Civil Engineers plan, design, build, and operate the infrastructure of modern society. This includes highways, bridges, large buildings, power plants, industrial facilities, tunnels, seaports, airports, offshore structures and almost anything else needed as the basis of modern life. Civil engineers are also vigorously engaged in environmental activities, particularly creating safe water supplies and transporting it to where it is needed, collecting and treating wastewaters, cleanup of environmental problems, and insuring the safe disposal of solid wastes.

To achieve the high level of professional competence needed, an extensive study of mathematics, mechanics (both solids and fluids), engineering materials, and environmental reactions is required. The civil engineering sub-topics that utilize these fundamentals are environmental, geotechnical, hydraulic, structural, and transportation engineering. The civil engineering curriculum at The University of Akron insures a firm grounding in all these sub-topic areas, while allowing a specialization, if desired, in the environmental, geotechnical, transportation, and structural areas. Engineering design problems are incorporated into courses in each area. The senior civil engineering design course presents a problem to involve any one, or possibly all, of these areas in the design of complex systems.

Most civil engineering graduates work for design consultants, construction companies, or governmental agencies at all levels. Others work for industrial firms and utilities. Many civil engineers own their own businesses.

The curriculum is designed to emphasize the fundamentals which places the graduate in a strong position to pursue further education, formally or informally, and to begin a career in any of the above areas.