Program in Civil Engineering School of Engineering Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Program in Civil Engineering - Detailed Information Programs of Study

Civil and environmental engineers are responsible for providing the world's constructed facilities and the infrastructure on which modern civilization depends. To ensure the proper construction and care of these complex systems and environments, Rensselaer civil and environmental engineers develop full ranges of skills in design, analysis, fabrication, communication, management, and teamwork. The growing panoply of sensors, instrumentation, intelligent facilities, and new materials is also highlighting the high-tech character of the disciplines, creating new educational challenges and redefining the skill set that civil and environmental engineers need to succeed. Through a commitment to technological excellence and the integration of research and education, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering fulfills its mission to educate the civil and environmental engineering leaders of tomorrow for technology-based careers. Using Rensselaer's extensive resources, the department's civil and environmental engineers are encouraged to celebrate discovery and are trained in the responsible application of technology to create knowledge and global prosperity.

The department offers MS, MEng, and PhD degrees in both civil and environmental engineering. The selection of a graduate program and degree is based on student interest, area of graduate concentration, and satisfaction of prerequisites. Areas of research and initiatives in civil engineering include earthquake engineering, structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, transportation engineering, and computational mechanics; in environmental engineering, the areas include pollutant fate and transport, water treatment, waste treatment, site remediation and bioremediation, and environmental systems.

The MS degree program is open to students with undergraduate degrees in engineering or the physical or natural sciences. In addition to the satisfactory completion of an approved set of advanced courses, candidates for this degree must complete 6-credit theses. In the civil engineering discipline, a thesis must provide documentation of an independent research-related effort and be approved by the student's faculty adviser. Environmental engineering candidates must also provide documentation of an independent research-related effort and are also required to give oral presentations of the thesis work.

The MEng is a 30-credit structured program of advanced professional study that prepares students for professional practice. Except for computational mechanics, candidates for this degree in the civil engineering discipline must have accredited bachelor's degrees in engineering. In environmental engineering, a BS in the physical or natural sciences is also acceptable. There is no project or thesis requirement, but students may elect to undertake projects or theses, at either the 3- or 6-credit level, in consultation with their advisers.

The doctoral programs require advanced study and research conducted under the guidance of advisers. Each doctoral candidate must have at least 72 credits beyond the bachelor's degree. Environmental candidates are required to submit drafts of journal articles prior to graduation. The PhD is a research-oriented degree focused on the development of new knowledge in the student's chosen area of study. It includes the preparation of a dissertation that carefully documents the original contribution of the student's research. The dissertation can represent up to 30 credits of the student's approved plan of study. In addition to the examination processes required of all Rensselaer doctoral students, civil and environmental engineering students must pass preliminary examinations during their first years of doctoral study. Environmental engineering students must also take oral candidacy examinations within 2 semesters of passing the preliminary examinations.

Research Facilities

Research is supported by state-of-the-art facilities and equipment including the Rensselaer Libraries, whose electronic information system provides access to collections, databases, and the Internet from campus and remote terminals; the Rensselaer Computing System, which permeates the campus with a coherent array of more than 7,000 nodes of distributed laptops, desktops, advanced workstations, and servers; a shared toolkit of applications for interactive learning and research and high-speed Internet connectivity; one of the country's largest academically based, class 100 clean room facilities; high-performance campus wide computing facilities that allow for serial or parallel computation; and 5 core laboratories for molecular biology, proteomics, bio-imaging, and tissue engineering.

Rensselaer's research capabilities have been enhanced with the addition of the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI). The result of a $100-million collaboration with IBM and New York State, the CCNI is one of the world's most powerful university-based supercomputing centers and a top 10 supercomputing center of any kind in the world. The CCNI is made up of massively parallel Blue Gene supercomputers, POWER-based Linux clusters, and Opteron-based clusters, providing more than 100 teraflops of computational muscle and approximately a petabyte of shared online storage.

From downloading data from instrumented facilities worldwide to using a 150 g-ton geotechnical centrifuge to being involved in the most advanced construction projects, including "The Big Dig," to winning national competitions in steel bridge building, Rensselaer's civil engineering students are involved in world-changing research on a daily basis. Recently the centrifuge facility was upgraded to a 150 g-ton overall capacity and enhanced with Web-based teleobservation and teleoperation wireless sensors as part of its integration into the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), a national NSF-supported collaboratory. Two modern telecontrol and teleconference rooms located close to the centrifuge facilitate collaboration and real-time experiments with the rest of NEES through a high-speed Internet connection. The geotechnical centrifuge is currently a main part of the Center for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (CEES), a School of Engineering interdisciplinary research center. The Rensselaer 1-g seismic shaking table is utilized to evaluate the behavior of scale-model structures subjected to dynamic loading. The shaking table is driven by a servo-controlled hydraulic actuator and is capable of reproducing a variety of input motions, including random motion for system identification testing and historical earthquake records for seismic testing. A variety of dynamic measurement sensors are available in the laboratory, along with a spectrum analyzer and data acquisition system to process and record the measured signals.

The environmental engineering program has a variety of equipment and facilities available for use in research. These include various 2-phase flow loops and associated instrumentation, laser Doppler and anemometer systems, optical void probes, probes to determine radiation damage in biological materials and semiconductors, state-of-the-art digitizing oscilloscopes, departmental computers, and computer terminals linked to the campus and national networks. A major upgrade in lab equipment and space for environmental engineering research and teaching has occurred through the establishment of the Keck Water Quality Laboratory, the National Science Foundation Environmental Colloid and Particle Laboratory, and the refurbishment of the Environmental Engineering Teaching Laboratory suite. Analytical equipment in these labs provides the capability for analysis and investigation of a wide variety of industrial processes, treatment processes, and polluted environments. This equipment gives students experience and expertise in treatability and toxicity studies, design and operation of bench-scale treatment systems, and investigation of a wide range of environmental quality parameters. The fate of specific compounds in the environment and in treatment processes can be analyzed by UV-Vis spectrophotometry, high-pressure liquid chromatography, and gas-liquid and gas chromatography with a number of specific and sensitive detectors, including electron capture, flame ionization, thermal conductivity, and mass spectral. Metals analyses by atomic absorption spectrophotometry and elemental analyses are also available. A complete suite of water-quality monitoring equipment, field sampling systems, and geographical information system tools are available. Computational capabilities are widely accessible not only throughout the campus but in research laboratories, as well.

• Degrees Offered
• Major Degree Levels Offered
• Geotechnical Engineering Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
  Master of Science (MS)
  Master of Engineering (M Eng)
• Mechanics Of Composite Materials And Structures Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
  Master of Science (MS)
  Master of Engineering (M Eng)
• Transportation Engineering Master of Engineering (M Eng)
  Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
  Master of Science (MS)
• Structural Engineering Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
  Master of Science (MS)
  Master of Engineering (M Eng)

• Degrees Awarded
• Master's Degrees 19
• Doctoral Degrees 3
• First Professional Degrees Not reported
• Other Advanced Degrees Not reported
• * Shows the number of degrees awarded for the last academic year that data was reported.

• Earning Your Degree
• Part-time study available? Yes
• Evening/weekend programs available? No
• Distance learning programs available? No
• Terminal master's degree available? Yes

• Degree Requirements
• Master's Degrees Required for some
• Doctoral Degrees Required
• First Professional Degrees Not reported
• Other Advanced Degrees Not reported

• Acceptance Rate
• Applied65
• Accepted8
• Acceptance Rate12%
• Enrolled5
• Applying
• Application Fee - Domestic $75
• Application Fee - International $75
• Electronic applications accepted? Yes
• Applications processed on a rolling basis? Yes
• Application Deadlines
• Type Domestic International Priority Date
• Fall deadline January 15th January 15th Yes
• Winter deadline Not Reported Not Reported Not Reported
• Spring deadline August 15th August 15th Yes
• Entrance Requirements
• Master's DegreesGRE
• Doctoral's DegreesGRE
• First-Professional's DegreesNot Reported
• Other Advanced DegreesNot Reported
• International DegreesTOEFL required, 570 paper based, TOEFL iBT, IELTS required, IELTS paper based

• Tuition & Fees
• In-state tuition *$39,600
• Out-of-state tuition *$39,600
• International student tuitionNot Reported
• * Tuition for full-time graduate student per academic year
• Fees
• Per-academic year fees$1,896.00
• Per-term feesNot Reported
• One-time feeNot Reported
• * Fees for full-time graduate students
• Financial Support
• Financial award applicants must submitNot Reported
• Application deadlines for financial awardsFebruary 1
• Types of financial support availableFellowships, Research Assitantships, Teaching Assistantships, Career or Field-Related Internships, Institutionally-sponsored Loans

• Gender
• Total Graduate Students20
• Female Percentage20%
• Male Percentage80%
• Participation
• Total Graduate Students20
• Part-time Percentage0%
• Full-time Percentage100%
• Ethnicity
• Hispanic / Latino0%
• Black / African American25%
• White / Caucasian75%
• American Indian / Alaskan Native0%
• Asian0%
• Native Hawaiian / Other Pacific Islander0%
• Two or more races0%
• Unknown0%

• Faculty Breakout
• Total Faculty16
• Full-time Percentage81%
• Part-time Percentage19%
• Female Percentage6%
• Male Percentage94%

• Existing Research
• Focus of faculty researchComputational mechanics, earthquake engineering, geo-environmental engineering
• Externally sponsored research expenditures last year$2,734,942