EEE Core Curriculum

Professional Development Series

The EEE Core Curriculum offers a Professional Development Series Designed to Promote Student Opportunities to Enhance their learning experience through career building skills.

EEE 29000

EEE 29000, Introduction to Environmental and Ecological Engineering Seminar, covers topics such as resume writing in preparation for Purdue's Industrial Roundtable, professional behavior in today's work environment, developing a plan of study, undergraduate research, internships, and international opportunities and study abroad opportunities. Goals of this seminar series include: accelerating development of professional habits, maximizing student opportunities for summer internships.

EEE 39000

EEE 39000, Environmental and Ecological Engineering Professional Practice Seminar, includes seminar lectures and discussions to introduce students to aspects of professional practice within Environmental and Ecological Engineering. Topics include career planning and placement skills, professional responsibility and ethics, functioning as a professional, and other current important topics in the profession. Students will interact with practicing Environmental and Ecological Engineers. Learning objectives include developing professional skills that will allow them to enter into the professional Environmental and Ecological Engineering field, gaining an understanding of major professional issues, beginning development of a personal approach to ethical professionalism, gaining experience in professional communication, gaining knowledge of the range of opportunities available in the profession.

EEE 48000

EEE 48000, Environmental and Ecological Engineering Senior Design, integrates knowledge and skills earlier in the degree program and stresses the application of the design process to interdisciplinary environmental and ecological engineering systems. Learning objectives for senior students include a ability to apply material and concepts from previous EEE coursework to an innovative design project, an understanding of the complete design process and an ability to perform the process, an ability to identify and acquire new knowledge as a part of the problem-solving/design process, an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams, an ability to communicate professional design and design decisions effectively, an awareness of professional ethics and responsibility of engineers, an appreciation of the role of engineering and of EEE in social contexts.

Environmental and Ecological Engineering Skills Core Curriculum

EEE 25000

EEE 25000, Environmental, Ecological, and Engineering Systems, is an overview of systems thinking and examples, and applications to environmental, ecological, and engineering systems. Students will develop an understanding of complex and global systems, along with the tools and analysis methods required to deal with them. Basic environmental and ecological science concepts are also included.

EEE 30000

EEE 30000, Environmental and Ecological Systems Modeling, teaches an introduction to computational methods for describing physical, chemical, and microbiological processes that occur in natural and engineered aqueous systems, including rivers and lakes, and within water and wastewater treatment systems. Emphases on understanding and conceptualizing important processes, data analysis, algorithm development, and competency in the use of programming tools.

EEE 35000

EEE 35000, Introduction to Environmental Engineering, offers an introduction to water pollution, air pollution, noise, hazardous and solid wastes, and their control. It includes topics of Environmental impact statements and global pollution issues. Learning Objectives for this course include an ability to apply material balance tools to environmental systems, an ability to describe the different types of air, soil, and water pollutants and how they affect environmental quality on a local or global scale, an ability to explain the principles of water, wastewater, air, soil, and hazardous waste treatment processes, an ability to describe the professional and ethical responsibility of engineers in the context of environmental management, an ability to describe the key roles and responsibilities of public institutions and private organizations in managing environmental resources.

EEE 35500

EEE 35500, Engineering Environmental Sustainability, offers an introduction to the examination of global-scale resource utilization, food, energy and commodity production, population dynamics, and their ecosystem impacts.  Learning objectives of this course include that students will be creative thinkers that can collect and analyze appropriate data and information, and perform necessary quantitative analysis to develop original and innovative management strategies for real-world sustainability problems, students will be able to individually and in teams skillfully communicate in writing, orally, and with multimedia their ideas and conclusions about managing sustainability issues in a manner that increases knowledge and understanding of the audience, students will be critical thinkers that can identify the environmental, social, political, and economic dimensions of technical challenges and evaluate their own and others perspectives in forming logical opinions and conclusions, students will be able to effectively identify information needs, efficiently acquire appropriate information, and critically evaluate and use it in an ethical and scholarly fashion to gain understanding of and communicate about sustainability issues, challenges, and strategies, students will become global citizens and socially aware by gaining knowledge of diverse international and cultural perspectives and display social responsibility and leadership in managing sustainability issues, ultimately increasing their global literacy, students will learn how to be a productive team member, constructively evaluate their own and others’ performances, resolve conflicts effectively and encourage the willing contributions of everyone.

EEE 36000

EEE 36000, Environmental And Ecological Engineering Laboratory, An introduction to laboratory methods of analysis of Environmental and Ecological Engineering systems. Topics will change from semester to semester and will be announced in advance. The list of possible topics includes experimental design, treatment of data, the analytical determination of chemical and biological constituents in water, soil, and air; analysis of environmental and ecological engineering processes; analysis of life-cycle characteristics and impacts of consumer products and commodities; methods of prevention and remediation of manufacturing waste streams.

Learning Outcomes: 1. Ability to acquire experimental data and evaluate experimental error and variability. 2. Understanding of data reduction, analysis and presentation. 3. Ability to produce professional technical communication of experimental conclusions. 4. Ability to summarize results of quantitative analysis to propose management strategies for environmental problems.

EEE 38000

EEE 38000, Environmental Chemodynamics, Introduction to chemical thermodynamics and general equilibrium processes in environmental and ecological engineering systems. Introduction to the first and second laws of thermodynamics; properties of pure substances; ideal and real gases; thermodynamic cycles and processes; heat transfer and combustion; and chemical equilibrium in aquatic solutions, including equilibria between phases and reaction equilibria. Emphasis is on understanding and conceptualizing important processes, and competency in thermodynamic calculations.

Learning Outcomes: 1. Apply the First and Second Laws of thermodynamics to closed and open systems. 2. Understand, identify, and quantify the environmental impacts of closed and open systems, based on mass and energy transfer. 3. Analyze full-scale systems, and compare actual and theoretical operation. 4. Understand the structure and reactivity of environmentally relevant organic compounds. 5. Calculate concentrations of different components in equilibrium and non-equilibrium environmental systems.

EEE 43000

EEE 43000, Industrial Ecology and Life Cycle Analysis, teaches the outputs and processes associated with industrial systems are examined, with special emphasis placed on interactions of these systems with environmental and ecological systems. A full product life cycle perspective is stresses, including energy and material flows, processes used to produce materials and realize products, and the management of end-of-life products.