The basic requirements for the MSE degree are established by the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate

Studies (referred to herein as the Graduate School). The faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental

Engineering has adopted certain additional requirements. The requirements, as they relate to the MSE in Civil

Engineering degree, are described in these guidelines.

Each MSE student must take personal responsibility for seeing that all requirements are met prior to the

graduation deadline specified by the Rackham Graduate School. These deadlines may be found at

To be granted admission to the MSE in Civil Engineering degree program, an applicant normally holds a BSE

degree in Civil Engineering and has attained an undergraduate grade point average (GPA) of at least 3.3/4.0.

Students holding BS degrees in another engineering discipline, in architecture, or in the physical, chemical or

biological sciences, may be admitted if they have achieved the technical background necessary to pursue

advanced work in Civil Engineering. This background must include three semesters of calculus, one semester

of ordinary differential equations, and two semesters of calculus-based physics. Courses at U-M which provide

this background are listed below:

It is expected that incoming students will also have some prior experience with computer programming, and

problem-solving using computers.

For each specialization area, additional prerequisites must be satisfied in order to take graduate courses

pertaining to the specialization, as detailed in Appendix 1. Ideally, students should complete these

undergraduate course requirements prior to applying. However, in special circumstances, and with the written

approval of the faculty specialization advisor as well as the CEE Masters Chair, an admitted student with some

prerequisite deficiencies may take the appropriate undergraduate courses in the first offering of the course after

enrollment for the MSE degree. It is necessary to obtain a grade of “B” or better in each of these courses.

A minimum of 30 credit hours of approved graduate work must be completed for the MSE in Civil

Engineering degree. According to the Graduate School guidelines, a student must register for a minimum of

nine credit hours per semester to be considered a full-time student. Nine to twelve credit hours per term is the

usual full-time graduate course load. Graduate students with research or teaching appointments must carry a

minimum of six credit hours per term.

Note that some U.S. government agencies, such as the Veterans Administration and the U.S. Citizenship and

Immigration Services, may require a student to be enrolled for a different minimum number of credit hours to

be considered a full-time student. International students must be enrolled full-time under requirements set by

the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and on F-1 or J-1 visas should consult the International Center

in the Graduate School, and for the 30 credit hours used to fulfill the credit-hour requirement. Failure to do so

will result in being placed on probation. A course in which a grade lower than C is obtained may not be

counted toward the satisfaction of any degree requirements, but it is considered in the computation of the

overall GPA.

A thesis is not required, but up to 6 credit hours of research can be used toward the 30-credit hour degree

requirement by electing the following independent study courses:

● CEE 910: Structural Engineering Research

To register for any of these, the student must have a faculty sponsor and have worked out the details of what

will be accomplished with that faculty member.

Proficiency in the English language, both spoken and written, is expected. There is no requirement for

proficiency in any other language. MSE applicants whose native language is not English must demonstrate

English proficiency by following Graduate School guidelines

semesters. Students pursuing the MSE in Civil Engineering degree on a part-time basis should become familiar

Graduate School.

The Graduate School guidelines permit transfer of up to half of the 30 credit hours required for the MSE in

Civil Engineering degree from inter-university and intra-university sources combined, according to the

following rules:

Graduate Credit

A maximum of 6 credit hours of graduate credit may be transferred from another institution. These must be

approved graduate-level courses completed while enrolled in a degree program with a grade of B or better

Pre-graduate Credit

Credit for courses taken by the student with a grade of B or better earned while an undergraduate in the U-M

College of Engineering may be included in the student’s graduate study program subject to the following: (1)

credit was not used to meet any bachelor’s degree requirement (including minors), (2) credit was earned no

more than two years before formal admission to the Graduate School and (3) credit was earned in courses

approved for graduate credit by the Graduate School. The student may request the transfer of such credits

through the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering after they have established an overall

graduate grade point average of B or better in resident work.

SUGS students with undergraduate specialization in any area of CEE may pursue an MSE degree in Civil

To be considered and to be formally awarded the MSE in Civil Engineering degree diploma, a student must

apply to graduate in Wolverine Access by the graduation application deadline, which may be found on the

Rackham Graduate School website at https://rackham.umich.edu/navigating-your-degree/

graduation/.

Students need to meet with the faculty advisor for their area of specialization to plan a program of study prior

to starting their first semester of coursework. (The list of faculty advisors for each area of specialization can

be found on the first page of this document.) Following this meeting, each student must submit (via email) a

approval before the end of the second week of the student’s first semester of enrollment. Any subsequent

● FIN 503 Financial Management

● FIN 563 Real Estate Development in Practice

● MO 414 Managing Change

● MO 412 Negotiation Strategy

● BL 582 Real Estate Law

Methods in Solid and Structural

Mechanics

● CEE 535: Excavation and

Tunneling

● CEE 542: Soil and Site

The following courses are commonly taken by CE students specializing in Geotechnical Engineering::

● CEE 421: Hydrology and Floodplain Hydraulics

● CEE 504: Engineering Economics and Finance

● CEE 509: Theory of Elasticity

● CEE 511: Dynamics of Structures

● CEE 575 Sensing for civil infrastructure systems

● EARTH 408: Introduction to GIS in Earth Sciences

● EARTH: Earthquakes & Faults

● EECS 442: Computer Vision

● EECS 556: Image Processing

● IOE 561: Risk analysis

● MATH 450: Advanced Mathematics for Engineers

● MECHENG: 412 Advanced Strength of Materials

● NAVARCH 551: Offshore Engineering 1

● STAT 412: Introduction to Probability and Statistics

Floodplain Hydraulics

Fluid Mechanics 1

● MECHENG 521: Advanced

Fluid Mechanics 2

● MECHENG 523 (AEROSP

523): Computational Fluid

Dynamics 1

● MECHENG 624 or AEROSP

Methods in Solid and Structural

Mechanics

● CEE 511: Dynamics of

● CEE 573: Data analysis in CEE

The following courses are commonly taken by CE students specializing in Hydraulics & Hydrologic

Engineering::

● EAS 520/521 (Fluvial ecosystems and lab)

● CEE 553 Infrastructure systems optimization

● CEE 555 Sustainability of civil infrastructure systems

● CEE 571 Linear Systems Theory

● CEE 575 Sensing for civil infrastructure systems

● IOE 561 Risk analysis

● CLIMATE 421/ EARTH 421 Introduction to Physical Oceanography

● CLIMATE 555/ SPACE 555 Spectral Methods

● NAVARCH 520 Intermediate Hydrodynamics

● NAVARCH 523 Numerical Marine Hydrodynamics

● NAVARCH 551 Offshore Engineering 1

● URP 520 Introduction to Geographic Information Systems

in Civil Engineering

● CEE 373: Probability and

Statistical Methods

● CEE 573: Data Analysis in

Civil and Env. Engineering

● CEE 576: Stochastic Systems

● EECS460: Control Systems

Analysis and Design

● EECS 501: Prob. and Random

● IOE 574: Simulation Design

of the other specializations in their programs of study, as general electives. In addition, the following courses

from other departments are commonly taken by CE students specializing in Intelligent Systems:

● AEROSP 566: Data Analysis and System Identification

● AEROSP 567: Inference, Estimation, and Learning

● AEROSP 577: Data-driven & Reduced Complexity Modeling

● AEROSP 580: Linear Feedback Control Systems

● EECS 502: Stochastic Processes

● EECS 544: Analysis of Societal Networks

● EECS 550: Information Theory

Engineering

● CEE 412: Matrix Structural

Reconfigurable Structures