I want to welcome you personally to the website of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida.

Through these web pages, you will get to know our creative students, our innovative programs, our distinguished faculty, and the contributions that we are making towards the advancement and modernization of civil and environmental engineering.

We are a progressive department - training our students to be tomorrow’s leaders in defining and resolving civil infrastructure and environmental issues that confront the US as well as the rest of the world. Our faculty has been on the forefront of infrastructure degradation and prevention, repair, rehabilitation, and durability issues. Here, at our Center for Modeling of Hydrologic and Aquatic Systems (CMHAS), we have developed highly innovative Integrated Hydrologic Models that predict the state of water resources in the state of Florida and are now being applied nationwide. Our transportation systems programs, delivered in close collaboration with the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR), are ranked in the top 10 in the country in graduate studies in the areas of transit operations and transportation planning.

We constantly strive to improve the quality of our undergraduate and graduate curricula. As you browse through our pages, you will see the untiring efforts of the faculty in developing a flexible curriculum for our students. By offering an increasing number of electives at the undergraduate level, we provide our students with the opportunity to chart their own course as well as to be prepared with an interdisciplinary background. Such training is essential for most challenging problems that we encounter today. Undergraduate students are involved in research both through the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program of the College of Engineering and through direct support from our faculty.

Our graduate program has been growing in the recent years as our unique graduate offerings attract brighter and more students to come here for their graduate studies. We offer specialties in four areas at the graduate level. These include: Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, Structures and Materials, Transportation Systems, and Water Resources and Environmental Systems. Each group within these specialty areas is involved in highly interdisciplinary work with collaborations across the university including with departments of Biology, Computer science, Geology, Geography, and the School of Public Health. Our faculty maintains a solid base for research funding from agencies such as the Florida Department of Transportation, Southwest Florida Water Management District, the National Science Foundation, and Sandia Laboratories.

The Department maintains close ties with the local industry, consultants, and agencies. We are strongly supported by our alumni and we maintain an active relationship with them. We have used these ties to strengthen our programs, seek and implement advice, and continue to grow the Department.

Sincerely,

William Carpenter
Professor and Chairman