Advising, Minors & Electives

Your academic success is important to us. That’s why you’ll be introduced to your academic advisor – or Advising Dean –  before you get to campus. Your academic advisor is here to provide guidance, advice, and encouragement, and help you with important steps like selecting electives that meet your educational objectives.

Advising

Full-time faculty of the department advise all undergraduates.

A faculty adviser is assigned to each student upon declaring their major in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics (CEEM) during the sophomore year. An effort is made to assign students to advisers based on their chosen concentration within the department.

The faculty adviser provides guidance to students regarding the completion of required courses and selection of appropriate technical electives. To ensure that students are on track to complete their degree requirements, students are expected to meet with their faculty adviser prior to course registration for each semester and to receive faculty adviser approval for their course selections.

If a student’s area of concentration changes, he/she may arrange to transfer to an adviser in the appropriate area with the assistance of the Student Affairs Officer and agreement of the two advisers.

Construction Engineering and Management: Julius Chang
Environmental Engineering and Water Resources: Patricia Culligan
Geotechnical Engineering: Hoe I. Ling
Structural Engineering: Raimondo Betti, George Deodatis, Maria Feng, Jacob Fish, Andrew Smyth, Haim Waisman, Huiming Yin
Combined Plan Program: Shiho Kawashima, Ioannis Kougioumtzoglou

Electives

The selection of technical electives is very flexible in order to facilitate enrollment in various minors. Essentially any course with technical content from Columbia Engineering, architecture, economics, business, etc., qualifies as a technical elective. Students should always check with their academic advisor for the appropriateness of courses to fulfill the requirements of a technical elective.

Minors

Undergraduate minors are designed to allow engineering and applied science students to study, to a limited extent, a discipline other than their major. In addition to engineering minors offered by Columbia Engineering departments, new liberal-arts minors are available.

A minor requires at least 15 points of credit, and no more than one course can be taken outside Columbia. In Columbia Engineering departments with more than one major program, a minor in the second program may be permitted, if approved by the department.

View the list of Minors available to Undergraduate students.