About the Department

Environmental engineers and scientists are the technical professionals who identify and design solutions for environmental problems. They provide adequate supplies of safe drinking water, treat and properly dispose of airborne, liquid, and solid wastes, maintain air quality, control water pollution, and treat sites contaminated due to spills or improper disposal of hazardous substances. In addition, they monitor the quality of the air, water, and land, and develop new and improved means to protect the environment. Management options include control at the source and modifying production processes to reduce pollutants, in addition to the traditional downstream controls after the pollutants have been generated.

The Environmental Engineering Sciences Program at the University of Florida was one of the original five graduate sanitary engineering programs in the United States dating back to the 1950’s. A separate Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences (EES) was formed in 1966 when the EES Department moved into its newly completed AP Black Hall. An undergraduate major in environmental engineering was added in 1972. A total of 18 full-time faculty are housed in the EES Department. The Fall 2003 enrollment is 100 undergraduate majors and 118 graduate majors. Current sponsored research expenditures per year are about $2.5 million.

In addition to Black Hall, the EES Department occupies space in the adjacent New Engineering Building. Education and research activities are also conducted on-campus at the Phelps Lab and the Joint Advanced Wastewater Treatment Research Facility. Off-campus field test sites are used to conduct larger scale research activities. The EES Department is equipped with state of the art instrumentation and computing facilities.

Three research centers are directly affiliated with the EES Department: The Center for Wetlands, The Center for Environmental Policy, and the NASA sponsored Environmental Systems Commercial Space Technology Center. These centers promote interdisciplinary activities that include faculty and students from across campus and with other universities.

The University of Florida is one of only three universities to have all major colleges located on a single campus. Nearly 300 faculty teach environmentally related courses in numerous colleges including engineering, liberal arts and sciences, agricultural and life sciences, and health sciences. These campus-wide resources provide a unique opportunity for students to enrich their educational experience by taking courses across campus and participating in cooperative research programs.

Current individualized programs of study within the EES Department, developed in cooperation with other departments on campus, include: air pollution, solid and hazardous waste, water and wastewater treatment, water resources, hydrologic sciences, systems ecology and ecological engineering, industrial ecology, environmental microbiology and toxicology, environmental chemistry, urban water infrastructure systems, wetlands ecology and management, and environmental restoration.