Civil Engineering, B.S.

What is Civil Engineering?

Get a Master's in Civil Engineering

The Civil Engineering B.S.

Civil engineering lies at the heart of our built environment, encompassing the design, construction and maintenance of infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, buildings and water supply systems.

Civil engineers use scientific principles and technical expertise to ensure the integrity, functionality and sustainability of structures and systems we live with every day.

Whether your interests are in land development or designing your dream house, building bridges or developing water distribution systems and treatment plants, or creating the highways and transportation systems of the future, a civil engineering degree from Florida Tech prepares you to enter the workforce with maximum skills and a minimum need for additional training.

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Why Choose Florida Tech for Civil Engineering?

With Florida Tech’s rigorous civil engineering curriculum, you’ll develop a strong background in engineering and hands-on experience in computer-aided design and construction management.

Six areas of engineering specialization are available to allow you to build the career you want:

Construction management
Environmental
Geotechnical
Structural
Transportation
Water resources

The supportive community of teachers and peers at Florida Tech encourages academic success in a challenging academic curriculum. Our low student-to-faculty ratio means it is a personalized academic environment, in which students collaborate, benefit from faculty mentorship and thrive.

Florida Tech’s expert civil engineering instructors are professional engineers with real-world design experience and diverse research interests. Among them are recipients of awards for excellence in research, practice, teaching and service and many have been honored for their work by industry, government and professional groups. They are passionate about teaching and passing on their knowledge and expertise to the next generation of civil engineers.

Areas of faculty research include using nanotechnology to characterize the mechanical properties of concrete materials, stabilization of waste materials for beneficial uses, wireless instrumentation development, catastrophe modeling, business strategies for sustainable transportation and design and performance of stormwater management systems, among many others.

At Florida Tech, you'll find the high-tech facilities and resources you'd expect from one of the best schools for civil engineering.

Our students have full access to the F.W. Olin Engineering Complex, a 70,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art building that houses the latest in electronic and communications technology, 26 specialized research labs and a 142-seat multimedia auditorium. The materials and structures laboratory is equipped with several universal testing machines for physical testing and equipment and instrumentation for experimental stress analysis. The soil mechanics laboratory contains commercial equipment for evaluating the engineering properties of soils.

The L3Harris Student Design Center, a one-of-a-kind, 12,000-square-foot building featuring remarkable equipment and resources, is a focus of activity for student research and design projects—and it's available for personal projects, as well.

Civil engineering internships for juniors and seniors include civil engineering design, cost estimation, subdivision design, drainage planning, landscape planning, bidding processes, construction site evaluations and negotiating, among many other opportunities. It’s not unusual for local and national engineering firms that have offered Florida Tech students exciting internships to extend job offers immediately upon graduation.

If graduate study is on your list of goals, you can take advantage of Florida Tech’s FastTrack Master’s Program. As an undergraduate junior or senior, you can take graduate-level courses and complete your master's degree in as little as one additional year of study. Any of your earned scholarships carry over to the fifth year.

Our 130-acre campus is on the Space Coast, with NASA-Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral just north of us, and we’re minutes from the Indian River Lagoon, the most diverse estuary in North America.

Our area is home to numerous high-tech corporations and government and military organizations—providing an abundance of internship and employment opportunities for our graduates.

Our location makes it easy to engineer a little rest and relaxation when you need it, too: Just over the causeway are 72 miles of beautiful Atlantic Ocean beaches, and our campus is a short trip away from Orlando’s theme parks or the Florida Keys. Closer to home, we keep things interesting with a rich campus life including intramural and collegiate sports, clubs and social activities.

Careers in Civil Engineering

Civil engineers are needed everywhere. Florida Tech’s civil engineering students are hired by private architectural, construction, environmental, geotechnical, land development, structural, transportation and water resources companies, including several national and multinational companies. Our students work for cities, counties, municipalities and state and federal agencies, as well as organizations such as Disney.

Many civil engineers hold supervisory or administrative positions, while others work in design, project management, research and teaching.

While government funding is often the source for civil engineering projects, private company projects will continue to fuel demand for civil engineering careers. Several of our graduates have become entrepreneurs and started their own companies.

Civil engineering jobs include:

Looking ahead to your future career can be exciting! Keep in mind that certain roles may entail additional prerequisites, such as an advanced degree.

Florida Tech Career Services assists students, alumni and employers in their search for careers and employee candidates. We help students develop career plans and job-search skills. Explore our Career Toolbox to learn more about our services and access additional resources.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook, published by the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), provides information about specific jobs, including median annual pay, working conditions and job outlook, among other things. Check the handbook for information on the outlook for civil engineering careers.

Advanced Degree Options

After receiving their civil engineering degree, some students continue their graduate studies at Florida Tech and other prestigious universities, specializing in areas such as construction, environmental design, structural engineering, transportation/highway engineering and water resource design.

Post-graduate programs our students choose include:

Explore the Civil Engineering, B.S., Curriculum

The Civil Engineering, B.S., Curriculum

During the first two years of the civil engineering degree program at Florida Tech, you’ll build a solid foundation with courses in chemistry, mathematics, physics and engineering mechanics, augmented by practice-oriented civil engineering courses—including computer-aided design. Your classroom studies are enhanced through field trips and lab work.

You will take courses in all main areas of civil engineering—construction engineering, construction management, environmental engineering, geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, transportation engineering and water resources engineering—to become familiar with the entire breadth of civil engineering. You'll have the option to specialize through taking electives in your discipline(s) of choice.

As a junior and senior, the emphasis is on project-based learning, and you will complete several real-world design projects as part of course assignments, including a two-course capstone design project in collaboration with a team of your peers. Engineering fundamentals are emphasized in all courses, so students are well-prepared to pass the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) examination during the senior year.

Classes include:

Construction Measurements
Mechanics of Materials
Leading Construction Operations

Check the catalog for a description of all courses.

Download the Civil Engineering, B.S. Curriculum now!

Well-Engineered Research Opportunities

Students presenting their design for a plastic recycling plant

Capstone projects are designed to simulate a real-world civil engineering situation and include multiple presentations and investigations of project feasibility and environmental impacts.

As part of the capstone experience, you’ll take your designs from basic blueprints to presentable projects and showcase them to industry leaders and prospective employers at the Northrop Grumman Engineering and Science Student Design Showcase held on campus each spring.

Recent projects have included design of a plastic recycling plant using sustainable processes to minimize the production of construction-related waste, and development of plans for an entire community of energy-efficient and affordable housing, from roads and water systems to home foundations, layouts and materials.

Florida Tech is well known for our fully equipped civil engineering laboratories and faculty who are actively engaged in a wide range of research areas, including construction management, geotechnical engineering, materials, structures, transportation and water resources. Faculty encourage students to get involved in research projects.

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Learn more about Civil Engineering at Florida Tech on the website.

You’ve Got a Network to Build—It Starts Here

Beyond the classroom, civil engineering degree students build leadership and professional experience through exciting internships and participation in academic organizations like Tau Beta Pi (the oldest engineering honor society in the U.S.), student government and over 200 other campus-wide student organizations.

Florida Tech’s chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is one of our most active organizations on campus. ASCE takes part in several national competitions to test members' engineering skills, including concrete canoe and steel bridge competitions. Our concrete canoe team has reached the national level several times and receives sponsorships from a variety of local businesses.

Chi Epsilon is a civil engineering honor society dedicated to honoring engineering students who have exemplified the principles of scholarship, character, practicality and sociability in the civil engineering profession.

These organizations offer networking opportunities for future civil engineering internships and careers.

In addition to on-campus groups, professional groups like the Construction Industry Advisory Board (CIAC) provide students with a solid understanding of the many difficult management issues engineering professionals face in the construction industry. The Civil Engineering Advisory Committee (CEAC) connects students with the civil engineering industry by providing guest lecturers, field trip opportunities and civil engineering internships.

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The Civil Engineering (Bachelor of Science) program is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, https://www.abet.org, under the General Criteria and the Program Criteria for Civil and Similarly Named Engineering Programs. Additional information can be found on the department’s ABET Accreditation page.

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