Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering Department Mission Statement


The mission of the CAEE faculty is derived from the overall University Mission:

The Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering faculty are responsible for delivering an outstanding curriculum that equips our graduates with the broad technical knowledge, design proficiency, professionalism, and communications skills required for them to make substantial contributions to society and to enjoy rewarding careers.

Drexel Engineering has a longstanding reputation for technological proficiency. However, the mission statement implies a larger intent to educate men and women in preparation for careers and lives that are still in the shaping—technological professionals whose core competencies are grounded in and enhanced by “a University training” in Newman’s words:

The education, which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any society, he has common ground with every class; he knows when to speak and when to be silent; he is able to converse, he is able to listen; he can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when he has nothing to impart himself; he is ever ready, yet never in the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a comrade you can depend upon; he knows when to be serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a gift, which serves him in public, and supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment have a charm.

(John H. Newman, The Idea of a University, Discourse VII, “Knowledge and Professional Skill”)