The Department of Civil Engineering offers a cooperative program in which students alternate some periods of school with periods of engineering employment and receive the B.S. degree in five years. The work periods are normally the spring and summer of the third year and the antecedent summer and fall of the fifth year. It is also sometimes possible to include the summer after the second year. Students do not pay tuition during the work periods and are paid a normal salary by the company or government agency. Although the department arranges employment contacts, final negotiations are made between the student and the employer.
Students successfully completing a cooperative program receive a notation on their transcript.
This program is available to nonengineering majors only, who would like an overview of the principles of structural engineering. The honors programs take five or six years, depending on the options selected, and carry an automatic tuition waiver of 50 percent after the first eight semesters of undergraduate work. The other program leads directly from the B.S. in Civil Engineering to the M.S.E. in Environmental Engineering through the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering.