Flash

Clarkson is building highly competitive cross-discipline majors upon the University's solid foundation in engineering, science, business and the arts. Two new majors being launched this fall exemplify how this approach prepares undergraduates to meet the needs of a changing world.

Environmental Engineering

Graduate program preeminence will support undergraduates

 "The need for environmental engineers has grown dramatically over the past decade and there is every expectation that this demand will continue," says Amy Zander, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, citing statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. "A shift in emphasis toward avoiding problems rather than handling current issues and hazards, in addition to increasing public health worries, are just two of the forces driving this demand for environmental engineers."

Administered through the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the new undergraduate program will be grounded in systems engineering and will allow for numerous cross-disciplinary courses leading to research with other units.

"Our undergraduate program will be one of the few in the country that uses a 'systems approach' to problem solving," explains Zander. "The method, which is often used only at the graduate level, looks at the overall picture for finding solutions, producing only the most positive results achievable without any drawbacks in ecological, societal or economical scopes."

The University's strong existing graduate degree program in Environmental Science & Engineering (ranked 24th nationally among graduate programs in its category by U.S. News and World Report this past year) provides an impressive resource base on campus, including a corps of faculty members with relevant expertise.

Clarkson's location in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains is an obvious draw for students interested in environmental engineering. And the undergraduate program could also help Clarkson attract more female students. According to the Engineering Workforce Commission of the American Association of Engineering Societies Inc., Environmental Engineering is of the greatest interest to women undergraduate students (among engineering programs), with 40 percent female enrollment nationwide.

More information on the Environmental Engineering Major.

The Virtual Reality laboratory facilitates multidisciplinary projects and courses, such as virtual product development, and cross-disciplinary majors such as Digital Arts & Sciences.
The Virtual Reality laboratory
facilitates multidisciplinary projects
and courses, such as virtual product
development, and cross-disciplinary
majors such as Digital Arts &
Sciences.

Digital Arts & Sciences

New pathway to exciting careers in the Digital Age

 Housed within Clarkson's School of Arts & Sciences, and developed and administered through the Departments of Mathematics & Computer Science and Communication & Media, the new Digital Arts & Sciences (DA&S) interdisciplinary program will provide students an education in both the artistic and scientific aspects of digital graphic arts. It is designed to appeal to students with interests and talents in both these areas and to address growing career opportunities in fields as diverse as entertainment, education and computational science, say Peter Turner, chair of the Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, and Bill Karis, chair of Communication & Media, who are the architects of the program.

"Over the past several years there has been an increasing demand for qualified people to work at the intersection of arts and science," says Turner. "The success of movie companies like Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic has created demand in the entertainment arena. The computer gaming industry is another area of rapid growth that requires a strong combined arts/science background. Web-based education opportunities continue to grow and scientific visualization and high-dimensional, data intensive areas have become important in computational scientific endeavors. Graduates of our DA&S program will be well positioned to work in any of these fields."

Coursework will be centered primarily in mathematics, computer science, communication and new media. New digital studio arts courses will offer opportunities for team teaching and multidisciplinary projects to help tie the various background components together.

"This is the first degree program of its kind in New York State and in the northeast," adds Turner. "There are a few other related programs out there, but these tend to be more oriented toward communications and require very little computer science or mathematics. With our interdisciplinary approach and state-of-the-art technology, our graduates will enter these emerging fields with a solid set of skills grounded in science and art."

More information on the Digital Arts & Sciences Major.