The Department of Civil and Environmental

Cyclic Tests of a Masonry Pier

Engineering has a long history within the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). It was first authorized as one of four branches of the Polytechnic Department, founded in 1867, and became an independent department in 1871. The research activities of the department became internationally known more than 70 years ago.

Today, the department is consistently ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of the top programs in the country and attracts the best students and faculty. Many of the faculty members hold positions of influence and responsibility in national and international engineering organizations, and serve on advisory councils and commissions on the local, state, and federal level. They are leaders in their fields in environmental, structural, construction, transportation, hydraulic, and geotechnical engineering. The faculty combines civil engineering practice with the education of the next generation of civil engineers.

No less significant are the accomplishments of our alumni, who have been involved with the major civil engineering achievements recognized throughout the world, including the Golden Gate Bridge, the trans-Alaska pipeline, the Sears Tower, and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur. They are also involved with less visible side of civil engineering: developing new materials and improving the ones we use, building on ways to keep our water supplies clean, ensuring the safety of transportation systems, retrofitting buildings and bridges to withstand earthquakes, and so on.

Our students and student organizations are recognized nationwide for their high academic achievement, as well as their philanthropic and social activities. Chi Epsilon, the civil engineering honor society, began here. We offer M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering. More complete information on our academic and research programs may be foung on the CEE Home Page. There are currently 500 undergraduate and 350 graduate students enrolled in the department.

Under the NSF NEES (Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation) program, the Newmark Laboratory facility is being enhanced with high performance 6 degree-of-freedom relocatable actuator “pods”.

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is committed to preparing individuals to practice as civil engineers and to expand the art and knowledge of civil engineering. The department’s long-range goals are:

(1) to provide the highest quality civil engineering education to undergraduate and graduate students,
(2) to perform forward-looking civil engineering related research,
(3) to serve as a resource for the civil engineering profession and for society.

The structures faculty, which currently numbers fourteen, has a long and distinguished history of research in a number of areas including material behavior and design, structural and computational mechanics and earthquake engineering. The CEE department is the home of the Mid-America Earthquake Center, one of three Centers for Earthquake Engineering Research. Other member partner universities include MIT, Georgia Tech, Texas A and M, University of Memphis, Washington University and St. Louis University. The Mid-America Earthquake Center is the first of its kind for addressing mitigation of earthquake effects in the central and eastern United States. The group of core institutions coordinates research and implementation activities with a vision towards making a difference for the better on seismic hazards evaluation and loss reduction strategies.