Environmental Engineering Minor

Environmental engineers play an important role in designing and implementing projects that protect public health and ecosystems, and therefore play an important societal role in our highly impacted and changing world. The goal of the Civil and Urban Engineering undergraduate minor in Environmental Engineering is to expose undergraduate students to the fundamental principles of environmental engineering theory and practice, which can be applied to solving practical problems that involve evaluation and treatment of contaminated water, soils, and air. Students will develop knowledge and skills in mass and energy balances, reactor models, unit treatment processes, environmental chemistry and microbiology, water resource engineering, hydrology, and environmental contaminants. These skills, along with an emphasis on building analytical reasoning and critical thinking capabilities, can be applied to problem-solving in environmental engineering or additional engineering domains. Students are required to take a total of 15 credits.

The minor is open to all undergraduate students. BS CE students are expected to be able to complete the minor within the required 129 credits.

Learning Objectives of the Environmental Engineering Minor:

Introduce students to the field of environmental engineering.
Build foundational skills in mass and energy balances, reactor models, unit treatment processes, environmental chemistry and microbiology, water resource engineering, and hydrology.
Understand current environmental challenges and environmental health risks, on local and global scales.
Apply science and engineering principles, and knowledge of environmental regulations, to evaluate current issues in water, soil and air pollution.
Analyze major unit processes in water, soil, and air treatment systems, and design unit operations to mitigate contaminants in the environment.
Quantify fluid flow and contaminant transport in the natural environment.
Enhance problem-solving capabilities and analytical reasoning skills.

Course Requirements

Minor Prerequisites:

CE-UY 2213 Fluid Mechanics and Hydraulics 3 Credits (or CBE-UY 3313 or ME-UY 3313 or equivalent)*
CM-UY 1004 General Chemistry for Engineers 4 Credits (or CM-UY 1014 or CHEM-UA125 or equivalent)*

Core Courses:

CE-UY 3223 Introduction to Environmental Engineering 3 Credits *
CE-UY 3233 Environmental Engineering Process Design 3 Credits
CE-UY 3243 Water Resources Engineering 3 Credits *
*CE students currently take these courses as part of their major.

Electives (take two courses from the lists below):

Undergraduate electives:

CE-UY 2253 Environmental Chemistry and Microbiology 3 Credits
CE-UY 4213 Green Infrastructure Design 3 Credits

Note

Graduate environmental engineering courses may be substituted for the above electives for students with a cumulative GPA> 3.0 with the approval of both the undergraduate academic adviser and the environmental engineering graduate program adviser.

In order for the Minor to be awarded and recorded on the official student transcript, the student has to obtain an overall 2.00 GPA in the Minor courses.

NYU Catalog description of a “Minor”

A minor is an approved coherent concentration of academic study within a single discipline. In specified programs, undergraduate students may select a minor in a field distinct from or related to their major, with approval of advisers in both the major and minor fields. The name of the minor will appear on students’ trasncripts if the approved 15 credits in the minor field have been completed with at least a 2.0 GPA. With the consent of a student’s major department, some of the courses used to satisfy the minor requirements may also satisfy the required or electives course requirements in the student’s major program.