Civil Engineering has been an important discipline in the Stevens broad based curriculum since the founding of the Institute. On the Institute’s first faculty, in 1871, DeVolson Wood, Professor of Mathematics, was responsible for providing instruction in basic civil engineering topics (Structures and Water Resources). The modern history of the Civil Engineering Department dates to 1981 when it emerged as a separate academic department after 12 years as a division within the Mechanical Engineering Department. It was a small department, initially with just 4 faculty members but grew quickly under the leadership of its head, Professor K. N.  Derucher. In 1983 the Civil Engineering Department merged with the Ocean Engineering Department to form the Civil and Ocean Engineering Department. Ocean Engineering had been established at Stevens in 1967 as a graduate program building on the research strength and international reputation of the Davidson Laboratory. It was the only academic department at Stevens to offer just graduate programs. The merger with Civil Engineering proved highly successful.

 In the late 1980’s the programs of the Civil and Ocean Engineering Department expanded to include first graduate and then undergraduate programs in Environmental Engineering. Concurrently with the development of these academic programs the Center for Environmental Engineering (now the Center for Environmental Systems) was created under the leadership of Professor G. P. Korfiatis, to foster research programs in Environmental Engineering. Along the way the name of the Department was changed to Civil Environmental and Ocean Engineering to acknowledge its three major components. Another development at this time was the hiring of Professor M.S. Bruno to become the Director of the Davidson Laboratory. He established a new research direction for the Laboratory in the area of Coastal Engineering while maintaining its traditional hydrodynamic model testing capabilities. The subsequent hiring of Professor A.F. Blumberg in 2002 further diversified the research arenas for the Davidson Laboratory to include numerical modeling of estuarine and coastal waters.

In 1995 a graduate program in Construction Management was inaugurated with the hiring of Professor H.P. Dobbelaar as the director of this program. This Master of Science degree program has been very successful.

The CEOE Department presently offers 3 undergraduate degree programs and 5 graduate programs. A portion of the success of the department may be attributed to the relative stability of the leadership of the department and the two research centers with which it is intimately associated. Professor Korfiatis was the director of the Center for Environmental Systems for 14 years until he became Dean of the School of Engineering in 2003. Professor Bruno has been the director of the Davidson Laboratory and more recently the Center for Maritime Systems for 16 years. Professor Derucher was the CEOE Department Head for 8 years. He was succeeded by Professor Hires who served for 15 years.

The CEOE Department is acively involved in the cutting-edge research. Major areas of current faculty research include earthquake engineering, wind engineering, high strength concrete, soil-structure interactions, soil mechanics and deep foundation systems, stochastic aspects of saturated and unsaturated flow modeling, advanced oxidation of hazardous wastes, transport of nonaqueous-phase liquids in the subsurface, statistical process control of wastewater treatment, stabilization/solidification of contaminated soil, physiochemical treatment of heavy metal contaminated wastes, hydrodynamic modeling of currents and the dispersion of effluents in the coastal zone, coastal sediment transport, analysis of current and wave observations in the coastal ocean, and remote sensing.