Civil and Environmental Engineering
Program of Study

Faculty | Goals | Program of Study | Course Descriptions | Other Departments

The Civil and Environmental Engineering Department's four-year program begins with courses which provide a foundation of knowledge and skill in the basic arts and sciences. Limited specialization in engineering starts during the sophomore year. In the junior and senior years, the time is devoted essentially to basic professional subjects. Throughout the four years, the program emphasizes the development of habits of orderly study, investigation, sound reasoning, problem-solving and design, rather than the mere acquisition of factual information. It is stressed that an engineer is a professional thoroughly grounded in engineering science and technology, but also aware of the social, economic, ethical, and ecological implications of professional activities. The civil engineering curriculum is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). Each year the curriculum is augmented by off-campus educators and engineers who lecture and moderate seminars in engineering specialties. Students' sources of knowledge are broadened by participation in these seminars and the student chapters of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Tau Beta Pi (honorary engineering society), Sigma Iota Delta (honorary civil engineering society), and the Society of American Military Engineers.

LeTellier Hall was designed for the needs of civil and environmental engineering education and contains, in addition to laboratories and traditional classrooms, two multi-media classrooms; an assembly room with appropriate audiovisual aids for special lectures and society meetings; and a well-lighted drafting room. Computer facilities in LeTellier Hall are built around 333 MHz Pentium II machines with 64 MB of RAM, 17 inch SVGA Monitors, CD-ROM drives, 6 GB hard drives, and a 3.5 inch floppy drive, and sound capabilities with headphones. The 23 computers in the main laboratory have direct connections to the campus-wide network and the Internet. These computers provide students with graphically-based access to civil engineering course resources on the Department's Web Server and to the Citadel's VAX cluster and Novell servers for e-mail and printing. Available software required to support class activities includes word processing, CAD, and computational. In a separate laboratory, eight additional computers are equipped as CAD workstations with digitizers and plotters. Geographic Information System (GIS) software is also available for students enrolled in geomatics.

Materials Testing Laboratory:
Major items of equipment include a 400,000-pound universal hydraulic testing machine with a clearance of 8 feet for column testing and with a 36-inch-wide working platform; a 250,000 pound concrete cylinder testing machine; a 60,000-pound hydraulic universal testing machine; a 10,000-inch-pound torsion machine; and equipment for making tension, compression, shearing, and most other accepted and significant tests on metals concrete, wood and other structural materials. A transmission Polariscope and related equipment are available to investigate in a wide variety of two dimensional photo-elastic models.

Construction Materials Laboratory:
Bituminous Materials Testing. This laboratory contains equipment for making the significant quality control and identification tests on asphalt cements, cutback asphalts, and asphalt emulsions. Equipment for the design, mixing, compaction, and testing of asphalt concrete paving mixtures by the Marshall and other methods is included.

Concrete Materials Laboratory:
A curing room, mixing equipment, air entraining measuring apparatus, scales, and other minor equipment are provided in this laboratory. Testing is accomplished using materials laboratory equipment.

Geotechnical Laboratories:
The two soils laboratories are equipped with both scale and deadweight consolidmeters, triaxial and direct shear machines, unconfined compression machines, permeameters, Atterberg limit equipment, Proctor and modified AASHTO compaction apparatus, standard sieves, soil hydrometers, C.B.R. apparatus, and other equipment needed for tests and experiments with soils.

Fluid Mechanics Laboratory:
Equipment is provided for a wide variety of experiments and tests involving the flow of water over weirs or through pipes, meters, orifices, or a Parshall flume. Other major items of equipment include a head loss and flow measurement fluid circuit apparatus, a Reynolds number device, two (2) hydraulic demonstration units permitting experiments involving many phenomena of open channel flow, and a centrifugal pump equipped to measure input and output of energy.

Environmental Engineering Laboratory:
Equipment is provided for water analysis determination (primarily according to "Standard Methods") of pH, alkalinity, turbidity, and color. Bacteriological examinations may also be made for wastewater analysis, biochemical oxygen demand, and solids content. The equipment includes incubators, a muffle furnace, pH meters, dissolved oxygen probes, electrophotometic devices, an autoclave, a constant temperature refrigerator, a drying oven, a water still, a fume hood, a microscope, and essential minor tools and equipment.

Other engineering equipment:
Adequate drafting equipment is available for the courses in engineering drawing, surveying, geomatics, as well as for the junior and senior courses. This equipment includes planimeters, transits, levels, theodolites, level rods, chains, tapes, total stations and data collectors. Three Trimble 4000 ST Geographic Positioning System (GPS) survey grade receivers have been recently acquired by the department for use in the geomatics courses, along with two GeoExplorer II Mapping Units.

Degree:
The degree of Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering (B.S. in C.E.) is awarded to those who successfully complete the program of studies outlined in the course offerings section of this catalog.

Two humanity or social science electives, one technical elective, and one civil engineering design elective are required. These are selected from a list of approved electives maintained by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. In completing the two humanities or social science electives, the student will take one from the core curriculum. The other shall be an approved course where an advanced level of study is achieved. The civil and environmental engineering design elective allows the students to specialize in a technical area of civil engineering by completing a design course at the senior level that integrates principles and practices of earlier courses into the design of the engineering system. Students who are on academic probation will not be permitted to enroll in upper level courses offered by the civil and environmental engineering department (i.e. junior and senior level classes). All scheduled freshman and sophomore level engineering, science, and mathematics courses must be completed before a student will be permitted to enroll in senior level courses offered by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.