Program Structure
The online M.S. in Civil Engineering is a 32-credit hour program, completed in 21 months while working full-time for students who start in the fall semester. The program focuses on technical and analytical civil engineering knowledge and the choice between a structural, geotechnical, transportation, or Water Resources track.
Structural, Geotechnical, Transportation, and Water Resources Track Course Overview:
Course Descriptions
Listed by course number
CEES 41213G - Open Channel Flow
Theory, analysis and design of channels, aqueducts, headworks, siphons, spillways and hydraulic structures. An in-depth study of critical flow and measurement techniques. Backwater analysis by analytical, calculator and computer methods. Special emphasis on practical problems of general interest, such as channel design and floodplain analysis with HEC-RAS.
CEES 4333G- Foundation Engineering
Focused primarily on subsurface exploration for foundation engineering, and analysis and design of shallow and deep foundations for buildings with respect to bearing capacity and settlement considerations.
CEES 4753G - Structural Design – Wood
Material properties and behavior of wood. Analysis and design of solid and laminated structural members, connections, systems, trusses, and arches. Current developments in structural wood design and research.
CEES 5020 – Special Topics: Highway Engineering
Focuses on the planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of highway infrastructure. Includes roadway geometric design, route location, drainage, earthwork, cost considerations, environmental assessment and social and safety impacts of highway construction, among other topics.
CEES 5020 – Special Topics: Multimodal Transportation
Focuses on transportation modes, including land, air and marine, modal shift and its impact on the transportation system. Study of transportation functions and transportation systems including highway, rail, air, and water and design of system elements such as travel ways, controls and terminals.
CEES 5020 – Special Topics: Traffic Engineering
Focuses on traffic flow theory, analysis of traffic data, and advanced technology applications for data collection, traffic control, and real-time system management. Includes emphasis on highway capacity, signal integration, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), and impacts of advanced technology including automated vehicles.
CEES 5020 – Special Topics: Transportation Asset Management, Finance, and Planning
This course will focus on fundamental elements of transportation asset management and application of its principles in practice. It will explore the impetus, philosophy and policy for implementing a long term, comprehensive plan for managing infrastructure assets. It will present engineering and economic analysis concepts and processes used to evaluate and support strategic and systematic planning, finance, investment, performance, measurement, management and preservation of a transportation system.
CEES 5020 – Special Topics: Watershed Science
Watershed Science is a broad field, so this course is offered in the form of a graduate seminar. Topical content will cover some of the most important technical and policy aspects of dealing with environmental issues in watersheds, specifically: background information on watersheds and their role in the hydrologic cycle; the physical responses of watersheds to flowing water and some practical aspects of stream restoration; water quality and ecosystem aspects of watershed management; an overview of the National Flood Insurance Program and floodplain analysis; and an overview on some of the regulatory and policy aspects of watershed management.
CEES 5323 - Geosynthetics
Introduces students to concepts and design methods involving the use of geosynthetics in geotechnical and transportation engineering applications. The course provides treatment of geotextiles, geomembranes and other geosynthetic products with application to geotechnical problems involving separation and filtration, reinforcement, erosion control, and waste containment, among others.
CEES 5343 - Advanced Soil Mechanics
Advanced treatment of theories, principles and applications related to soil physical-chemical behavior, effective stress, pore water pressures, seepage, shearing behavior, stress distribution, consolidation, and settlement.
CEES 5353 - Introduction to Soil Dynamics
Focuses on behavior of soils during seismic loading. Students will be exposed to the state of the practice geotechnical earthquake engineering design techniques. Specific topics include vibration of single- and multi-degree of freedom systems, wave propagation through soils, stress-strain behavior of cyclically loaded soils, liquefaction of soils, dynamic settlement of level ground sites, and dynamic deformation of slopes.
CEES 5373 - Water Resource Management
Interdisciplinary course to study human decision making in the context of effective water management, with the goal of optimizing social, economic, ecological and environmental benefits, security and equity, and natural yields, which are all intimately tied to water. This course is designed to educate and foster future water managers and planners, and to equip them with fundamental theory and knowledge on how to manage surface water resources.
CEES 5413 - Soil-Structure Interaction
Introduces students to analytical and numerical solutions to soil-structure interaction problems. Includes methods of solution for beams and mats on elastic foundations; analysis and design of axially and laterally loaded piles and pile groups; and sheet piles and retaining walls. Nonlinear behavior of soils and piles will also be covered, and the students will be introduced to industry standard software such as LPILE and GROUP.
CEES 5443 - Unsaturated Soil Mechanics
Examines the mechanical and hydraulic behavior of unsaturated soils in contrast to saturated soil behavior. Topics include vadose zone processes leading to soil moisture variability, stress state variables, measurement of soil suction, soil water characteristic curve, seepage, shearing behavior, lateral earth pressure, bearing capacity, slope stability, and volume change due to wetting including heave and collapse behavior.
CEES 5653 - Advanced Mechanics of Materials
Advanced concepts of mechanics of materials including principal stresses and strains; theories of failure; introduction to elasticity; unsymmetrical bending and shear; torsion of noncircular solid cross sections, cellular sections, and open sections; and introduction to plate bending and buckling.
CEES 5683 - Dynamics of Structures
Free vibration, forced vibration, and transient response of structures having one, multiple, or infinite number of degrees-of-freedom; structural damping effects; numerical solution techniques; Lagrange’s equation of motion; Rayleigh-Ritz method. General matrix formulation for multiple degrees-of-freedom and modal coordinate transformation. Introduction to earthquake engineering concepts.
CEES 5693 - Structural Design of Pavements
Focuses on the design of rigid portland cement concrete pavements and flexible asphalt cement concrete pavements and interaction of pavement components. Specific topics include determination of traffic and environmental loading on pavements, mechanical properties of pavement materials and their determination, AASHTO 1993 pavement design methods for flexible and rigid pavements, and the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) approach for pavement design.
CEES 5773 - Structural Design – Steel II
Advanced structural steel design including steel deck diaphragms, column and beam bracing, composite beam design, rigid frame design, torsional member design, plate girder design, and design of building connections.
CEES 5783 - Structural Design – Concrete II
Advanced reinforced concrete behavior and design including limit design, anchorage slender columns, truss models for shear and torsion on beams, two-way and flat slabs, and the art of detailing.
CEES 5793 - Prestressed Concrete Structures
Design procedures for pretensioned and post-tensioned concrete structures, with emphasis on the behavior of prestressed concrete. Topics include methods of analysis, time dependent effects, fabrication and construction procedures, connections, highway bridges, frames, composite construction, continuous structures, and anchorage zone detailing.
CEES 5813 – Water Treatment, Reuse and Health Impacts
Water Treatment, Reuse and Health Impact is an introduction to water quality applications and the health impacts of water and wastewater. The course covers the basic principles of public health epidemiology and water-related diseases. Conventional and advanced water treatment methods are presented, along with various types of potable and non-potable water reuse to supplement public water supply in times of water stress.
CEES 5843 - Hydrology
An applied course in quantitative hydrology dealing with environmental water problems; hydrologic principles, the global water cycle and its components, rainfall-runoff hydrography, flood frequency analysis, flow routing, urban stormwater design, hydrologic models and their application for hydrologic design and water management.
CEES 5853 - Groundwater and Seepage
An applied course dealing with properties of aquifers, modeling of groundwater flow, groundwater hydrology and its interrelation with surface water, well hydraulics, pumping tests and safe yield of aquifers.
CEES 5963 - Water Security
This course defines water security as existing at the water quantity-quality-equity nexus, looks at historical examples of water insecurity, discusses major water security challenges (e.g., natural disasters, global warming, the water-food-energy nexus, urbanization, transboundary issues) as well as responses to these challenges (e.g., water resilience plans, LID, desalination/reuse technologies, developing a water ethic) and evaluates pioneering water security initiatives.
CEES 5970 – Special Topics: Capstone Design Experience I and II (each 1 credit hour)
An independent capstone design experience that focuses on a real-world, open-ended design problem that applies the skills, knowledge, and techniques learned by the student during their graduate studies.
DSA 5013 - Fundamentals of Engineering Statistical Analysis
Introduction to probability, expectation, discrete and continuous distributions, sampling and descriptive statistics, parameter estimation, and statistical tests to aid decision making. The student will learn analysis techniques for verification of systems parameters.
ENGR 4013G - Leadership and Management for Engineers
This course will help prepare students for leadership and management positions in a global culture. The course emphasizes team building attributes in a multi-cultural organization, how to build commitment among team members, and how to organize to compete in the global marketplace. Students will gain a better understanding of themselves and their personal and professional goals.
ENGR 4510G - Fundamentals of Project Management
This course develops a foundation of concepts and solutions that supports the planning, scheduling, controlling, resource allocation, and performance measurement activities required for successful completion of a project. The course introduces project management from the standpoint of a manager who must organize, plan, implement, and control tasks to achieve an organization's schedule, budget, and performance objectives. Tools and concepts such as project charter, scope statement, work breakdown structure, project estimating, project network diagrams, responsibility assignment matrices, and scheduling methodologies are studied. This course develops the competencies and skills for planning and controlling projects and understanding interpersonal issues that drive successful project outcomes.
GIS 5013 - Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems
Designed to help students learn introductory to intermediate concepts of geographic information science (GIScience) and become proficient users of geographic information systems (GIS). The course covers a variety of topics but focuses on GIS data models, data structures, and spatial analysis.
*Possible electives for Water Resources Track Only: CEES 5643 - Quantitative Hydrometeorology, GEOG 5943 - Natural Hazards, or GEOL 6633 - Aqueous Geochemical Modeling
LAW 6580 - Water Law (2 credit hours)
The system of water rights; riparian, appropriation, and prescriptive rights; stream, surface, and groundwater; transfer and termination of rights; injuries caused by water; development of water supplies; federal-state, interstate, and intrastate conflicts; water pollution control; federal and Indian rights and federal water resource problems.
METR 5633 - Hydrometeorology
Hydrometeorology is a rapidly changing discipline with new techniques for monitoring hydrologic stores and fluxes across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. It enables multi- resolution modeling and updating of decision-making practice. The course provides students with an in-depth study of precipitation estimation as well as data analysis and computational methods for hydrometeorology, including disaster prevention and decision making under uncertainty. The overarching goal is to train students to conduct critical thinking across atmospheric science and hydrology and across water science and engineering.
