The new wave of innovation driven by artificial intelligence, automation, Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems and mobility will continue to transform various engineering fields. The PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering program is for preparing students for this evolving engineering field and for meeting present and emerging engineering needs for the engineering academia and industries.

Admission to the Degree

Ph.D. requirements

Program of Study

The minimum requirement for completion is 72 credit hours, consisting of a minimum of 28 credit hours of coursework (of which a minimum of 16 hours must be at the 8000-level) and a minimum of 44 credit hours of research and dissertation. A thesis master’s degree from an accredited university may be accepted for up to 12 credit hours, in which case a minimum of 60 credit hours of approved coursework, research, and dissertation beyond the M.S. degree would be required.

Required Advanced Engineering Core Courses (7 credit hours)

• ENGR 8130, Statistical Learning and Data Mining in Engineering (3 credit hours)
• ENGR 8910, Foundations for Engineering Research (3 credit hours)
• ENGR 8950, Graduate Seminar (1 semester, 1 credit hour) *

* Only up to 3 hours of Graduate Seminar may apply to the program of study and be included in the 72-credit hour requirement. Students are strongly encouraged to continue regular attendance at speaker series presentations even if not formally registered in the seminar.

Electives (21 credit hours)

Students must complete a minimum of 9 credit hours selected from the list of approved electives and an additional 12 credit hours of any courses. For electives, at least 9 credit hours must be 8000-level or above. Students will work with their graduate advisor to select the most appropriate coursework to ensure breadth of understanding as well as mastery of knowledge in a specific subject area. Students may work with their graduate advisor to develop an interdisciplinary plan of coursework drawing from the extensive graduate course offerings available outside the College of Engineering at UGA.

The University requires that students who are accepted to the Ph.D. program directly from a B.S. degree or who switch to a Ph.D. program before earning an M.S. degree must complete an additional 12 semester hours of University of Georgia courses open only to graduate students. Students entering Civil and Environmental Engineering (Ph.D.) without a master’s degree must have completed an undergraduate engineering degree.

Research and Dissertation (44 credit hours)

• A minimum of 41 hours of ENGR 9000, Doctoral Research, or ENGR 9010, Project-Focused Doctoral Research. Typically, students complete more than 42 credit hours with the approval of the Graduate Advisory Committee.
• 3 hours of ENGR 9300, Doctoral Dissertation, are required in the program of study.

Approved Electives

• CRSS(GEOL) 8710 Watershed-Scale Modeling
• BCHE(ENVE) 6490, Environmental Engineering Remediation Design (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 6330, Advanced Structural Analysis (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 6340, Design of Bridges (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 6470, Pavement Design (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 8110, Environmental River Mechanics (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 8140, Transport and Mixing in Natural Flows (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 8410, Inelastic Behavior of Construction Materials (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 8420, Geomechanics (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 8460, Soil Improvement (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 8470, Advanced Pavement System Design (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 8510, Advanced Concrete Materials (3 credit hours)
• CVLE 8550, Design of Prestressed Concrete Structures (3 credit hours)
• CVLE(MCHE) 8160, Advanced Fluid Mechanics (3 credit hours)
• CVLE(MCHE) 8350, Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis (3 credit hours)
• ENGR 6350, Introduction to Finite Element Analysis (3 credit hours)
• ENGR 6490, Renewable Energy Engineering (3 credit hours)
• ENGR 8103, Computational Engineering: Fundamentals, Elliptic, and Parabolic Differential Equations (3 credit hours)
• ENGR 8990,  Advanced Topics in Engineering (3 credit hours)
• ENGR(INFO) 8110, Informatics in Engineering and Environmental Sciences (3 credit hours)
• ENVE 6230, Energy in Nature, Civilization, and Engineering (3 credit hours)
• ENVE 6250, Energy Systems and the Environment (3 credit hours)
• ENVE 6410, Open Channel Hydraulics
• ENVE 6440, Computer Modeling in Water Resources (3 credit hours)
• ENVE 6450, Engineering Hydrology and Hydraulics (3 credit hours)
• ENVE 6460, Groundwater Hydrology for Engineers (3 credit hours)
• ENVE 6470, Environmental Engineering Unit Operations (3 credit hours)
• ENVE 6530, Energy and Environmental Policy Analysis (3 credit hours)
• ENVE 8450, Design for Rapid Change: Food, Energy, Water, and Climate (3 credit hours)
• MCHE 6400, Air Pollution Engineering
• MCHE 8380, Continuum Mechanics (3 credit hours)
• MCHE 8650, Aerosol Science and Engineering
• MCHE(CHEM) 8970, Combustion Science (3 credit hours)