At Michigan Tech students develop a deeper understanding of how human systems impact the natural environment and how to engineer systems to protect human health and ecosystems.
Research funding comes from a wide variety of sources, including federal and state governments, industry, and foundations. The department attracts more than $3 million in research funds each year. Allowing our faculty and students to study air-quality engineering, drinking-water and wastewater treatment, pollution prevention, and more.
Through several international programs, students can also play a critical role in the facilitation of appropriate technology, beneficial infrastructure, and social change in underdeveloped communities throughout the world.
World-Class Facilities
Environmental engineering is housed in the $45 million Dow Environmental Sciences and Engineering building, overlooking the Keweenaw Waterway. The Great Lakes Research Center provides additional research facilities. Graduate students have access to more than 43,000 square feet of research and teaching laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment for drinking water and wastewater treatment, organic and inorganic contaminant characterization, air- and water-quality monitoring, and sediment analysis. Laboratory facilities provide opportunities ranging from small-scale batch and continuous-flow kinetic studies of engineered systems to large-scale simulations of mesocosms of the natural environment. The department also maintains its own research vessel, the R/V Agassiz, which allows researchers to take advantage of the largest freshwater laboratory in the world: Lake Superior.
Master's Program
The Master of Science in Environmental Engineering is designed for the pursuit of advanced environmental engineering studies. The program integrates course work and research in environmental science, mathematics, and engineering application.
Under the guidance of an advisory committee, students tailor an academic plan to their individual interests and professional goals, choosing an area of emphasis from the following:
- Atmospheric systems and air-pollution control: to study atmospheric environmental processes and mitigate the air-pollution in engineered systems.
- Environmental chemistry: to study fundamental organic and inorganic chemistry embedded in various environmental systems and processes, including soil, gaseous, and aqueous phases.
- Environmental-systems modeling: to study how to understand and predict the various natural and engineered systems involving water, energy, food, soil, and air.
- Pollution prevention: to study how to prevent chemical and microbial contaminations in various environmental media, including the subsurface, groundwater, air, surface water, and engineered systems.
- Solid waste and hazardous wastes: to study the processes involving solid and hazardous disposal, remediation, and resource recovery in engineered and natural systems.
- Surface-water quality: to study the transport and transformation of conventional and emerging organic and inorganic contaminants and microbial species, the nutrient and carbon cycling, and the general water qualities in surface waters.
- Water resources: to study the planning, modeling, management and risk analysis, and the hydrologic and hydraulic engineering of water resources.
- Water and wastewater treatment: to study physical, chemical, and biological treatment processes for water purification and resource recovery in engineered water infrastructures.
MS Options
Whether your interests lie in research or course work, we offer a master's degree option to suit your educational goals.
PhD Program
The PhD in Engineering (Environmental) is a research-intensive degree designed for the pursuit of advanced, interdisciplinary studies in environmental engineering. The discipline of environmental engineering, as defined by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers, is “the application of engineering principles to improve and maintain the environment for the protection of human health, for the protection of nature’s beneficial ecosystems, and for the environment-related enhancement of the quality of human life.” This definition informs the graduate program in environmental engineering at Michigan Tech.
PhD Degree Requirements
A detailed explanation of degree requirements can be found on the Graduate School's Doctor of Philosophy requirements page.
