2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog
Civil and Environmental Engineering
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 Return to: Lyle School of Engineering
Professor Kathleen M. Smits, Chair
Professors: Khaled F. Abdelghany, Usama S. El Shamy, Zhong Lu, Nicos Makris, Barbara S. Minsker, Kathleen M. Smits, Halit Üster
Associate Professors: Andrew N. Quicksall, Brett Story, David A. Willis, Jessie Marshall Zarazaga
Assistant Professor: Janille Smith-Colin
Senior Lecturer: John H. Easton
Adjunct Faculty: Yasser Abdelhamid, Samir Bougacha, Mark K. Boyd, Robert Casagrande, Gretchen Coleman, Jennifer Cottingham, Eva Csaky, Weiping Dai, John Furlong, Christopher Hill, Sina Iman, Qiguo Jing, S. Nazanin Kardi, Patrick Kennedy, Mehedy Mashnad, Steven D. McCauley, Elizabeth R. del Monte, Jon D. Rauscher, Goria Ruiz, Paris Rutherford, Hosam Salman, Patricia A. Taylor, Philip K. Turner, Mikel Wilkins, Rumanda K. Young
The mission of the CEE department is to advance learning and discovery in service to humanity. To that end, undergraduate programs within the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering educate and train leaders in the fields of environmental protection, resource management, construction and engineering design. Programs are tailored to the individual needs and interests of CEE students, so that students with interests in studying global climate change, protecting the quality of the drinking water, or designing the next generation of high-rise buildings or smart highways receive the training they need to excel in their careers.
Civil and environmental engineering are inextricably linked. While civil engineering focuses on the infrastructure of modern society, environmental engineering is concerned with the well-being and health of people and the environment. Civil and environmental engineering functioned as a single integrated discipline in the early 1900s when it was critical to address sanitary problems to protect public health and to develop regional water supplies and the civil infrastructure to support rapid urbanization and early industrialization. Separate disciplines gradually emerged, evolving and broadening to address the overall quality and function of modern society – preserving the environment while enabling the realization of an enriched life through technology.
Civil engineers are engaged in planning, design, construction, maintenance and management of the infrastructure of modern society. They are responsible for the design of water supply and wastewater treatment systems; transportation systems such as highways, railways, waterways, mass transit, airports, ports and harbors; dams, reservoirs and hydroelectric power plants; thermoelectric power plants; transmission and communication towers; high-rise buildings; and even aircraft and aerospace structures, shuttles and space stations. Every major structure critical to this country, and global society, depends on the work of civil engineers.
The mission of the civil engineering program is to prepare graduates for professional practice and advanced studies by focusing on the following areas: structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, transportation planning, environmental engineering and water resources., Graduates will be equipped with the skills and knowledge necessary to be fully participatory members of civil engineering teams and contributors to civil engineering efforts conducted within the evolving global economy.
The mission and educational objectives of the civil engineering program are consistent with the missions of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, the Lyle School of Engineering, and the overall institutional mission of SMU, and were determined based on the needs of the program’s various constituencies. The program prepares graduates to achieve the following educational objectives during the first 5 to 15 years of their professional careers:
- Be entrusted by society to create a sustainable and resilient world and enhance the global quality of life through the practice of civil engineering.
- Serve others competently, collaboratively, and ethically as either engineering designers, managers, or leaders in the public or private sectors.
- Demonstrate mastery and leadership as builders, planners, environmental stewards, innovators, and advocates for public health, safety, and welfare.
- Obtain licensing as professional engineers.
The environmental field is dynamic and wide-ranging, comprising many different disciplines and professional roles. Environmental engineering involves not only traditional water and wastewater management, but also the management of hazardous and radioactive materials, pollution prevention and waste minimization, innovative hazardous waste treatment and site remediation processes, environmental and occupational health, resource conservation and recovery, sustainable development of natural resources, and air quality management and pollution control. In addition, modern manufacturing, both domestic and worldwide, focuses on using recycled and natural materials to fabricate products that are competitive in the marketplace and harmlessly degraded in the environment. The trend toward global manufacturing will grow stronger in the years ahead. Environmental challenges presented by this movement must be overcome if the economic and lifestyle benefits of globalization are to be extended to all peoples of the world.
The educational objectives of the environmental engineering program are consistent with the missions of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, the Lyle School of Engineering, and the overall institutional mission of SMU, and were determined based on the needs of the program’s various constituencies. The program prepares graduates to achieve the following educational objectives during the first 5 to 15 years of their professional careers:
- Be entrusted by society to create a sustainable and resilient world and enhance the global quality of life through the practice of environmental engineering.
- Serve others competently, collaboratively, and ethically as either engineering designers, managers, or leaders in the public or private sectors.
- Demonstrate mastery and leadership as builders, planners, environmental stewards, innovators, and advocates for public health, safety, and welfare.
- Obtain licensing as professional engineers.
The environmental engineering program prepares graduates for professional practice and advanced study through a focus in the following areas: 1) water supply and resources, 2) environmental systems and process modeling, 3) environmental chemistry, 4) wastewater management, 5) solid waste management, 6) hazardous waste management, 7) atmospheric systems and air pollution control, and 8) environmental and occupational health.
The CEE Department offers undergraduate degrees as follows:
Bachelor of Science With a Major in Civil Engineering
Bachelor of Science With a Major in Environmental Engineering
Bachelor of Science With a Major in Environmental Engineering with a premedical track
Students wishing to get a second degree, such as in Mathematics, should consult the department granting the second degree.
The undergraduate programs in civil engineering and environmental engineering are accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, https://www.abet.org. Both the civil and environmental engineering programs are designed to prepare students for the Fundamentals of Engineering Examination, the first step toward licensure as a professional engineer. Engineering design is integrated throughout the civil and environmental engineering curricula, each culminating in a major design experience based on the knowledge and skills acquired in earlier coursework. In their senior year, the department’s engineering students are required to take two terms of design where teams of two to four students work closely on practical projects sponsored by industry and government. Senior design projects incorporate engineering standards and realistic constraints including most of the following considerations: economic, environmental, sustainability, manufacturability, ethical, health and safety, social, and political. Both the civil and environmental engineering programs prepare students with:
- An ability to identify, formulate, and solve complex engineering problems by applying principles of engineering, science, and mathematics.
- An ability to apply the engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors.
- An ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.
- An ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.
- An ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives.
- An ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions.
- An ability to acquire and apply new knowledge as needed, using appropriate learning strategies.
- An understanding of professional practice issues and an understanding of the roles and responsibilities of public institutions and private organizations pertaining to public policy and regulations.
- An understanding of basic concepts in project management, business, and leadership.
CEE departmental offices and instructional and research laboratories are located in the state-of-the-art J. Lindsay Embrey Engineering Building, which is certified as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold Building in LEED’s internationally recognized green building certification program. Teaching and research laboratories include dedicated space for air quality and meteorology, industrial hygiene, environmental microbiology, soil and water quality, mechanics of materials and structural engineering, hydraulics and hydrology, geotechnical engineering and transportation materials, infrastructure and environmental systems, and intelligent transportation systems.
The environmental teaching and research laboratories have sophisticated analytical capabilities for performing chemical analyses of air samples and for assessing the quality of water supplies and wastes and the effectiveness of water and waste treatment procedures. Major equipment includes a Thermo Scientific inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, a PerkinElmer fourier transform infrared spectrometer with attenuated total reflectance, a Dionex ion chromatography unit, an Agilent gas chromatography and mass spectrometry unit, a PerkinElmer thermogravimetric analyzer with scanning calorimetry, a Quantachrome surface area analyzer, and an Agilent high performance liquid chromatograph. Other miscellaneous equipment includes continuous ambient air monitoring devices, UV-visible spectrophotometers, pH and other specific ion meters, incubating ovens, microscopes, anaerobic chamber, furnaces, centrifuges, dissolved oxygen meters, several temperature control baths, hot and cold rooms, autoclave, microscopes, and a UV light reader.
Civil engineering teaching and research laboratories include dedicated space for structural engineering, hydraulics and hydrology, geotechnical engineering and transportation materials, and intelligent transportation systems. The structural laboratory is equipped for instruction and research on the behavior of materials under various loading conditions. This lab is equipped with an Instron 5582 universal materials testing machine, a 16’ x 20’ strong floor for small scale load and reaction frames, and comprehensive data acquisition capabilities. Data from string potentiometers, accelerometers, cameras, and strain gages is collected by a wired Strainbook 616 DAQ and Lord Microstrain wireless nodes through a Lord WSDA base station. Major hydraulics and hydrology laboratory equipment includes a 5-meter open channel flume with various accessories (e.g., undershot weir, rotary undershot gate, and sharp and broadcrested weirs), a basic hydraulics bench for fundamental fluid mechanics experiments (e.g., hydrostatic pressure forces, Bernoulli’s theorem and pipe friction losses), and a hydrology study system for hydrology experiments (e.g., simulating rainfall over watersheds and measuring resulting outflow hydrographs, and groundwater flow profiles). The geotechnical engineering and transportation materials laboratory has a Geocomp soil testing equipment automated set, a Geocomp direct residual shear test system automated set, a pocket penetrometer and the torvane shear device, and liquid and plastic limit devices. Traditional geotechnical testing equipment such as sieve analysis, hydrometer, constant head/falling head permeameter, liquid and plastic limits, compaction, and relative density are also available.
The Embrey Building also houses computing facilities with general applications software and specialized software for engineering problems, including air dispersion modeling, AutoCAD, ArcGIS, hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, statistical analysis and stochastic modeling, structural analysis and design, transportation systems planning and analysis, and water quality modeling.
ProgramsMajor(s)Minor(s)CoursesCivil and Environmental Engineering
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