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]