Admitted Students Live Q&A Session - Civil & Environmental Engineering Master's Programs

Mark, if you're on, you can go ahead and broadcast audio. It's not gonna start recording until 10:30.

Or until nine? I'm sorry I don't know what time it is.

That was funny season.

I know I don't know what time it is so tired right now.

It's been a warning.

Yeah.

Were you copied on all those in that thread about the contract?

What contract?

Oh debas, how much it would cost to add a fourth bucket to our convert?

Oh, I was on that.

I'm so confused. I don't know what she wants.

Yeah.

Hum.

And she says, you know, I do give you things as I get them, and that's not helpful for me. I'm afraid I'm going to miss something.

Hum.

Yeah.

Dennis

Yeah, it's not. Yeah, just kind of throwing them against the wall like oh, here's this and this and not wild.

Yeah.

Mark, if you're there, broadcast audio.

Bye see you later.

Hello.

Hello and welcome to today's Live Q&A session on Dukes Masters programs in civil and environmental engineering for admitted students. Congratulations to all of you on your admission.

We've had quite a few questions that were submitted during the registration process and will get started with those, but this is the chat box where you read these words where you will enter your questions live. Please don't worry if you don't see your question immediately, we will see it and we will respond. You also don't need to resubmit questions that you submitted during the registration process.

I'm Susan Brown and I'm here with doctor Mark Borsec. Mark Welcome.

How?

Hi, thanks Susan, I'm glad to have the opportunity to talk to everybody.

It's so nice to it to be here with you today. We were so disappointed to have to cancel our on campus admitted student day due to COVID-19 before we dive into the questions that were submitted during the registration. Can you briefly share what you wanted students to take away after attending admitted student day?

Season of course. Our main goal would be for students to come away from their visit. Feeling confident in a decision to attend Duke. This decision would be based on an appreciation for the strong curriculum that many supports student services that we provide the recognition of a cohort of students that have similar professional and academic goals and possibly an unexpectedly falling in love with the Duke campus and Jeremy Large. I'm continually amazed by all the opportunities that this University in this particular place.

Can provide, that's why I'm especially disappointed that most students won't have the chance to visit in person this year.

Great good.

Exactly, I wanted to share in the chat box a virtual tour of Duke that students can take not now later, but it's quite. It's quite good you get to walk the campus and walk into buildings in a little student in a Duke shirt pops up and tells you about it. It's really nice. It's really nice.

Oh, good hug. Hopefully that'll give everybody in appreciation, at least visually, of what things look like.

Right, right, but I hope that through these virtual events we will address many questions. And of course we're here if questions come up later. So alright.

Before we get started, I do want to note that we got a few questions on how COVID-19 might affect the incoming class. We will be communicating something to admitted student soon, but for now we suggest that students move through the enrollment process just as they would have in case things workout. But note that Duke is working through this issue and is committed to providing flexible resources to students, so we will definitely share more information on that.

Sure.

Tom, so let's get started with our pre submitted questions. I think this is a good one to start out with. Mark what stands out about the Duke Environmental Engineering Professional Masters program compared to other schools and I think you can talk about your Department at large in this answer to what can we get out of a Duke degree compared to other prestigious programs?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I'm confident that our curriculum is strong and, importantly, it's personalized so that students can choose courses that are appropriate for them and their interests. We have quite a bit of flexibility. We provide specific tracks that are available to students based on their interests. And then there's flexibility. Among those within those tracks on particular course selection and I think that allows the students to really come up with a tailored curriculum. You can see that. Yeah, coming up here So what we've got on this slide is the.

Sure.

Image program and so those of you who are interested in the more professionally oriented program can see the specific tracks on here. I won't go through each of those as you considerably read about them on the website and you'll see them here. I think what's especially strong about our program is the broader engineering services that are provided. I alluded to those earlier, and I think that's what really sets up this students for success. There are campus support services I should say. Pratt Engineering specific services including.

OK.

Clear support services and I see we have another question coming up about that, so I'll hold off on going into that in more detail, but also the communications and intercultural programs for students that might be coming from other cultures or other countries around the world. This really helps them integrating both immediately in terms of giving them tools for success in our courses and programs, but then also in a long term to be comfortable with.

Professional skills interviewing, finding a job, and so forth in a way that isn't always about. Just putting together the best resume. But how you like? I say how you interview and how you present yourself and working within the cultural context of the United States. And then finally, and I think really most importantly is that network that gets established. This is the network of faculty that you'll be working with who will continue to support you in your career endeavors. And in many cases throughout your career.

And then network of fellow students and alumni who are always there to help you as well. So it's this kind of Duke family. I think that really distinguishes our program for mothers.

Amazing.

Great an I'm always like to point out that we are 180,000 plus strong in terms of Duke Alumni and it's in is an amazing group to join to follow up on that. Someone asked what support do you offer to help students obtain crucial internships and other opportunities to find work?

After graduation.

Sure, I'll talk about that a little bit. I think Susan, you might be able to point people towards a whole kewene or maybe even a whole recorded set of Information, Yeah?

I can we we had a Q&A yesterday and it was great. We're going to share that with all registered students we were on with Cameo Hearts and Jenny Johnson and we talked about karere for about an hour.

I cannot.

Absolutely.

How excellent so these query services are offered centrally through Pratt, meaning that in conjunction with the other department's, although there are Department specific services and civil and environmental engineering tools and support specifically, I don't Susan can I pass this back to you if you are involved in this yesterday and then you can talk a little bit about these tools, yeah?

Absolutely. So we have a team of career services and professional development.

In our in our program we have three advisors who work with students on resume review, practice interviewing, career exploration, that kind of thing, and then they're a fantastic team. I'll definitely share that recording with everyone. Oh, and JD is posting information about career services and crew outcomes. Thank you. JD JD is our man on the chat, but also we have. We have one person on the team who is dedicated to professional development.

Yeah.

To hate helping students become a more polished version of themselves and a new and improved version of the engineer that they are with activities on communication, negotiation, emotional intelligence. Basically I think. But then also the 5th member of this team is employer relations. So going out to companies and seeing what they are seeking in the next batch of graduates making sure they know.

What are graduates have to offer and I like to point out that this group, this career services and professional development group is only dedicated to engineering students at the Masters level. We don't share them with undergrad. We don't share them with PhD. We don't share them with economics majors, so I think that it is.

And that's important, I mean, because they really are tailored services and you know that their types of careers are internships that are appropriate for this particular level, which may not always be the case that some larger universities or where there are. There is a more blended Courier service.

Hum support where you know it may be hard. Sometimes I think to identify what's the right thing for me as a master's student as opposed to a PhD student or an undergraduate or somebody in another Department. So I think that's really special.

Yep.

I think it. I think it is too and the nice thing about this group too is that each of the career advisors are a liaison to a specific Department, so you can use a student can see any of them, but there's also each of them has an assignment to be dedicated to civil and environmental students and other students within that Department, and I think that is that's pretty special.

2.

Yeah.

Um?

And choosing what you're showing here on the slide. I think right now that everyone can see is the online tools. So I think anyone can access this at this point and see where recent students have gone for for their careers for their first jobs after graduation.

Good.

He

Absolutely, and JD has posted the direct link, but you can also go to ce.duke.edu Ann search career outcomes and master screw outcomes should be the second link you will find on that page. Kind of the chart that shows you how many people have gotten a job. You have a pretty good record, civil and environmental.

But also what I really like about this is that you can go into this data visualization tool on tableau. Word of caution, do not look at this on your phone. It doesn't work. You want to look at it on a computer or a large tablet, but I like this because you can toggle degree options on and off. Compare what NMS student did versus what an image student did. You can look at student status.

Are they domestic or international you can toggle on years of data? You can search for. You can search for companies, an position, titles and click on states to see you know if you're interested in working in Texas. Click on Texas and see what kind of jobs, what kind of jumps alumni got there. So it's a really powerful tool.

On good.

Great Yep, that's and it's useful both now and you know as student proceeding start to look for jobs.

Absolutely we have a live question that I'd like to pose to you. Our classes are classes, mostly lecture test, base, or are there also discussion project based classes.

Yeah, that's a good question. I'd say it's depending on exactly what courses you choose. It's about 5050. I'd say some of the introductory kind of maybe not introductory. I should set a Masters level there, advanced courses, but the ones that are broader topics.

You know, take it to the next level relative to undergraduate armor, lecture test based, and then there are smaller, more specialized courses that are unique to the specific tracks in programs that are more discussion and project based. Even the lecture and test based courses at this level at Duke are small courses, so there on the 10:15 students or so. They're not huge courses, but they are. You know those are the spirit of presenting material and testing on those material.

Of course they have. Most of those courses have term projects associated with them, where you might work in small groups or as an individual on a specific topic of interest, but it's then when you get into the in your second term or the second year where you're getting into more specific courses that are more project based, and then of course many students do a Masters Project. The mass students would choose either to do a thesis or non thesis project, and that's an individual project than with their.

Research advisor sometimes working in conjunction with PhD students or postdocs as well. If they're part of a larger project and those are more individually oriented to good question.

Yeah, thanks for the question.

So moving on to our next pre submitted questions, are there any opportunities for employment during graduate student study, such as teaching assistant positions? If so, how do we find these opportunities?

So in general we want the students that come here, you know, as a master's student, your time on campus is relatively short and we want that to be focused on your studies and then also finding your internship and or your ultimate job and.

Having opportunity interact with other students, so we tend to what we do is provide financial aid in the form of tuition reductions as opposed to asking you to service teaching assistance or specific research assistant. And so I know that the financial aid letters have been a little late to go out, so if you haven't received one yet, you will be soon and that gives you an opportunity to reduce your tuition without any expectation of service.

That said, I know sometimes students are looking for other ways to reduce their overall costs. Are PhD students are required as part of their program to take on teaching assistantships, and so they tend to have the first priority after that. Then if there are some opportunities available.

TA

Those would be. There's a point person who coordinates the teaching assistantships and could let's will let students know when such opportunities arise. That would happen once you get on campus, so there's really no need or no opportunity to line something up in advance. It really happens on a turn by turn basis depending upon availability, so I'd say it's uncommon but occasional. That Masters student will be teaching as are being doing a teaching assistantship atie ship.

Uh-huh

And so I'd say, hold onto that until you get to campus. But as I say, what we'd prefer to do in most in all cases, is provide a financial aid in the form of a tuition reduction directly without an expectation of service.

That's right.

Right?

And that's fabulous. I do want to point out that some students will also work in on campus jobs like at the library or the gym. Sunday mornings are really good if you want to get your homework done.

There are an.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Right, good point. Yeah, that's right. There are other campus jobs available, and again those are tend to be. Once you get on campus, it's a lot easier to line those up. Those are kind of aren't advertised part in advance.

Perfect a student ask, can we have contact information for specific students in our program to ask more specific questions? You can let me show?

This slide, so we are the admissions team that's JD page and Me Suizen. If you email us at Pratt underscore Masters at duke.edu and ask to be connected to a connected to a student, we have a group of student ambassadors for all of our programs and we can connect you with the CE ambassador.

Yeah, that's great.

Perfect.

So let's move on to some curriculum questions. What courses are required for the Ms in civil and environmental engineering? What courses do you recommend?

Right?

OK.

My faculty colleagues aren't going to want me to steer them towards or away their particular courses. We have such a wide sweet that it's I don't want to recommend specific ones, but what I'll do is I'll walk through the expectations in terms of courses that are required for the various programs so.

What you see on the side here for the MSN again just to be clear here you know there's the Ms and then there's an image and sometimes you at this point I imagine you've got that sorted out as a student you decided which one to apply to but just to remind you the difference Ms is primarily a research oriented degree but sets people up for career in?

In research oriented endeavors, which might mean going on to do a PhD, it might mean working in industry in a research with the research bent, and so you see here on this slide there's 30 credits required of technical course work, and then students are expected to do a thesis research project that's written up in the form of academic thesis, or what we call it non thesis project which can be in the form of mock grant proposal which would be training for say, going onto academic position where you be writing grant research proposals.

Literature.

Thank you.

Or it could be in the form of a type of consulting report, that is an analysis that you do as part of your project and write up which may not be, say, cutting edge research but rather application or a literature review of an area that you'd like to learn more about and collect information on. And so then the course work if you want to go to the next slide season will depend upon the particular track that you choose, so you see that there's these 5 tracks, and I imagine you.

Each of you have seen these on the website and started to think about which one you'd like to pursue. This slide gives an indication of what topics you would have among those, and then depending on the track, I'll have to steer you to the website to get the details on the requirements for each track, but each of them have typically three or possibly four categories. Of course, is from which you choose among four or five within each category.

1.

And then there are electives beyond that, and so the idea is just to give you some direction and framework for the course work, but also provide you with flexibility. So courses I recommend, well, I guess it's going to depend upon your interests. I'd recommend really choosing the courses that spark your interest. You know we do have required courses, but then the flexibility within that and what I I think a real asset especially for us and environmental in Civil Engineering, is the proximity.

And availability of courses in neighboring department's the school of the environment is just across the quad from us and for students in environmental engineering. There's a lot of great courses available there that are both listed as options and are available. It's electives. Also are Sciences is inappropriate set of courses for students in both civil and environmental and then other courses. Of course, run campus, which could include biology, statistics, economics.

So.

You know public policy, for example, so.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I think my recommendation for courses are the ones that really you're keen on taking or you really feel some passion about that subject.

Absolutely, and the same student asked how often do you see your classmates outside of academic activities?

So.

Have quite a bit if their strong cohorts you'd be taking both within courses. You'll be courses with some of the same students. That said, it's also mix as I say, if you're taking courses, especially in other programs in Department, you'll be in courses with students at the same level in those departments, and then we also within civil and environmental engineering have a master student Workspace Lounge, so it's an area dedicated. Specifically the master students that has work tables and desks.

A little Kitchenette area. It has a private conference room with video screen where you can work on group projects or reserve if you have individual calls, an interview or something that you'd like to take. And that's also an opportunity to socialize with student with the other Masters students in your program, and then our Masters program is housed fully within the practical of engineering and so on. A routine basis you'll be interacting with PhD students in both civil and environmental engineering and in the other department's.

As well as, of course, undergraduates who are taking courses in the same in the same buildings.

Yeah.

Great and I would add that Pratt Pratt School of engineering has a group dedicated to the student experience. I'm a part of that group, but we also have the career team is housed under that group. The Inter cultural and language group is housed there and we also have.

Person, the Associate Director of Student Services Bridget Kerwin, who really works to build community among our Masters students in engineering. So I just wanted to give that quick plug.

In Dover, 20s.

Oh yeah, yeah don't forget 20.

Uh-huh

Right?

20 says the coffee shop cafe sandwiches coffee drinks teas. That's right in the ground floor of Engineering Building, so you can always go and find people to talk to and hang out with their. It's really great, you know we often intersect at a location like that.

That's a great point. Here's a good question. Can the Master of engineering and risk engineering be completed in one year?

Right?

So.

That would be pretty tough. I think any of our programs are designed. All of our programs are designed for two years. You could fit them in. And, well, I say I manage programs in 1 1/2 years, but you're busy in that time already and the internship is a key part of it, which happens in the summer after your first year. So I would have to say no. It's 1 1/2 years is really the time frame over which these are designed.

Maybe in very special cases of high course load and coming in with something that would count as an internship that maybe on a case by case basis, but that wouldn't be something that we would recommend.

Uh-huh

Yeah.

An I would advise you to think about you might have. You might have overloaded as an undergraduate, but you were probably doing that with a mix of course. Is overloading with five graduate engineering courses would be difficult?

Sure.

Yeah, that's right. We were sensitive to the fact that you know everyone is eager to move on with their careers and financially you want to minimize costs and everything. And we've tried to make the whole programs as efficient as possible, but one year would really be pretty tough.

Yeah.

Right, right? So let's move on to advising how are mentoring and advising relationships established or advisors assigned? If so, when will they be assigned?

Yeah, great, so how we work with advising is every student is matched with an academic advisor and those advising.

Connections are made just prior to when you arrive on campus. I think the best, most effective advising relationships are those that it can be done.

Right?

Should I say that? I guess we probably, do you remember shoes and let's see when I'm thinking? Yeah, I guess it was just prior to arriving on campus. I think those best of rising relationships are done in person and into your assigned an academic advisor within your home Department, and that I make those assignments myself. Based apon student expressed interest in their track and expected to areas of coursework and research work. So I do those to the best best I can in terms of finding.

Advisors and student matches that workout well recognizing I'm trying to balance the load among the faculty and such, so those would be our faculty academic advisors. When you arrive to choose courses to start to think about your time here and what you might do for thesis or non thesis project and then by the end of your first term what I'll do is what I do is ask the students to.

But you've settled on campus. You've had some courses to individually meet with faculty that you might be interested in doing your thesis or non thesis project with.

And then you'll provide a list to me of three faculty in in order of of interest that you might like to work with. And then I use that list and allocate student research advisor relationships based apon on that and thinking back to this year, I think 80 or 90% of the students got their first choice. There were a couple times where because of course load or availability of positions students had to get their second choice, but.

I'd say everyone was satisfied with how that worked out and to the Met.

Faculty advisor becomes your research advisor and typically your research advisor at that point forward is in the best position to also advise you on course selection and stuff. Recognizing that those courses might be tailored towards what you need to do for your research or specifically for your career goals, and so you can continue to have that relationship with your initial academic advisor. But for the most part, the students transition into working more closely with their research advisor, both for their project and.

Or their academic advising.

Around.

How about for the professional degrees? What is there advising situation?

Yeah, so the professional degree students since they're not doing a thesis or non thesis project, they tend to stick with the same advisor throughout and so those advisors again are signed when they arrive or shortly before they arrive and they work with them throughout their time. If you know in some rare cases if this student finds out that advisor wasn't the right match, because again, it's based upon my best attempt to try to see who would be a good match.

Then it's easy to make some switches if someone has some effect. As soon as a faculty member as an instructor in a course or meets them otherwise and would like to switch to them as their advisor, that can usually be arranged.

Perfect and quick follow-up question, how often do you see your advisor? I think that varies.

That does very if you're once you get into your research with your research advisor, you'll see them pretty regularly, probably at least weekly. You're doing your work and you get updates on that. You might be also working in collaboration with one of those advisers, PhD students or postdocs as part of a larger project, and so that might be sometimes in the form of group meetings, but also individual meetings or small group meetings.

As far as an academic advisor, when you arrive, we really leave that up to this student. We ask that all the academic advisor and student pairs meet early in the term to select courses and then beyond that usually the academic advisor will check in. At the very least before the next term to think about courses. But there are always open as the student wants to initiate meetings as questions arise, and you're very likely to kind of bump into each other around the halls in class or.

20s.

Yeah.

Right at 20.

Yeah.

We have a live question and before I get to that please post your questions. We're here to help. So a student ask our students encouraged to take courses from the Nicholas School of the environment as electives. Is there a concurrent degree or program?

Yeah, great question. They are encouraged. Those courses are available right now if they were pushing people in that direction or another, but we do list the number of Nicholas School of the environment courses as options within. Both are required groups and as electives, so you'll see that those are listed as Environ courses in VR on.

Prefix to the course number.

Uh-huh

So.

And so those are available and you'll see that there's a lot that compliment, so it's fairly convenient. As I said, it's in the neighboring building. They follow the same academic schedule and everything. So yes, it does fill a key part of our program, and students are allowed and encouraged to take those courses. There's Nicholas School environment also offers a Masters degree and Masters of Environmental Management, which is a kind of parallel degree.

In the sense that students it's a similar timeframe, typically a similar age and experience is core cohort of students coming through there. You might see them in many of the same courses.

It's not.

Right?

It's not an opportunity to take a joint degree if that's the question about concurrent degree or program. Each is tailored specifically and is, as I said, is busy enough and specialized enough that you'll have enough on your hands with one degree level 2. But that said, You know many of the courses can overlap and so the subject matter may be very similar in many cases, but we do want to. I think the defining features of.

Specifically.

Engineering degree are that technical engineering analytical training that we want to assure by having that within our degree and within our program and as I mentioned, all the services that are provided are Pratt Engineering services and so those are provided to the engineering students specifically and Nicholas will. The environment has her own support services as well, so they're distinct programs, but there is overlap in this, and so we're all under the same.

Umbrella University and students too often take courses in either direction, but maybe the short answer question if I'm understanding it correctly, is there's not a joint program.

Right right? I do want to point out that if you have questions later, you can reach out to our admissions team or email addresses. Pratt underscore Masters at duke.edu if we can't answer your question, we will call in the department for support. But we are happy to answer your questions. I don't see any others but.

Sure.

I want to hang on for just a little bit longer to see if other things arise. A quick plug for other student events, career services for master students, and a vibrant community. Life in Durham took place yesterday, but we will be posting the recordings of those. I think those were both great sessions to really show admin. It's kind of what they can expect from both the career team and the support that they get is really phenomenal.

And we had a great conversation about how great life in Durham can be. I think it's a great small city to be a young professional.

Yeah, yeah, it really is. It's really a very vibrant community.

All right, right? OK, well I don't see any other live questions. JD do you see any other live questions that I cannot see?

Let me know.

Nope, Alright, well this session will be has been recorded and we will send a recording out to all registrants. So if you missed it and you're listening later, this is for you. Mark, thank you so much for your time today.

Right?

Yeah thanks Susan. Thanks for organizing this. I know it can serve as a substitute for an on campus visit, but I do hope we could provide some useful information. And as I mentioned earlier, it just like with our site visit, I hope you can come away from today's meeting with some confidence in a decision to ultimately join us here at Duke in civil and environmental engineering. I hope we can see you in the fall.

Absolutely yeah. Echo that sentiment. We hope we can see you in the fall. Alright? I hope the rest of you have a wonderful Friday and let us know what we can do to help.

Alright, enjoy the rest of your day.

Pisces