CEE will partner with local, national, and global organizations. We will do this primarily through research and educational initiatives. Research initiatives in CEE often involve cooperation between government agencies and CEE faculty. These agencies are often strong supporters of our research initiatives. Our educational initiatives include cooperative education (CECOP), senior capstone projects focused both locally and internationally, student club projects (EWB, ASCE, STEP/ITS), short courses and seminars that attract local and international professionals. Additionally, our service in local and national committee assignments and outreach to K-12 through MESA or science/engineering fairs augment our partnerships. We also want to market our current and future successes in developing these partnerships.

The CEE Department realizes that excellence in research and the global recognition that it entails is shown by increasing research funding and high quality research publications. Also, the ability to perform research not just locally, but internationally is an important aspect of perceived global excellence. We will try to include international projects and those that are globally relevant to our research program.

CEE wants to improve the success of its undergraduate and graduate students. For our undergraduate students in our Civil (CE) and Environmental (EnvE) BS programs, we will meet our program outcomes and educational objectives and achieve ABET accreditation. We also want to enhance the student learning experience through internships and undergraduate research. In addition we will strive to improve our advising. We will explore non-traditional opportunities to provide education for delivery of our courses, such as webinars, short courses and workshops. We will encourage greater educational opportunities for our students to study abroad.

We plan to expand the resources in CEE by hiring faculty who have outstanding research potential, provide incentives through IDC return to PIs to self-invest in their research programs, hire research productive post-docs, and work on broad research ideas which incorporate larger groups of faculty. We also will encourage short-courses and workshops for generating revenue.