The granite academic hall on an October afternoon.

Engineering

School of Engineering

Civil, mechanical, electrical, and environmental engineering, with the Hudson as a working site.

The School of Engineering is the oldest part of the college. The first curriculum, adopted when the first class entered in 1875, was civil engineering: surveying, masonry, timber, and the behavior of the river. Students still survey the terrace, test the granite used in the halls, and design for a river that freezes, floods, and carries traffic.

Mechanical and electrical engineering grew with the power house and the boathouse. Environmental engineering, the newest program, studies the Highlands, the water supply, and the weather on an exposed campus. Studios meet in Founders Library and in the shops at North Dock, and close for bench check at four on Friday.

Majors

Civil engineering
Mechanical engineering
Electrical engineering
Environmental engineering

Dean: David Okonkwo

Every student at the college spends four weeks at the Garrow Tract after the first year. Read about Field Term →

From the faculty

Walter Ostrowski

Professor of Civil Engineering · Since 1988

Professor Ostrowski teaches Surveying I and Structures. For the first two weeks of Surveying I, calculators are set aside and every student computes with a slide rule, which the department lends from a cabinet he restored himself. He believes a student should know roughly where the decimal point goes before a machine says exactly where it is. He has carried the same slide rule since his own first year and describes its condition as “adequate.”

“He calls it ‘two weeks with the rule.’ It is three weeks. Nobody has had the nerve to tell him.”Marcus · Brannock · Class of 2028

Meet the faculty →

Standards Memorandum No. 52 · On “approximately”

From:: David Okonkwo, Dean, School of Engineering
To:: All students in Engineering

It has come to my attention that the word “approximately” appeared forty-one times in last term’s senior project reports. Approximation is a technique. It is not a mood. When you approximate, state the method and the error. When you don’t know, write “unknown.” The bridge does not care how you felt about the load.