Concurrent Degree Program in Transportation Engineering and Urban Planning

Concurrent Degree Program in Transportation Engineering and Urban Planning

Overview

The concurrent-degree program in transportation engineering and urban planning is aimed at holistically preparing students for a successful career in the interdisciplinary field of planning, designing and operating urban infrastructure. While the planning program is focused on sustainable land use and transportation policies and geospatial analysis to provide a good quality of life for the future population, the engineering program focuses on rigorous analytical methods for evaluating and prioritizing these policy actions and on operating the transportation systems efficiently. Thus, a student graduating with a concurrent degree will be better equipped to understand, analyze, design, and operate effective and efficient urban systems. Such persons are in great demand in both the engineering and planning professions today.

A qualified student can expect to obtain the Master of Engineering (ME[1]) and the Master of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning (MAURP) degrees in about 3 years.

 General Admission Requirements

  • Applications from a wide range of undergraduate majors from any accredited institution will be accepted.
  • Applicants should possess strong quantitative-analysis skills
  • Applicants should possess strong oral and written communication skills in English
  • Minimum GRE scores of 700 in quantitative and  320 in the verbal component
  • A minimum TOEFL score of 550 (if paper-based), 213 (if computer-based), or 80 (if internet-based) for international applicants

 Application Procedure

Students should apply separately to each of Civil and Coastal Engineering and Urban and Regional Planning Departments. Applications for fall admission are due by January 15th and those for spring are due by September 1st. Applicants are encouraged to apply as early as possible. The detailed procedures and the required forms for each of the departments are available at:

Civil and Coastal Engineering:
http://www.essie.ufl.edu/student_resources/admissions/graduate/

Urban and Regional Planning:
http://www.dcp.ufl.edu/urp/admissions

Please inform the program co-coordinators (siva@ce.ufl.edu and rsteiner@dcp.ufl.edu) via e-mail about your concurrent application to facilitate appropriate processing.

Students who are interested in the concurrent degree but do not have sufficient background in mathematics (especially those with a non-engineering undergraduate degree) are encouraged to first apply only to the Urban and Regional Planning department. If admitted, the student should register for the undergraduate-level Introductory Transportation Engineering (TTE 4004) course in their first semester. Based on their performance in this class, the students may choose to apply for the Civil Engineering program by the end of their first semester.

Degree Requirements

  • A total of 73 credit hours in all (30 in Transportation Engineering and 52 in Urban Planning with 9 credit hours shared between the two degrees)
  • Students with a non-engineering undergraduate degree are required to take the undergraduate-level Introductory Transportation Engineering course in their first semester
  • The students are required to satisfy the specific requirements of each of the degree program (such as core courses, electives, internship, and thesis). Details are available at:
  • A thesis is mandatory for the Planning degree. Students may choose to pursue a second thesis (6 credit hours) to satisfy the Engineering requirements. If this is the case, the two theses should be sufficiently different to meet each department’s requirements.
  • Students have considerable flexibility in structuring their overall degree programs
  • The students should form their supervisory committees comprising faculty from both departments by the end of the first semester
  • A detailed plan of study (approved by the supervisory committee) should be submitted to the graduate school by the end of the first semester in the program
  • A minimum GPA of 3.0 is required for graduation
  • One degree may be awarded earlier than the other

Funding Opportunities

Qualified candidates can receive financial assistance in the form of Teaching or Research Assistantships from any of the two departments. An additional source of funding is the Center for Multimodal Solutions for Congestion Mitigation (CMS), a Tier 1 interdisciplinary research center established with financial support from the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) of the US Department of Transportation (USDOT).

Program Coordinators

Dr. Siva Srinivasan
Associate Professor
Dept. of Civil and Coastal Engineering
siva@ce.ufl.edu
Phone: 352-392-9537 x 1456

Dr. Ruth Steiner
Professor
Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning
rsteiner@dcp.ufl.edu
Phone: 352-392-0997 x 431


[1] A student whose undergraduate degree is not engineering will receive a Master of Science (MS) degree