Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering

The mechanics course curricula was divided. The result was the creation of the Department of Civil Engineering and Mathematics.

Wallace C. Riddick worked as a civil engineer before joining the faculty at NC State and continued professional service in Raleigh while teaching, including work on rebuilding the city’s water system. He served as president of North Carolina State College from 1916 to 1923 and was the founding dean of the School of Engineering from 1923 to 1937.

Teisaku Sugishita of Japan enrolled in 1894 and graduated with a degree in civil engineering. Teisaku was the first international student to receive a degree from NC State.

Winston Hall opened and housed civil, chemical, and electrical engineering courses. It was named for the second college president, George Tayloe Winston.

The State College Civil Engineering Society was recognized by and inducted into the North Carolina Society of Civil Engineers.

Three undergraduate specialties were offered in the civil engineering degree program: general civil engineering, highway engineering, and architectural engineering.

The School of Engineering was established on May 28, 1923. The school included five departments: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, physics, and textile engineering.

The architectural engineering program was transferred to the new architectural engineering department. The civil engineering department offered special undergraduate specialties in general civil engineering, highway engineering, and construction engineering.

Structural engineer Wilfred George Geile joined the faculty as associate professor of construction engineering. He taught construction specialty courses that emphasized estimating, construction methods, construction engineering, and management of operations.

By the 1920s, Winston Hall, shared by civil engineering and others, was no longer meeting the needs of the department. Construction of a new facility named the Civil Engineering Building began in 1927 and was completed in 1928. It was initially a two-story building located south of the 1911 Building.

John E. Powers of Maple Hill, NC, was awarded the first BS in civil engineering with the construction engineering option.

NC State received the first charter issued by the Associated General Contractors of America for a student chapter. A student delegation received the charter at the AGC national convention in Washington, DC, and met with President Hoover.

A degree specialty in sanitary engineering was added to the civil engineering curriculum.

The first North Carolina Building Code was published as Bulletin No. 10 of the NC State College Engineering Experiment Station. The publication followed efforts by construction and structural engineer Professor Wilfred George Geile to organize and create legislation for a State Building Code.

The civil engineering curriculum received accreditation from the Engineers' Council for Professional Development.

Due to low regular enrollments during World War II, degree specializations in construction, sanitary, structural, and transportation engineering were phased out with only the general civil engineering degree available.

After attempting to reintroduce degree specialties in construction, sanitary, structural, and transportation engineering, the department was overloaded with students returning from the war and offered only a "consolidated curriculum in civil engineering." The consolidated curriculum included courses from each of the option areas.

Ralph Fadum came to NC State in 1949 as a professor and head of the civil engineering department. He held this position until 1962.

Emily Catherine Brown Blount of Fayetteville, NC, became the first woman to receive a BS in civil engineering from NC State in 1953. She received a professional degree in civil engineering in 1954. Blount went on to become the first woman licensed as a professional engineer in North Carolina in 1960, and she was inducted into the North Carolina Transportation Hall of Fame in 2007.

The civil engineering construction (CEC) option degree program was approved and the curriculum was developed by Carroll Lamb Mann Jr. who joined faculty in 1953.

The North Carolina General Assembly provided support for the establishment of the Industrial Experiment Program, a service which expanded upon existing extension services in the School of Engineering to provide technical information to small industries. The program was designed to encourage new industry for the state and to increase utilization of the state’s natural resources.

The Civil Engineering Building expanded between the years of 1950-1956, and was renamed Mann Hall after alumnus, retired professor, and department head Carroll Lamb Mann. Mann Hall later became the east wing of 111 Lampe Drive.

Financial support for engineering extension doubled under North Carolina’s State Technical Services Act and the Public Works and Economic Development Act. The Industrial Experiment Program was renamed the Industrial Extension Service, which was more indicative of its function. The School of Engineering continued its extension classes in industrial centers in Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point, and the school frequently offered upper-level and graduate course work at the centers.

The graduate program at NC State expanded in the 1960s alongside a growing emphasis on science and engineering education in the U.S. following the launch of the Sputnik satellite in the Soviet Union in 1957. Changes were gradually implemented in individual courses, and other areas of civil engineering expanded with graduate programs, including the first PhD granted in civil engineering at NC State.

With the support of the Carolinas Associate General Contractors and the North Carolina Licensing Board for General Contractors, retired Brigadier General Richard Jewett was hired to organize initial extension programs in construction focusing on company management.

Mann Hall was named for Carroll Lamb Mann, an alumnus and head of the Department of Civil Engineering from 1916 until his retirement in 1948.

With the arrival of Ray DeBruhl as the extension program coordinator, the position became a joint faculty and extension position. The program expanded to offer short courses and to prepare studies for associations such as NC Home builders and NCDOT. DeBruhl was instrumental in implementing the Code Officials Qualification Board and organizing early building inspector training programs.

Samia Galal Abdel Hamid Saad of Alexandria, Egypt, became the first woman to receive a PhD in civil engineering at NC State.

Nunnally and Johnston were hired to reimplement a graduate program specializing in construction engineering.

Civil engineering alumnus Colonel William “Bill” D. Alexander III was named the 1976 recipient of the College of Engineering’s Distinguished Alumni Award. Alexander contributed his engineering skills to the moon landings of the Apollo program in the 1960s as project manager for the design of the NASA Launch Support Facility.

After being suspended in the 1940s, the master's degree of civil engineering and civil engineering with a specialty in construction engineering programs were offered again. This began a steady stream of graduate degrees awarded with gradual expansion of graduate courses and research.

Paul Zia became the head of civil engineering department in 1979 after joining the civil engineering faculty at NC State in 1961. Professor Zia earned a BS in civil engineering from the National Chiao Tung University of China in 1949, a MS from the University of Washington in 1952, and a PhD from the University of Florida in 1960.

Mechanical contractors in North Carolina expressed interest in having a construction degree program at NC State. The contractors advocated for the creation of a construction management (CM) degree program that was distinct from the construction engineering degree. Less math and science was required in the CM degree, which focused more on economics and business.

Based on feedback from students with double majors in civil engineering construction (CEC) and construction management (CM), the construction management (CM) degree was discontinued. The CEC degree program was renamed construction engineering and management (CEM).

Alumnus Johnnie Hooper Jones, Chairman of the Board of J. A. Jones Inc., provided engineering leadership in construction of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. Construction on the towers was completed in 1997. They were acknowledged by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat as the tallest buildings in the world.

A portion of a steel beam recovered from the World Trade Center was donated to the department by David Griffin of D. H. Griffin Wrecking Company Inc. in Greensboro, NC, and Ronnie Stott (BS in civil engineering, 1997), of the Raleigh office of Bovis-Lend Lease. Griffin led the demolition and recovery operations for Bovis on-site in New York City. The beam was placed on display in the lobby of Mann Hall.

The Department of Civil Engineering was renamed the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering.

A new environmental lab facility opened in Broughton Hall. This 5,200 square foot facility was dedicated to environmental engineering research, research programs in water and waste water treatment, contaminant transport and site remediation, solid waste engineering, and molecular microbial ecology.

Fitts-Woolard Hall opened as a 225,000 square-foot engineering innovation building. Fitts-Woolard Hall brought the College of Engineering together on Centennial Campus by serving as the home for the Dean’s Administration; the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering; and the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and System Engineering.