The Department of Civil Engineering prepares undergraduate and graduate students for a rewarding career in the dynamic profession of civil engineering.
Our faculty, research and teaching staff is comprised of some of the finest minds in the fields of civil and environmental engineering. They welcome questions and collaborations with our students. Along with our students from around the world and our professional administrative staff, they work together to create an energetic and creative department.
Building and sustaining industry partnerships is a strength of our department. We prepare students for industry with substantial professional skills, design experience, and industry connections. Our Civil Engineering Forum, a weekly presentation and discussion series, allows students to learn from and engage with engineers in their field. Both our undergraduate and graduate students have opportunities to work in our unique lab facilities.
We deliver cutting-edge education and research outcomes to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, preparing our students to tackle the large-scale challenges associated with climate change.
Our objective is to provide a broadly-based education in civil engineering supported by world-class research in the areas of Structural, Geotechnical, Hydrotechnical, and Environmental Engineering.
Queen’s Civil Engineering anticipates the need for broadly educated civil engineers with solid foundations in a wide variety of sub-disciplines and excellent professional skills. To provide the best education possible, we will prioritize hands-on learning with field-based experiences at the department's Kennedy Field Station and lab-based experiences with large-scale testing in all disciplines.
We enjoy strong relations with industrial partners. We aim for greater industrial involvement to increase our experiential learning opportunities.
Our researchers strive to protect and preserve the environment by focusing on the sustainability of the natural and built environment. We will pursue further research in structural rehabilitation. This includes research in advanced materials, infrastructure replacement, sustainable water supply and management, and environmental engineering in general.
We will strengthen the GeoEngineering Centre and the Water Research Group hosted by our department. Our goal in this research program will be to cement our place as a leading Civil Engineering Department in Canada and bolster our international standing.
The Department is part of the Stephen J.R. Smith Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Queen’s University. Smith Engineering is changing the face of engineering education, so future engineers can be leaders in the face of complex and multidisciplinary global issues, building on four key pillars:
Problem-based, experiential learning oriented toward the world’s grand challenges.
A transformative approach to engineering education needs to incorporate problem-based learning across the program to ensure students engage with others and develop novel, technically sound solutions to a broad range of societal challenges in an ethical, sustainable, and humanistic way.
A humanistic approach to engineering.
A human-centered mindset will be cultivated in students and faculty to frame problems, ensuring that knowledge and creativity are brought to solutions that will have the greatest impact, recognizing and driving “problem-solution” fit through observation, insight and empathy.
Alongside students’ grounding in fundamental and applied sciences, Smith Engineering needs to incorporate a systematic inclusion of social science and humanities knowledge.
Competency-based education to ensure subject mastery.
Program-wide competency-based education must communicate progression to students on their competence, allow students to articulate their abilities to employers and ensuring that all graduating students possess the required knowledge and skills.
This fundamental shift can provide ongoing feedback to students on their progress toward meeting all program requirements, and repeated opportunities to improve at an individualized pace, and will significantly help students articulate their skills to employers.
Experiential learning where students learn through practice.
A new model of education must provide all our students with innovative professional development and experiential learning opportunities and ensure that community and industry insight is embedded into curricular and extra-curricular experiences.
What is needed is an approach that provides significant relationship and experience within industry.