Revamping MSU's environmental engineering program

A National Science Foundation (NSF) grant received by MSU on Friday, Sept. 4 will rework the current undergraduate environmental engineering degree through NSF’s Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program. The mission of the RED program is to catalyze revolutionary approaches to engineering curricula. The five-year funded grant, totaling nearly $1 million, will redevelop MSU’s environmental engineering program to focus on technical, social and economic knowledge while incorporating sensible teaching practices throughout the program. The grant will also fund MSU’s Montana Engineering Education Research Center, which will assess the effectiveness of the newly-evolved curriculum.

Craig Woolard, head of the department of civil engineering, is leading the project. Professors from the civil engineering department include Adrienne Phillips, Catherine Kirkland, Ellen Lauchnor, and Katey Plymesser. The civil engineering professors are co-leaders of the project and will be the main faculty transforming the old curriculum and creating and instructing the new courses.

"As an environmental engineer you often have to work with communities and regulators within an economic and policy context that maybe you didn't expect when you were in college,” Kirkland said. “We want to integrate those social and economic concepts into our courses to make the technical skills more relevant and more meaningful when our graduates enter professional practice."

The department of civil engineering in the Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering strives to modify its program in a way contrary to the current undergraduate curriculum common in the U.S. MSU hopes to begin giving students repeated opportunities to address complex problems like those faced by professionals. The new underclassman curricula will consist of 32 credits of topic-focused environmental engineering coursework, which is normally scheduled for the final two years of the program; however, the faculty plans to distribute integrated courses beginning freshman year. By establishing a career-oriented engineering identity early and by providing practice, students will continue to have effective schooling throughout their years. According to Woolard, the changes made to the program will, “provide students with an integrated project-based curriculum that improves their professional skills and results in improved student retention and increased diversity.”

For more information regarding the overview of the environmental engineering program, visit http://catalog.montana.edu/graduate/engineering/environmental-engineering/.