Environmental engineering offers students the opportunity to explore multidisciplinary solutions to solve problems around protecting human health and the environment from the effects of pollution and creating a sustainable future. They tackle problems related to sustainability, managing water supplies, air pollution, and industrial waste.
Program Overview
The environmental engineering curriculum at the Tickle College of Engineering emphasizes the importance of equipping engineers with specialized skills to mitigate the impacts of pollution on human health and the environment and to promote sustainable practices in our communities and society.
This degree will provide students the opportunity to solve engineering problems and contribute to successful projects, with increasing technical and leadership responsibility. Students will learn to adapt to rapid changes in societal needs and engineering technology by leveraging existing and emerging engineering knowledge.
Why study Environmental Engineering
The environmental challenges faced by our society have become increasingly complex during the last 50 years. For example, a recent report from the National Academies’ identified the following grand challenges for environmental engineering:
- Create sustainable food, water, and energy
- Curb climate change and adapt to its impacts
- Design a future without pollution or waste
- Create efficient, healthy, resilient cities
- Foster informed decisions and actions
Environmental engineering students will play a role in solving these challenges by working in partnership with other engineering professionals, policymakers, and affected communities. This degree program provides specialized skills to the area of study not included in a traditional civil engineering curriculum and thus allow graduates to contribute to these grand challenges.
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is situated amongst seven lakes, beside the state’s largest river, in the foothills of a national park while still part of a bustling urban environment, placing it in a perfect position to study environmental engineering.
Future program expansion is anticipated to support specific regional needs and institutional strengths, including atmospheric science, watershed and river management, hydropower, and nuclear decommissioning and waste management.
What can you do with a BS in environmental engineering?
As an environmental engineer, you may be involved in designing infrastructure to treat drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater; ensuring compliance to environmental technology, assessing impacts of pollutant, mitigating the effects of climate change, or evaluating the sustainability impact of emerging technologies.
Graduates will go on to work for employers such as employers such as private consulting and industry, as well as utilities and government agencies (ORNL, TVA, NOAA, the Southeast Regional Climate Center, US Army Corp of Engineers, the USGS, and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation).
Curriculum
The environmental engineering curriculum will include fundamental topics such as fluid mechanics, environmental chemistry, microbiology, fate and transport of environmental pollutants, environmental systems engineering, and risk assessment, as well as applied topics such as hydrology, water resources engineering, water, and waste treatment, air pollution control, solid and hazardous waste management, and energy systems.
Featured Courses
This course covers cross-cutting engineering approaches to analyze and solve current sustainability challenges. Students will learn some of the tools, protocols, and methods that are common to sustainability analysis, particularly focused on engineered systems.
This course provides an introduction to drinking water treatment and distribution systems, wastewater treatment and collection systems, air pollution, solid/hazardous waste, and environmental regulations.
Students learn fundamentals of air pollution and visibility reduction, air quality laws and regulations, air pollutions sources and impacts, and design of air pollution control technologies for gaseous and particulate pollutants.
Students are introduced to the hydrologic cycle and key physical processes such as precipitation, evaporation and transpiration, runoff, infiltration, and groundwater. Students learn tools for hydrological measurement, data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation; and applications for water resources management are discussed.
Complementary Minors
The following minors work well with environmental engineering to offer students the opportunity to develop and showcase a multidisciplinary skill set as they enter the next phases of their career. Use the link below to find out more about our programs and what you can do with an engineering degree.
- Nuclear Decommissioning and Environmental Management
- Watershed
- Engineering for Sustainability
- Business
- Engineering Entrepreneurship
Technical Electives
The following table contains a list of suggested technical electives for students in the BS ENVE program. All 500 level Environmental Engineering courses can be applied towards technical electives.
| Area of Interest | Example Technical Electives |
|---|---|
| Infrastructure Engineering | CE 210, CE 300 |
| Energy and Sustainability | ALEC 485, EEPS 206, EEPS 456, ESE 511, ESS 110, GOEG 346, ME 331 |
| Nuclear Decommissioning and Environmental Management | NE 233, 404, 406, 433, 542 |
| Public Health | PUBH 201, 202, 420 |
| Fundamentals | Accounting 200, EF 333, Physics 231, Physics 232, Math 251, ME 231, MSE 201, ECE 201, IE 405, IE 452, COSC 102, Chem 210, Chem 260/268 |
Policies
- The technical electives may be a departmental offering, including a graduate course for undergraduate credit. A student must have a GPA of 2.75 or higher or have approval of the instructor to take a 500-level course for undergraduate credit.
- Unless the course is specifically listed above, the course should be above the fundamental level in its topic area; first-year courses are usually not acceptable.
- There must be a logical relationship between the course and a major interest area of the student. This category is not a place to put courses already taken which do not have a place elsewhere in the minimum degree requirements.
- A transfer or first-degree course can be used as a technical elective if it meets these stipulations.
- An advisor has the prerogative of requiring a student to justify the choice of a technical elective in writing, with that written note going into the student’s file.