FEATURE
A New Environment for Undergraduate Engineers The growth off environmental engineering programs raises questions about curriculum and careers. KATHRYN S. BROWN
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hen undergraduate Mary Long graduates from Michigan Technological University next year, she may pursue a wastewater treatment design job in Germany, go to graduate school, or join a U.S. engineering company. An ambitious student, Long is double-majoring in environmental engineering and business. She also studies German. Meet the new environmental engineer. Once the exclusive domain of graduate schools, environmental engineering has swept the undergraduate scene. Five years ago, only a handful of schools offered a bachelor's degree in the field. Today, nearly 20 schools offer programs accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). According to the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES), 827 students earned a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering (or a closely related field) in 1996, six times more than in 1990. In contrast, the number of environmental engineering master of science and doctoral degrees approximately doubled. As a field, environmental engineering initially grew out of civil engineering. The avalanche of environmental laws and regulations since the 1970s has created a serious need for environmental engineers. But the wheels of academe grind slowly, and most environmental engineering majors and minors have emerged in just the past seven years. In some cases, the new programs have boosted previously stagnant numbers of students in civil engineering. "Environmental engineering is the new light that draws the moths," said Asirn.6 Vesilind, a Duke University civil engineering professor. Like Long, many of these new environmental engineers emerge from programs that encourage academic diversity, from serious doses of science to classes in communications and foreign language. That's a departure from the typical civil engineering undergraduate curriculum, which often consists
of focused technical design courses. The differences don't stop there. Today's young environmental engineers don't automatically pursue a master's degree, long considered a minimal professional credential. Engineers hotly debate the merits of these new undergraduate degrees. Some disagree about how much science belongs in an engineering curriculum, and many professors say the coming tidal wave of environmental engineering graduates will flood an already stagnant job market. "We may be promising things we can't deliver," said Robin Collins, a University of New Hampshire associate professor of civil engineering.
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0013-936X/97/0931-232AS14.00/0 © 1997 American Chemical Society
Preparing undergraduates The field of environmental engineering grew with the surge in regulations that sent companies scrambling to clean up old messes and comply with new laws. "It was a command-and-control framework," said Nicholas Albergo, chair of HSA Environmental Inc., a Tampa, Fla., environment and engineering firm. "The [regulatory] rules_were written: You do this, or you'll get that, meaning fines or penalties." Public health and hazardous waste became big business during the 1980s. Many companies hired civil engineers and spent significant time training them in environmental science and technology. Enrollment in civil engineering graduate programs rose by 30% between 1985 and 1992, according to figures from the National Center for Education Statistics. "Because of the growth, it looked like consulting firms and regulatory agencies were ready to hire at the undergraduate level," said Jo Ann Silverstein, a University of Colorado (Boulder) professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering. Perhaps, professors reasoned, they could better prepare undergraduates for jobs—or graduate study—in environmental engineering. ABET accredited its first academic engineering program in 1984. Six years later, many universities
Undergraduate environmental engineers learn the basics of stormwater drainage under the guidance of Duke University's Miguel Medina. (Courtesy Les Todd, Duke University)
began adding environmental majors or minors to their undergraduate engineering curricula. These programs combine core engineering courses with chemistry, biology, math, and physics. ABET suggests the following for an undergraduate environmental engineering major: 48 credit hours of engineering science and design, 16 credits of design, 32 credits of math and basic sciences, and 16 credits of social science. The University of Miami's environmental engineering major, first offered last fall, typifies the ABET model. Students take a year of basic chemistry, three semesters of calculus and physics, and two semesters of writing before getting to most of the engineering design courses, which number about six. Meanwhile, they take biology and more chemistry. Engineering departments need ABET's stamp of approval for their graduates to qualify to take a professional engineer's exam and become certified. Some professors, however, are frustrated with the curriculum requirements. "We wanted to have physical chemistry as an engineering science," said Vesilind. "But [ABET] wouldn't let us because it was chemistry, not engineering. 'Engineering' is the adjective they like."
Educational trade-offs Indeed, if one debate echoes in the halls of engineering departments, it's how much science an environmental track should include. In designing these programs, civil engineering faculty must cut some specialized engineering courses—for example, in surveying or structural analysis—to make room for basic science. "The problem is that some people are reluctant to give up what they perceive as essential technical education," said Richard Luthy, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at CarnegieMellon University. "Until now, [civil] engineering curricula tended to get crammed with technical courses and little flexibility. At the extreme, you can end up with a trade school." Luthy and colleagues say that giving students breadth and versatility is more important than graduating "drafting-table-ready" engineers. CarnegieMellon, for example, offers a minor in environmental engineering instead of a bachelor's degree. "Frankly, students go off and do all kinds of things," Luthy said. "We shouldn't encourage them to specialize too early." Others argue that curriculum diversity has a seVOL. 31, NO. 5, 1997/ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE S TECHNOLOGY/NEWS " 2 3 3 A
Accredited environmental engineering undergraduate programs These U.S. colleges and universities offer BS degree programs approved by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology in environmental engineering (BSEE) or civil engineering (BSCE) with an environmental engineering (EE) option. Advanced degrees (MS, PhD) are also listed. California Polytechnic State University Building 4, San Luis Obispo, CA 93407; (805) 756-2311; www. calpoly.edu. Civil & Environmental Engineering, Edward Sullivan, chair; (805) 756-1166. EE since 1968. BSCE, BSEE, MSE. Humboldt State University Areata, CA 95521; (707) 826-3619. Environmental Resource Engineering (ERE), Al Burrows, head; (707) 826-3518. ERE since 1973. BSERE.
Northwestern University 2145 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL 60208; www.nwu.edu. Civil & Environmental Engineering, Leon Keer, chair; (847) 491-3257. EE (graduate) since 1992. BSCE, BSEE, MSCE, MSEE. Ohio State University 470 Hitchcock Hall, 2070 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43210-1275; (614) 292-2771. Civil and Environmental Engineering, Keith Bedford, chair; (614) 292-7338. CEE since 1883. BSCE (EE option). Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th St., Troy, NY 12180; (518) 276-6000; www.rpi.edu. Environmental & Energy Engineering, Don Steiner, head; (518) 276-4016. EE since 1955. BSEE, BS Nuclear Engineering, BS Engineering Physics, MS, PhD.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139-4307; (617) 2531000. Civil & Environmental Engineering, Room I-290; Rafael L Bras, chair; (617) 253-2117. EE since 1992. BSCE, BSEE, MSC, EE.
Stevens Institute of Technology Castle Point Station, Hoboken, NJ 07030; www.stevens.edu. Civil, Environmental, & Ocean Engineering, Richard Hires, chair; (201) 216-5675. EE since 1989. BSCE, BSEE, MSCE, MSEE, PhDCE, PhDEE.
Michigan Technological University 1400 Towson Dr., Houghton, Ml 49931; www.mtu.edu. Civil & Environmental Engineering, C. Robert Baitlod, dean; (906) 4872520. EE since 1986. BSCE, BSEE.
Syracuse University Syracuse, NY 13244; cwis.syr.edu. Civil & Environmental Engineering, Shoba Bhatia, chair; (315) 443-3352. EE since 1989. BSCE, BSEE, MSCE, MSEE, PhDCE.
Montana Technical University 1300 W. Park St., Butte, MT 59701; www.mtech.edu. Environmental Engineering, Kumar Ganesan, chair; (406) 496-4239. EE since 1972. BSEE, MSEE.
University of California—Riverside 700 University Ave., Riverside, CA 92521; (909) 787-1012; www.ucr.edu. Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Mark R. Matsumoto, chair; (909) 787-5218. EE since 1992. BSCE, BSEE, BS Electrical, BS Mechanical.
New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology 801 Leroy PI., Socorro, NM 87801; (800) 428-7324; www.mnt.edu. Mineral & Environmental Engineering, Aimone Martin, chair; (505) 835-5345. EE since 1982. BSEE, MSEE.
University of Central Florida Orlando, FL 32816; (407) 823-3000; www.ucf.edu. Civil & Environmental Engineering, P.O. Box 164250; Essam Radwan, chair; (407) 823-2841. EE since 1979. BSCE, BSEE, MS, PhD.
North Carolina State University Campus Box 7908, Raleigh, NC 27695-7908; (919) 515-7676. Civil Engineering, E. Downey Brill, head; (919) 515-2352. CE since 1978. BSCE, BSEE.
University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611-6450; www.ufl.edu. Environmental Engineering Sciences, 217 Black Hall, P.O. Box 116450; Joseph J. Delfino, chair; (352) 392-0841. EE since 1967. BSEE, MSEE.
Northern Arizona University Box 5694, Flagstaff, AZ 86011; (520) 523-9333. Environmental Engineering, Spencer Brinkerhoff, head; (520) 523-4339. EE since 1993. BSEE, BSES.
Utah State University Logan, Utah 84322-4130; (801) 797-2932. Civil and Environmental Engineering, Loren R. Anderson, chair; (801) 797-2938. EE since 1992. BSCE, BSEE.
rious downside: engineering ignorance. "If we're going to graduate a person as an engineer, their stockin-trade is the application of science to real-world problems," said William C. Anderson, executive director of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers (AAEE). "If they don't have that capability, they are a fraud on the marketplace. I don't fault [those] who think we need more science. The problem comes with the trade-off that must ensue." Educational trade-offs are growing more complex as the field of environmental engineering expands. Today, students learn more than ever about organic pollutants, chemical speciation, and micro2 3 4 A • VOL. 31, NO. 5, 1997 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS
bial processes. The best and brightest often try to fit in internships, too. General Motors, for example, recruits undergraduates from four schools—Purdue University, Wayne State University, Michigan Technological University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—into an intense co-op training program. All the demands on undergraduates—science, technology, practical engineering experience—lead some professors to ask a basic question: Just how much can be accomplished in an undergraduate degree? "You've got a box that's full," said Chester Rock, associate dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Maine in Orono. "If you want more in
it, you're going to have to get a bigger box." Rock and others say the master's degree, which offers specialty courses and analytical expertise, is that bigger box. Undergraduate work simply opens the door. Charles Glass, an environmental engineering Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado, agrees. Glass, who holds a civil engineering bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University, says hard-core environmental courses belong at the graduate level. "If you go to a serious civil engineering program and learn dynamics and statics as an undergraduate, that will hold you in good stead," Glass said. "Then you can go back and take lots of chemistry or microbiology." It's hard to predict how many environmental engineering undergraduates will go to graduate school. Some 105 ABET-accredited environmental engineering graduate programs exist. In 1996, these and others graduated 1177 master's degree students, up from 471 students six years earlier. Also, about 94 Ph.D.s in environmental engineering were awarded last year, compared with 51 in 1990. Undergraduate degree holders obtain different jobs than their more educated counterparts, said Kurt Paterson, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan Technological University. Paterson's former students often send him email to relate job success or sorrow. "The majority of my undergraduates are finding jobs in industry doing things like air emission sampling or [pollution] reporting requirements for companies," Paterson said. "If they go to graduate school, they get a different tier of work. Master's degree students get offers from engineering consulting firms. At the doctorate level, graduates can go into academics, government, or a few consulting positions." Undergraduates are usually placed in a wide variety of entry-level jobs. "My students end up doing everything from picking up mussels to working in a New York law firm as an environment specialist," said Vesilind. "It seems there are a lot of folks who would like to hire young environmental engineers with rigorous training." It's even harder to predict how well graduates steeped in engineering science versus technology will fare in today's job market. One reason is that the market is changing. During the 1980s, Superfund and other regulations kept engineers busy with cleanup, control, and monitoring for industry or for EPA. According to the EPA budget office, however, the agency's Superfund appropriation has fallen by roughly $200 million over the past five years. EPA's budget for hazardous waste media has dropped from $330 million to less than $200 million. "The federal market has definitely slowed down," said Dean Mericus, a senior environmental engineer at Limno-Tech, Inc., in Ann Arbor, Mich. "One of the trends we've seen is away from hazardous waste remediation work. That market is much more competitive, and cost has become the deciding factor [in hiring engineers]." Cynthia Paulson, manager of watershed services at Brown & Caldwell in Denver, notes that regulationdriven jobs depend in part on hard-to-predict congressional budgets. For example, legislators involved in amendments to the Clean Water Act have discussed scaling back stormwater quality control to
Growth in undergraduate engineering degrees The Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies, in its survey of undergraduate environmental engineering programs, has documented a dramatic increase in the numbers of students receiving B.S. degrees in environmental engineering or closely related fields.
Source: Engineering and Technology Degrees, 1996
save money. "If we gear up for mat market, we have to move quickly if it changes," Paulson said. This volatility means that firms are looking for versatile environmental engineers who can shift projects, said Paulson. "Probably the key thing is that people need to be diversified." In general, industry observers say, air and water quality are beginning to win more government attention. Last year, Congress reauthorized the Safe Drinking Water Act and approved a grants program to build publicly owned water treatment plants. Companies also are independendy contracting witii municipal water clients such as water management and sewer districts. Water quality work favors engineers who are comfortable in science and statistics, says Mericus. "There's a lot of science involved in watershed management. Projects now tend to have an emphasis on big systems: whole watersheds or entire facilities, not just point source pollution. So we focus on a whole realm of pollutants, from chemical and physical to biological. There's also increasing ecological interest." In general, EPA and large industries are moving from a "cleanup mentality" to one of waste minimization, pollution prevention, and sustainable development. The shift from end-of-pipeline technology toward internal pollution control should bring new jobs to technology-oriented engineers, says Albergo of HSA Environmental. "There will be more emphasis in the near future on industrial wastewater treatment design, waste recycling. And mat moves back toward mechanical engineering. We're talking about taking what was traditionally part of me waste stream and minimizing it or reusing it to save management money." Industry representatives agree that all jobhunting environmental engineers need one critical thing: communication skills. "You can't underestiVOL.31, NO. 5, 1997/ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE S TECHNOLOGY/NEWS " 2 3 5 A
Grads also engineering pollution prevention The new breed of environmental engineers is also coming out of chemical and mechanical engineering programs. Graduates in these fields develop cleaner car engines, separate and eliminate waste from industrial processes, and build pollution prevention into product design. 'There has been a tremendous amount of growth in chemical engineering with an environmental emphasis," said Ralph Yang, chair of the chemical engineering department at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Many of the major environmental challenges, such as clean air and water, need chemical engineering solutions." According to the January 1996 issue of Chemical Engineerrng Progress, 11% of its readers described themselves as environmental engineers in 1995, approximately 4000 more people than in 1988. Student interest is also on the rise. At the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, chemical and environmental engineering professor Robert Counce says undergraduates have been signing up in droves to take his course on industrial pollution prevention. "Most of these students end up in the chemical process industry. They often work to make products with reduced waste." Chemical engineers get swept up by environmental consulting firms as well, said Yang. As in environmental engineering, a chemical engineer with a bachelor's degree may compete with a student holding a master's in chemical engineering for "environmental" jobs. From the employer's point of view, these two engineers may require a similar amount of training, according to David Allen, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Texas in Austin. "The biggest distinction in chemical engineering is between doctoral students and [undergraduate] students." In mechanical engineering, today's students have good opportunities to pursue air pollution work, said Kenneth Ragland, chair of the mechanical engineering department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The effort to make cars cleaner is a big market for us. There's a strong emphasis on emissions that's driving [auto] design." Across the board, industrial companies today want to add pollution prevention into product design from the very start, engineers say. "That means getting the people doing the design more deeply involved in environmental issues," said Allen. That's where traditional chemical and mechanical engineers come in. In fact, Allen contends that some chemical engineers with environmental know-how may have a leg up on students coming from strictly environmental engineering programs. "A chemical engineer has almost as much chemistry training as a chemistry major," said Allen. "If you're studying things like ozone formation or water [pollution], then a chemistry background will benefit you." Combine that science with the basics of reaction kinetics, reactor design, and other engineering areas, and you have a powerful combination, Allen believes. —K.S.B.
mate a person's ability to communicate what they know," said Steve Tomaszewski, coordinator of the environment and energy staff at General Motors. "It is critical." Albergo agrees: "If you can't write, it doesn't matter how good you are." He says you must be able to convey your message—whether it's rich in science or nrartiral experiencf.
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The coming squeeze Even as students are lining up for environmental engineering majors, many professors have begun to quiedy ask one question: Can all these students find jobs? "I would guess that there's a point of saturation that may come in a few years," said David Chin, head of the civil, architectural, and environmental engineering department at the University of Miami. "We're not there yet, but it is a concern." Estimates suggest that up to 70,000 environmental engineers are already practicing in the United States today. As happened with the auto industry in the 1960s, foreign companies have begun moving into the American market, increasing competition. At the major environmental consulting firms, only a fraction of engineering applicants are called for interviews. Even though the United States represents 40% of the world's market for environmental engineering services, the U.S. market is flattening, according to Philip G. Hall, chairman of the board at CH2M Hill in Denver. Because "global markets continue to grow at a double-digit rate," many environmental engineers are seeking jobs abroad. More generally, environmental engineering is a game of diminishing returns, noted Anderson of AAEE. "Only so many sites need to be remediated,,.. and we've got plenty of people eliminating pollution in the process and design stages. That could ultimately mean little work in the pipeline." Glass adds that ambitious undergraduates could make job hunting harder for others. "If the undergraduates are [willing to accept] lower salaries, then they could cut out graduate students willing to work in the mid-thirties," said Glass. "Is this field big enough for all these students? We'll have to see." Some regions grapple with more environmental regulations—and thus offer more jobs—than others. California, for example, tends to legislate more pollution and water goals than the Midwest. Sometimes, regional differences in engineering jobs are driven by the general economy. At the University of New Hampshire, Collins said environmental engineering graduates are finding it hard to land jobs close to home. Local industries in the area have laid off workers, causing new home construction to plummet and thus leaving fewer jobs for civil and environmental engineers alike. Nationwide, increasing numbers of environmental engineers could feel similarly squeezed as regional economies go up and down says Collins. At Colorado, Silverstein is still optimistic. She pushes environmental engineering students to study a variety of subjects—chemistry, physics, biology, math—to broaden their job opportunities/'Really, if you get the fundamentals, you can do a lot," she said. "At its best, engineering is a collection of skills that can be applied to a variety of problems. You can change your focus once you acquire those skills." After all, that's how environmental engineering got started in the first place. Kathryn Sergeant Brown is a freelance science writer based in Columbia, Mo.
