New construction engineering program to begin at The Citadel in fall 2018

Construction Engineering Cadets at The Citadel

The Citadel School of Engineering continues to grow to meet the demand for highly trained engineers in South Carolina and around the country. The South Carolina Commission on Higher Education (CHE) approved a new Construction Engineering Bachelor of Science degree program at The Citadel during its meeting Dec. 7 in Columbia. Applications for the program will be accepted beginning in January with classes beginning in the fall of 2018.

“Construction engineers are in especially high demand at this transformative time. The Citadel has taken to heart the needs for engineering leadership to support the population and business growth in South Carolina,” said Col. Ronald Welch, Ph.D., U.S. Army (Retired), dean of The Citadel School of Engineering. “Overall enrollment in The Citadel School of Engineering has grown by 50 percent in five years, and our engineers have a nearly 100 percent employment rate within two months of graduating.”

According to the Charleston Regional Development Alliance, the Charleston area is growing three times faster than the U.S. average, with 34 new people moving to the region each day. Additionally, forecasts by the Charleston Regional Competitiveness Center project a 16.4 percent in the engineering field in this area by 2018.

“Approximately 80 percent of The Citadel’s engineering graduates stay in the state of South Carolina to work,” said Welch. “Our engineers graduate knowing how to manage the processes involved with their work from beginning to conclusion, with the knowledge gained from a robust amount of hands-on experience.”

The four-year Construction Engineering Bachelor of Science will train engineers to ethically and judiciously apply knowledge of science, mathematics, and engineering methods to solve problems facing a technologically complex construction process. Courses can be taken either during the day, or in the evening. The full-time day undergraduate program will be offered to cadets, veterans, and active duty students, and a full-time evening undergraduate program will be available for the non-military focused students with Trident Technical College offering the first two years, and The Citadel offering the second two years.

Construction engineering graduates will be able to:

Design a system, component, or process within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability
Design and conduct experiments while analyzing and interpreting data
Comprehend the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context
The Citadel School of Engineering more than doubled its offerings in the past five years, adding civil, electrical and mechanical engineering master’s degrees, 10 graduate certificates, and a fabrication lab. All new programs were approved by CHE, the coordinating board for the state’s 33 public instructions of higher education.

Approximately 125 engineers graduate from The Citadel annually. The Citadel School of Engineering is the fifth oldest engineering program in America. It is currently ranked #19 in the nation, and consistently among the top 25 undergraduate engineering programs in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in institutions where the highest degree is a master’s.