The undergraduate program of the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science offers bachelor of science degrees in civil engineering, environmental engineering, and environmental science. In addition, the school offers an undergraduate degree program in pre- architecture engineering under the general Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree program. This program is jointly coordinated with the College of Architecture.

Civil engineering is comprised of four areas of emphasis: environmental, geotechnical, structural and transportation engineering. The undergraduate civil engineering student must complete a sequence of core engineering courses
plus one or two courses in each of these areas. The final two years of the curriculum are devoted to professional electives and the capstone experience.

The core curriculum for environmental engineering is similar to civil engineering; however, the last two years of the program focus strictly on environmental courses. Students are required to take courses from at least three of the following areas: air pollution control engineering; water and wastewater engineering, solid and hazardous wastes engineering, and environmental/occupational health engineering.

CEES is truly at the forefront relative to educational reform and innovative modes of delivery. A primary focus of our educational reform efforts is to move toward more "experiential-based" learning. The cornerstone of these efforts is the Sooner City project. Sooner City refers to an award-winning curriculum
reform project funded by the National Science Foundation. Sooner City is a comprehensive, integrated, infrastructure design project that is threaded throughout the civil and environmental engineering curriculum. Freshman students are given a plat of undeveloped land that, by the time they graduate, is turned into a blueprint for Sooner City's infrastructure.

CEES offers a unique project-based course for elective credit. The two-semester elective course focuses on developing student entries for the "Concrete Canoe" and "Steel Bridge" design contests, sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The fall semester focuses on the design process and professionalism; the actual prototypes are constructed and tested during the spring semester, prior to the competitions. We also allow students in civil and environmental engineering to take up to six hours of non-traditional professional electives from outside our department. Students can use these elective courses to get training in some of the non-technical professional areas (e.g., entrepreneurship, leadership, management, communications, etc.) of interest to potential employers.

Students enrolled in the pre-architecture program take the same core engineering, mathematics, science, and English courses taken by other engineering students. During the last two years, they take structural engineering courses from CEES and architectural planning and design courses from the College of Architecture. All three of the undergraduate engineering programs (i.e., civil, environmental, pre-architecture) were reviewed in 1999 by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) using the new "outcomes-based" review criteria. Each one of the programs received accreditation.

The undergraduate environmental science curriculum was revised in 1999 to give students flexibility in designing their degree program. Students can now choose one of four degree tracks-chemistry, biology, math/physical science, and policy-for advanced elective course work. This allows students to customize degree programs based on their educational and career goals.

The culmination of each BS degree program in CEES is a two-semester capstone sequence. The capstone design experience requires students to draw upon various aspects of their undergraduate course work to develop a comprehensive solution to an open-ended problem. CEES has developed two innovative capstone courses; a multi-disciplinary engineering course and an environmental course. For the multi-disciplinary capstone class (i.e., civil, mechanical, electrical engineers and architects) students are assembled into design teams structured to simulate a typical engineering design firm. The student design teams address a real-world problem and their work is supervised by practicing engineers. The teams must submit written reports and make oral presentations before an evaluation board comprised of practitioners. The instructor for the multi-disciplinary capstone courses has won two national engineering education awards (1996 ASEE Merryfield Award, 2000 NSPE Excellence in Engineering Education Award) during the last five years.

The environmental capstone experience involves teams of environmental engineering and environmental science students. The teams address a real-world environmental problem that typically involves extensive fieldwork. The course is co-instructed by environmental engineering and science faculty. The student teams must submit written reports and make oral presentations before an evaluation board comprised of practicing environmental regulators and consultants. During spring 2000, the environmental capstone class won a Public Health Service award for their work at the
Tar Creek Superfund site in northeastern Oklahoma.

ENROLLMENT

Undergraduate enrollment in CEES has decreased from 333 in 1995-96 to 210 in 2000-01. This has brought our undergraduate student to faculty ratio down to 12:1, which is the second lowest in the College of Engineering and fifth lowest in the Big 12. At the same time, the average ACT of incoming freshmen in CEES has climbed from 24 in 1996 to 25.9 for 1999. Although the undergraduate enrollment has decreased, the number of B.S. degrees awarded has increased to almost 50 degrees annually. Almost 30% of CEES undergraduate students are women and over 37% are members of under-represented minorities.

SCHOLARSHIPS

Over the past six years CEES has built its endowed scholarship fund to over $530,000. CEES now offers 40 scholarships ranging from $500 to $2000, including three scholarships targeting incoming freshmen.