My mom really wants me to go into environmental engineering but I’m looking around school programs and started to wonder it may not be exactly or only what she has in mind. I think she has in mind any sort of engineering for sustainable purposes and development like wind mills, geothermal energy production set up, or solar panel productions. but as I look, Environmental engineering seem to more geared toward environmental management such as water system management and pollution control. If I want to build solar panels after graduation - should I go into what engineering? Mechaical?
I’m also a little confused about the difference between civil and environmental engineering - can anyone explain this to me?
Thank you,
Short version: Major in mechanical engineering, not environmental if that is what you want to do.
Long version: Mechanical engineering is an interesting major. What can you do with it? Almost anything: aerospace, robotics, geothermal and renewable energy, nanotechnology, power plants, petroleum engineering, environmental engineering, manufacturing, materials, etc. Mechanical engineering is the jack of all trades, master of none. Your career as a mechanical engineer will be dictated largely by your own interests. It is one of the broadest engineering degrees. You’d be able to work in a variety of industries, including environmental and renewable/geothermal energy with it.
Environmental engineering is a much more restricted major than mechanical. If you want to go into renewable energy or geothermal, mechanical is much better. Environmental engineering deals with remediation of the environment, construction of landfills, cleaning the air for industrial processes, etc. It is a subset of civil engineering What can you do with environmental engineering? Environmental engineering. It wouldn’t be impossible to do something else, but much harder than with a broad based degree like mechanical.
Civil engineering deals with major structures: the design, construction of buildings, bridges, roads. In many schools, environmental engineering developed as an offshoot of civil, with group of professors specializing in water or air treatment and pollution reduction. Schools without a specific environmental engineering department may have professors in the civil or mechanical or chemical engineering departments that have a program related to environmental engineering. For example, a materials engineer can be developing new materials for solar energy conversion.
Your interest in environmental engineering covers a broad area (wind mills, geothermal, solar), so it might be better to look into many areas of engineering at the start and see which areas pique your interest.