Mission
The Bachelor of Science (BS) in Civil Engineering and Sustainable Design (CESD) program at AUB Mediterraneo provides students with the expertise that they need to become successful leaders and difference-makers in this field. Students in the CESD program learn a range of valuable skills. The courses in the CESD program cover a variety of topics, such as planning, designing, constructing, and managing transformative projects as a manifestation of one of humanity's oldest and most remarkable abilities: the power to shape and build the world around us.
The educational objectives of the CESD program are to see our graduates move on to become: • Engineers who hold central positions, create sustainable and ethical solutions, and advance the knowledge in various sub-disciplines of civil engineering in local, regional and international practice. • Graduates who are admitted to, and successfully complete advanced degrees in leading universities around the world. • Leaders and innovators in their profession and in the service of their community.
Learning Outcomes
Knowledge
On successful completion of this program the graduate will be able to demonstrate:
• An ability to identify complex engineering problems by applying principles of engineering, science, and mathematics.
• An ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations.
Know-How and Skill
On successful completion of this program the graduate will be able to demonstrate:
• An ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.
• An ability to make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.
• An ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives.
Competence
On successful completion of this program the graduate will be able to demonstrate:
• An ability to formulate and solve complex engineering problems by applying principles of engineering, science, and mathematics.
• An ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, socila, enviromental and economic factors.
• An ability to acquire and apply newknowledge as needed, using appropriate learning strategies.
These learning outcomes align with the European Qualifications Framework.
Program Requirements
For successful completion of the BS in CESD degree, students must complete all components of the program, which carry a total
of 244 ECTS over 9 terms (4 years), including eight fall/spring terms and one summer term taken during the third year of the program.
The program consists of:
• Compulsory Core CESD Courses
• Elective CESD Courses
• Required Basic Math and Science Courses
• Practical Training
• General Education Courses
*BS in Civil Engineering & Sustainable Design is in the final stages of approval and scheduled to launch in fall 2026.
Sample Core Courses
Introduction to Civil Engineering Design
The course is a project-based introductory design experience for first-year civil engineering students. Student teams work through a real project to solve a design challenge involving structures, construction management, transportation, water, and sustainability. The course develops the students’ design mindset, critical thinking, and engineering problem solving skills. Students will work in teams to break down a complex design problem into well-defined sub-problems, understand the process of collecting various types of information, and find approximate solutions to each sub-problem. Students identify themselves as civil and environmental engineers and develop a context to better understand subsequent civil engineering courses and how they relate as a system.
Engineered Systems and Sustainability
This course introduces key engineered systems, including energy, water supply, buildings, and transportation, and examines their environmental impacts. It covers the basic principles of science necessary to understand how natural processes are influenced by human activities. Students will critically evaluate various engineering approaches, including renewable energy integration, water conservation techniques, green building practices, and sustainable transportation planning, to address sustainability challenges in civil engineering.
Sustainable Construction Materials and Technology
An introductory course on the composition and properties of engineering materials such as aggregates, asphalt, cement, concrete, steel, polymers, and wood. It also provides a detailed exploration of sustainable construction materials and the technologies used to implement them in modern building practices. Hands-on laboratory experiments and demonstrations are part of the course and are designed to familiarize students with materials, testing methods, equipment, and standards.
Transportation Engineering and Design
An introductory course to the field of transportation engineering and design through presenting the basic principles of geometric design of highways, traffic flow theory, and operational analysis. Emerging trends in the transportation field are also discussed. The laboratory component consists of field experiments and contemporary software (Python and Synchro) that reinforce students’ understanding of academic concepts and principles.
Capstone Sustainability Project
This project-based course starts with the selection of a topic for a design group project involving sustainable materials, systems, or technologies and the preparation of a detailed execution program aimed at providing practical design experience in a civil and environmental application through comprehensive research with the guidance and approval of faculty members.
Sample Elective Courses
Environmental Biotechnology
This course examines current and emerging environmental biotechnologies used for environmental quality evaluation, monitoring, and remediation of contaminated environments, and provides students with a working knowledge of the science that underpins them.
Urban Transportation Planning
An introduction to methods and models used in transportation planning with emphasis on the urban context. Topics include travel patterns in urban areas; data requirements for planning and data collection techniques; transportation/land-use interaction; travel demand and network models; discrete choice and machine learning models with applications; applications of geographic information systems (GIS).
Environmentally Sustainable Renewable Energy Sources
The course covers basic principles, potentials and limitations of various renewable energy sources and technologies. The focus will be on solar energy, hydroelectricity, wind energy, bioenergy, hydrogen energy and fuel cell technology. Sustainability and environmental impact of renewable energy sources will be discussed based on globally implemented technologies.
Climate Change and Infrastructure Resilience
Climate change is a major sustainability challenge. Although this issue is global, climate risk assessment and solutions are often of local character. This course introduces the students to the issue of climate change, and how the dynamics of the climate system shape global and regional climate impacts like heat waves, floods, sea-level rise, drought, etc. and how the human, societal, and natural/physical environments affect systems’ sensitivity and adaptive capacity to these impacts. It also provides the students with the tools and thought process to interpret climate data and projections, assess the vulnerability of civil infrastructures and operations to climate impacts and their potential disruptive scenarios, and identify measures to build adaptive capacity and mitigation strategies to improve climate resilience within the built environment.
Coastal Engineering
The course introduces the student to the field of Coastal Engineering that is involved with the design and maintenance of harbors, marinas, coastal and offshore structures such as breakwaters, seawalls, and jetties. Coastal Engineering is also concerned with the study of waves and currents and their effect on coastal structures, the control of erosion, and the pollution of the coastal waters. The course is divided into three main parts: water wave theories for regular and irregular waves, wave propagation and transformation, and wave-structure interaction. The first part of the course covers various water wave theories to predict their properties and associated phenomena. The propagation of water waves from deep water to shallow water and associated wave transformation is covered next, while the wave-structure interaction constitute the last part of the course. The coastal engineering course material is tied together again through an optional design project of breakwater or seawall.
