Creativity, teamwork and inventiveness are cornerstones of NDSU’s civil and environmental engineering program. Our students want to play a role in enhancing quality of life with innovative designs for everything from sports stadiums to safe drinking water supply systems.
Senior Rachel Vogl liked civil engineering because of the problem-solving skills necessary to succeed in the program. She also appreciates the large-scale projects that engineers create, and that engineers often work in teams of people with diverse backgrounds to come up with innovative designs.
“I was drawn to engineering because there is a wide variety of problems to solve with many different solutions,” said Vogl, a civil engineering major from Becker, Minnesota. “Being able to go out and see projects that I worked on around me was something that really drew me in to this program. I enjoyed that I would be working with people every day on projects that had the primary goal to make lives better.”
NDSU civil and environmental engineering graduates are known by employers as project-ready and able to immediately take on challenges because of the program’s hands-on approach to learning. Vogl said NDSU’s faculty and her participation in engineering student organizations have prepared her for success after graduation.
Several field trips to see projects in progress or finished facilities in the region also help give students a better understanding of parts of civil and environmental engineering that may not be visible in a classroom.
“I am so grateful for my experience at NDSU,” said Vogl, who has accepted a full-time job at a St. Paul, Minnesota, engineering consulting firm after previously working as an intern at the company. “The people and community around Fargo are so welcoming, which made the transition from my hometown a lot easier. The faculty in our department truly care about the students, and the program has prepared me for the variety of challenges I will face as an engineer. I really enjoyed working on realistic projects in class because it challenged me to think of ways to apply what I had been learning in a real setting.”
The field of civil and environmental engineering has grown at an incredibly rapid rate. The median annual salary is $86,640 and more than 32,000 new jobs are projected from 2016-26.
Our graduates can work in the office, in the field or a combination of both. They can work with a number of intricate designs or with people in management or sales. NDSU’s recent job placement rate is 100 percent.
Learn more about the NDSU civil and environmental engineering program and apply today.
