The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is confident it will win its appeal against the Board of Regents’ recommendation to close the undergraduate environmental engineering program.
The University must submit to the Regents either its plans to consolidate or cut the programs or its appeal to keep the program funded by Feb. 28.
Environmental engineering professor John Pardue, who is currently working on the department’s response to the Regents’ recommendations, said the department dipped slightly below the average completion requirements last year, but is expecting to graduate its largest classes yet in the coming years.
To be considered a low completer, an undergraduate program must have, on average, graduated fewer than eight students annually in the past three academic years.
Pardue said the program dipped below the eight average but is expecting to graduate 15 students this year.
“We got ahead of this issue about three or four years ago,” Pardue said.
Pardue said the department noticed a lull in graduates and applicants and retooled the program.
Pardue said the curriculum has been revamped and the department recruited corporate donors such as Walmart, which updated and remodeled the program’s laboratories.
“This really helps with recruiting,” Pardue said. “We are actually recruiting really heavily for the program now. We were not really doing much recruiting before.”
Pardue said the program is also improving its attractiveness to out-of-state students after having the program certified in Mississippi and Alabama as Academic Common Market, which allows students from these states to pay in-state tuition when studying environmental engineering at the University because these states’ Universities do not have a similar program.
These changes have greatly increased the program’s outlook. Pardue said the program has 37 students declared in the University College and has seen its applications increase by about 40 percent.
 
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Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]