I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the
Department of Civil Engineering and to provide some background
information about the field of civil engineering that you won’t
find elsewhere on this site. Also, I’d like to make a
few personal observations about our Department here at Johns
Hopkins.
Starting about 200 years ago, engineering education in this
country was available only to military engineers, who were educated
at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Civil(ian)
engineering was the first non-military engineering discipline;
formal schools of civil engineering began to emerge in the U.S.
in the mid-1800s.
Today, civil engineering is a very broad field--broader
than the other engineering disciplines. Civil engineers
build the civil infrastructure--buildings, bridges,
airports, tunnels, roads, etc. They are also concerned
with the foundations of these structures, and this
requires knowledge of the mechanics of the soil beneath
them. Civil engineers also solve problems related
to water supply and waste treatment and the design
and construction of ports and harbors.
[continued]