| Environmental Engineering: |  View Environmental Division Web Site |
The Division of Environmental Engineering is a multidisciplinary program and is intended to enable engineers and scientists interested in the environment to obtain degrees relating to potable water and waste treatment, toxic and hazardous wastes management, air quality management, natural systems engineering, and environmental impact assessment. The program provides an interdisciplinary educational approach to fundamental principles that can be applied to environmental phenomena. Research and training projects are a part of the program and provide the student with appropriate research experience leading to a thesis or dissertation.
- Hazardous Waste Management Emphasis: This specialization has been developed within the broader scope of the environmental engineering program to provide an integrated approach for students with a BS in engineering or natural sciences to deal with the complex issues of toxic and hazardous waste. Aspects of toxic/hazardous waste management, including characterization, treatment, disposal, control, monitoring, and environmental impacts, are dealt with in this program.
- Natural Systems Emphasis: This is the study of the interaction of engineered systems with nature, emphasizing impacts to aquatic ecosystems. Techniques include assessment of aquatic habitat through computer simulation and model verification, quantification of aquatic habitat using remote sensing systems, and data analysis and display through integrated statistical and GIS approaches. These tools are used to evaluate impacts on threatened and endangered species, habitat enhancement, instream flow assessments, fish habitat, stream sediment, and hydraulic features.
- Bioprocess Engineering Emphasis: This program has been developed as a cooperative effort between the Division of Environmental Engineering and the Biological and Irrigation Engineering Department. This program provides students with specialized coursework and research experience in areas of bioreactor processing of environmental materials and engineering scale-up of biologically-based environmental reactions. Areas of specialization include waste to energy, fermentation, composting, and industrial waste (agricultural and chemical) reuse, recycling, and technologies based on biological processes, as well as engineering optimization of aquatic habitats.
Geotechnical engineering involves the study of soils and is concerned with how the physical and engineering properties of soils are related to engineering projects.
Traditional geotechnical engineering includes the application of engineering principles to the analysis and/or design of building foundations, earth embankments, retaining walls, drainage systems, earthquake motion, buried structures, and other systems involving soil and rock. Engineers and architects cannot ignore the problems of investigating properties of soils in connection with engineering construction. Undergraduate and graduate courses offered by the department provide the basic knowledge necessary for the design of foundations and various types of earth structures. Fundamental concepts and their application are emphasized so that the student will be properly trained for his or her initial job, as well as being prepared to understand future development in this field.
The Geotechnical Engineering Division, in cooperation with the Environmental Engineering Division, is offering a new program in Geoenvironmental Engineering. This new program uses the strengths of both divisions to provide a program involving the geotechnical aspects of hazardous waste management, the investigation of hazardous waste sites, and the design of hazardous waste containment systems.
The Geotechnical Division has a strong research program. Current research projects in this division include studies on liquefaction, seismic slope stability, pile foundations, landslides, mechanically stabilized embankments, risk analysis of dams, and properties of clay soils used in hazardous waste containment systems.
Structural Engineering:
The structural engineer is involved in the design, construction, repair, and retrofit of all types of structures: buildings, bridges, dams, and many others. The safety of the structures we occupy and utilize every day is the responsibility of structural engineers. They must be able to evaluate the loads placed on a structure, determine their effects on elements, or repair strategy, to withstand these loads. Today's structural engineer is using new space materials in the design of new structures or the retrofit of older structures.
Mathematics, physics, and materials science constitute a foundation for structural engineering. Structural analysis and design are added to this foundation and become the focus of the structural engineering program. Graduate students in the structures program also engage in structural mechanics, numerical methods, strucutral dynamics, geotechnical engineering, and the study of new structural materials. Current research in the structures area is focusing on the dynamic characteristics of structures, their potential response to earthquakes, and new seismic retrofit measures, using advanced composite materials, for older structures. Materials research is focusing on cementious materials and constitutive modeling.
| Transportation Engineering: | View Transportation Division Web Site |
Transportation engineering is a growth area for graduate education and research. Expanding opportunities exist in many specialties of transportation engineering, including highways, transportation planning, traffic operations and safety, mass transit, and airport and seaport planning.
Goals of the program are to provide educational and research opportunities to promising students in both traditional (fundamental) and advanced-technology transportation engineering. A multidisciplinary and multimodal approach serves to strengthen the students' abilities to understand and address future transportation needs. Emphasis on computer applications and technology integration produces highly skilled and well-rounded transportation professionals.
The Transportation Division offers a wide spectrum of emphases to prepare students for "real life" challenges. These include:
- Airport Systems
- Transportation Systems Analysis
- Pavement Management
- Infrastructure Planning
| Water Engineering: | View Water Division Web Site |
The Water Division of the CEE Department embraces strong academic programs in fluid mechanics and hydraulics, groundwater, hydrology, and water resources engineering. Faculty members are nationally and internationally renowned. They are very active in research, in professional organizations, and are in demand for consulting activities. They are also highly committed to guiding students through their research and coursework programs.
Graduate students have the opportunity for research support through the
Utah
Water Research Laboratory (UWRL) while working on theses or dissertations. Fluid Mechanics and Hydraulic Engineering covers both fundamental principles and theory and their applications in a variety of engineering
fields. Elementary fluid mechanics, based on fundamental principles of conservation of mass and the energy and momentum
principles, is the logical core for all water-related engineering programs. Consequently, other specialties in water
engineering, such as hydrology, water resources, groundwater, environmental engineering, irrigation, drainage, geotechnical
engineering, and watershed science, study fluid mechanics. Students specializing in fluid mechanics and hydraulics
emphasize theoretical fluid mechanics, hydraulic design, numerical methods, and laboratory hydraulic techniques.A good variety and balance of courses and supporting research in theoretical fluid mechanics, open channel hydraulics, hydraulic design, transients, sedimentation, municipal water system design, cavitation, and porous media are available at the graduate level. Graduates from the fluid mechanics and hydraulics area find employment in a broad range of professional engineering fields, including private consulting, university teaching and research, and government service.
- Groundwater Emphasis: A groundwater emphasis within the Water Engineering Program is concerned with the transport of fluids in the subsurface
environment. It encompasses the theory of flow in porous media, groundwater hydrology and hydraulics, transport and
fate of contaminants in subsurface, and analytical and numerical modeling of such processes. Emphasis is placed on the
quantitative analysis of the physical and chemical principles governing these processes and on the application of these
principles to practical field problems, with all their difficulties related to the complex structure of subsurface
formations. Examples of such problems include groundwater supply and management, subsurface cleanup technologies,
and analysis and remediation of groundwater contamination. These problems are of a multidisciplinary nature, and their
solutions require a multidisciplinary approach, involving, among others, soil and water chemistry, chemical engineering,
and economics. The groundwater professional is an important team player in solving such problems.
The groundwater emphasis has a strong research component. Current research activities cover a well-balanced variety of topics, from theoretical (e.g., stochastic analysis of transport of contaminants in groundwater) to practical problems (e.g., design of cleanup technologies for gasoline-contaminated sites). - Hydrology Emphasis: Hydrology is a branch of geoscience concerned with the origin, distribution, movement, and properties
of the waters of the earth. The hydrologic cycle encompasses the atmosphere, the land surface, lakes and oceans, and the
subsurface. Complex, interacting processes at varied time and space scales describe the hydrologic cycle. The concepts
and practice of hydrology derive from an integration of field observations, laboratory investigations, and conceptual,
mathematical, chemical, statistical, and probabilistic models.
The hydrology program at USU has strength in both the theoretical and applied aspects of modern hydrology. Past and present research focuses on a broad spectrum of hydrologic problems. These range from climate modeling, rainfall processes, floods, droughts, terminal lake analyses, soil erosion, and stream water quality models to groundwater contamination characterization and rededication, and watershed analyses. Excellent laboratory and computing facilities are available. Strong, continuous state and federal research funding keeps the research topics and facilities current.
The hydrology faculty are committed to a strong academic program. The hydrology curriculum is one of the most comprehensive offered in the U.S. Elements of ongoing research projects are routinely and effectively incorporated into the classes. Students are encouraged to design a degree program that best suits their interests. In addition to the course offerings in the program, a variety of appropriate classes are available through Mathematics and Statistics; Computer Science; Watershed Science; Geography and Earth Resources; Plants, Soils, and Biometeorology; Biology; Chemistry and Biochemistry; Physics; Forest Resources; Fisheries and Wildlife; and Rangeland Resources. - Water Resources Emphasis: prepares engineers to be lead members in water resources planning teams, often charged with
coordinating the information and concept supplied from other disciplines. This need for breadth requires considerable
flexibility in the arrangement of degree programs.
Water resources engineers draw principles from hydrology, fluid mechanics, hydraulics, environmental engineering, economics, ecology, political science, and other disciplines in the design and operation of projects and nonstructural methods for water resources planning and management. They need a sound understanding of how water storage, delivery, and other management systems function; of criteria used in evaluating and selecting among alternatives; of the techniques of operations research that can be used in system design; and of the institutional aspects of decision-making in the public sector.
In addition to taking core courses in the water resources engineering academic program, students are encouraged to take courses in groundwater, fluid mechanics and hydraulics, environmental engineering, and hydrology for a background in the basic principles used in water resources management. Graduate students can supplement these departmental offerings by working with their supervisory committees in choosing courses in Mathematics and Statistics; Economics; Political Science; Geology; Biological and Irrigation Engineering; Plants, Soils, and Biometeorology; Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology; Forest Resources; Rangeland Resources; Fisheries and Wildlife; and other departments.
The program combines training, research, and experience to cope with impending needs for water resources management in the United States. The department has one of the largest international water resources programs in the U.S., involving several technical assistance and training projects in Asia and Africa.
Are you a graduate applying for admission to Utah State University? View the requirements for graduate admissions here.
