, Duke recognizes the value of multidisciplinary research in these areas--and Duke excels at helping students to develop cross-disciplinary curriculum programs that suit the individual's particular interests.

Why choose Duke for your CEE education?

At Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, our goal is to provide a personalized engineering learning experience for every Pratt student. Your professors will know you by your first name. We view teaching as a partnership where students and faculty share the responsibility to excel. Through our engineering curriculum we emphasize teamwork, leadership, persuasive oral and written skills, ethics, project management and finance. Our intent is not just to graduate technically competent students, but leaders in their field who can work seamlessly with professionals from other disciplines in both national and international environments.

Where do Duke CEE graduates go? Updates from the Class of 2006:

Bound for Graduate School:

  • Star Davis - Parsons School of Design
  • Jean Foster - Oxford University
  • Siu-Chung Yau - Princeton University
  • Serdar Selamet - Princeton University
  • Will Senner - Duke University, Master of Engineering Management
  • Brooke Rennick - Duke University, Master of Engineering Management
  • Robert Tipton - University of California, Berkeley

Practicing Engineers:

  • Christina Armstrong - MM Design
  • Kristen Boswell - Kimley Horn
  • Lisa Duty - Thornton-Tomasetti
  • Pete Staver - SKANSKA
  • Ashley Thames - Bovis Lend Lease

Other Careers:

  • Sara Oliver - Teach for America
  • Emily Wren - Boston Consulting Group, Atlanta
  • Mika Taniimoto-Stroy - Banc of America Securities LLC

Duke Student Stories:


extraordinary CEE projects:


The Falkirk Wheel, named after the nearby town of Falkirk in central Scotland, is a rotating boat lift connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal, which differ by roughly the height of an eight story building. Photo courtesy of: undiscoveredscotland.co.uk


The Petronas Twin Towers, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were once the world's tallest buildings.


pictures:
Miguel Medina, DUS
DUS Miguel Medina

contact information:
Miguel Medina
Director of Undergraduate Studies
(919) 660-5195
[e-mail address]
 

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering | Pratt School of Engineering | Duke University
Box 90287 Hudson Hall • Durham, NC 27708-0287 • Phone: (919) 660-5200 • Fax: (919) 660-5219