I’m looking into colleges in the Midwest area that are good in the engineering field. I’ve found plenty of options, but some have a separate degree for EnvE while some others don’t. This wouldn’t be a problem, as all the colleges also allow you to get a degree in CE and concentrate in EnvE. My question is, what is the coursework difference? I don’t think I would like CE nearly as much as EnvE, and I would like to limit the amount of classes that I don’t necessarily enjoy. General answers on separate degrees vs concentrating in a certain subject are welcome also. Thanks!
This may certainly be a problem, because at a lot of universities (in fact, most universities, in my experience), EnvE is a subset of or offered by the school of civil engineering. In other words, environmental engineering is just a flavor of civil engineering, much like aeronautical engineering is a flavor of mechanical engineering. Now, this will differ from school to school and program to program (for example, at some schools, environmental engineering may focus more on topics related to electrical or chemical engineering), but generally speaking, it holds true.
If you don’t like civil engineering, what makes you think you’ll enjoy environmental engineering?
Looking at what civil engineers do and study I don’t find it nearly as interesting as what EnvE study. Waste water and water pollution seem a lot more interesting than structures. I did just find the coursework for Madison, which doesn’t have a separate environmental engineering course. From what I can tell, you have to take all the classes a normal CE would take, and then just take more for the concentration. So a flavor like you said. While at Purdue or twin cities, the coursework is always around EnvE. So these seem like better options. However, this narrows my list of potential schools down… As I now need to find separate EnvE programs, that are also ABET accredited (which Purdue and Twin Cities are, but I’d like more options obviously)
The best way to answer this is to do as you’ve already done, look up the flowcharts and/or curriculum sheets for all the programs that intrigue you.