Civil Engineering Changes Department Name

The Ohio State University Board of Trustees has approved changing the name of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science to the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering.

The department will continue to offer degree programs in civil engineering and environmental engineering, as well as two minor degree programs in environmental engineering and surveying and mapping.

Since 1994, the department had administered two distinct programs, one in civil and environmental engineering and the other in geodetic science and surveying. After a university doctoral program review in 2008 indicated that the latter needed to be reassessed and/or restructured, the administration of the geodetic science and surveying graduate program was moved to the School of Earth Sciences.

A new specialization called geoinformation and geodetic engineering was created in the civil engineering graduate program. Students will study topics such as real-time mobile mapping; position, navigation and timing; multi-sensor integration; and image understanding, on scales from planetary to microscopic. The specialization will provide additional courses for civil engineering students, contributing to the depth and breadth of other relevant programs such as environmental and transportation engineering, and help strengthen the multidisciplinary character of education and research.  

Also, at the undergraduate level the student can select courses in “transportation and geodetic engineering” – one of three focus areas in the civil engineering undergraduate program. The other two focus areas include “infrastructure (structures, soils and construction),” and “water resources and environmental engineering.”

Virtually all specialty programs in the department are users of spatial information, such as surface mapping, or rendering of the Earth’s surface, construction sites or man-made objects. The department’s geodetic engineering faculty specialize in extracting useful information from multiple sensors and in visualizing and managing this information.

“There is an increasing demand for students with a background in geodetic engineering at the bachelor’s and master’s degree levels,” said department chair Carolyn Merry. “These changes will better prepare our graduates for careers in these fields.”

More than 150 companies in the U.S. private sector are providers of geospatial information products such as digital maps, orthophotos, digital elevation models, thematic maps, land use/land cover maps, city models, building models, site models, flood risk maps and damage assessments. Government agencies and municipalities, as users of geospatial information, also need experts at all levels.

Learn more about the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering.