Messages from the Department Head
Summer 2023 - Plans, Accomplishments and Anticipation
Dear CEE Friends,
I hope all our Illini near and far are enjoying a wonderful summer! Here on campus, the quiet summer months will soon give way to the bustling enthusiasm of another new school year. This year, we have much to anticipate.
We are looking forward to closer and stronger connections with our colleagues in industry, thanks to a new corporate partners program currently in development that will make it easier for companies to connect with our world-class faculty and our talented students, as well as utilize the outstanding facilities and equipment that the department has to offer. We will be working to establish cooperative partnerships with industry that will allow us to stay on the leading edge of innovation in a two-way exchange of ideas between academia and engineering practice. Please watch our e-news and upcoming issues of the magazine for more details as this program develops.
In a related initiative, we are beginning to plan for renovations to Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory (NCEL) to add more hands-on laboratories that will enable our students to benefit from these developing connections with industry. It has been 55 years since the first class was taught in NCEL. The foundations and the walls remain as strong as on that first day. The interior design and the water, energy and air quality infrastructure systems however are in critical need of a major renovation. They are old and inefficient, requiring constant and costly upkeep; maintaining indoor environmental quality to support the work of our staff, faculty and students is a challenge. This is a great opportunity to re-envision NCEL as a student-centered smart building, itself both a classroom and a convening space to nurture the excitement of engineering innovation and teamwork. Our goal is to leverage our new partnerships with industry for the benefit of our students, bringing technological innovation into the classroom and making our facilities and the intellectual prowess of our world-class faculty available to support industry directly. We want our students to have a second-to-none education in computational and visualization skills, data science, robotics, new materials, and as users and potential developers of digital infrastructure systems from design to construction to operations. We are considering a whole reset of our experimental spaces to promote interdisciplinary research and to facilitate the infusion of the most advanced technologies into civil and environmental engineering research and practice.
Another exciting development is the official launch this fall of our bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering (B.S.Env.) program. Current undergraduates may transfer into the program starting this fall, and new incoming students may apply to begin in fall 2024. Students will choose from among five primary concentrations that represent emerging areas of critical importance in the 21st century: Public Health Engineering, One Water, Energy and Environmental Sustainability, Climate and Environmental Sustainability, and Water Systems and Sustainability.
Our enrollment numbers are stronger than ever. Our undergraduate student population has rebounded to pre-Covid levels; our current undergraduate enrollment is the highest it has been since 2017. This increase is due to large incoming first-year classes in 2022 and 2023 – likely the result of improved efforts to encourage admitted students to accept their offers of admission. During the past two years, we have increased communications with admitted students to make them aware of the many advantages of a degree from CEE at Illinois. This year our CEE Alumni Association Board of Directors assisted in this, along with several faculty members, making phone calls to prospective students to encourage them to accept their offers of admission. One of the many advantages of a CEE degree from Illinois is our vast and accomplished alumni network; the work of the Board this spring in encouraging and welcoming prospective students led to a very strong class of first-year students who will matriculate already having experienced the power of the CEE alumni connection.
Again this year, our number of women students has hit an all-time high. The percentage of women students in this incoming 2023 first-year undergraduate incoming 2023 first-year undergraduate class will be 42% – the largest ever in history! The incoming graduate student cohort includes approximately 45% female students, one of the highest ratios in our history. We are delighted to see that more and more women are accepting the challenge of serving society as civil and environmental engineers. The future looks bright!
On the graduate enrollment front, the number of graduate applications and admissions have substantially rebounded from a low in fall 2022, with admissions increasing this year by 22%. The number of incoming graduate students has remained nearly constant since fall 2017, excluding a low enrollment in fall 2020 (a 34% drop), with an incoming class of 197 students in fall 2023. International students make up about 67% of the incoming graduate cohort (fall 2023), with these students originating from 31 countries. The online CEE M.S. program, ranked #1 in the United States, continues to grow with the third largest incoming cohort (30 students) since the inception of the program in fall 2011.
I am delighted to bring you such good news from your home department at Illinois. I have a deep sense of gratitude and excitement for the privilege to serve as department head during this time of great change and so much promise for both the future of CEE at Illinois and the civil and environmental engineering profession.
-Ana P. Barros Donald Biggar Willett Chair of Engineering Department Head, Civil and Environmental Engineering