On behalf of our faculty, staff and students, I welcome you to the website of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the University of Houston (UH). Relatively low student-to-faculty ratios, state-of-the-art laboratories, highly accomplished faculty and students, active student chapters of professional societies, internships in local engineering companies, teaching assistantship and scholarship opportunities make us truly unique.
During the last 70 years, CEE has established a tradition of preparing successful engineers who have made important contributions to the development of our civil infrastructure and the built environment. Our accomplished alumni hold posts within the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the city of Houston, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and countless civil and environmental firms both regionally and across the state. They contribute to society by engaging in policy making and through successful careers in academia and industry leadership.
With an eye on the future, CEE is molding its curriculum and adding faculty with varied expertise to better prepare our undergraduate and graduate students to be productive engineers and responsible citizens in the changing environment of the 21st century. As they enter the noble profession of civil and environmental engineering our graduates’ role in improving the human condition will be ever-increasing. It is they who will contribute to the creation of the technologies required to: provide everyone access to clean water; maintain a healthy environment; build robust structures that can withstand earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural hazards; develop methods to extract energy from the earth, the oceans, the sun and the wind; build safe and economical transportation systems; further develop geosensing technologies for mapping the earth’s surface; design and sustain reliable electric power distribution systems — I could go on and on. And they will accomplish these things in an environment of limited natural resources. By addressing these issues both in and out of the classroom, we are educating engineers who possess the requisite technical skills to serve as tomorrow’s leaders. This is what makes our department a place of choice for students and professionals to begin or advance their careers in civil and environmental engineering.
We offer undergraduate degrees in civil engineering, construction engineering, and construction management and graduate degrees in civil engineering, construction management, environmental engineering, and geosensing systems engineering. Our in-house laboratories house equipment capable of making measurements on nanometer (a billionth of a meter!) sized particles, and bridge components with dimensions of several meters. And our faculty and students even use satellites to make measurements of much larger-scale features including glaciers. CEE faculty members are active in and internationally recognized for their research, and many lead national educational and technical committees and organizations.
We are excited about the future of our profession and the important role our department will continue to play in this rapidly advancing field. I invite you to explore our website for a closer look at our programs, research efforts, faculty, and other helpful information.
Roberto Ballarini, Ph.D., P.E., F.EMI, F.ASME, Dist.M.ASCE
Thomas and Laura Hsu Professor and Department Chair
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Cullen College of Engineering
University of Houston