Changing departmental structure good move for all

The department of CEOR was put together in the 1970s when the civil engineering department assumed the responsibility of the basic engineering program and the statistics department. For a long time, the department had three divisions: civil engineering, water resources, and operations research. This is a unique Princeton organizational arrangement that is not shared by any of the major engineering schools, and it worked very well for decades.

As time went by, each division found new intellectual stimulations and major emerging problems of society to solve, so that the core disciplines began to diverge more and more, and the department lost cohesion. The faculty and students based their teaching and research on different intellectual foundations, published in different journals, and attended different conferences. Water resources branched out to embrace all environmental problems and needed expertise in chemistry and biology; operations research branched out to financial engineering and needed expertise in economics and finance. The banner of Civil Engineering and Operations Research no longer accurately communicated what they were doing.

The split was a grass roots affair. Each side felt that they could do their work better under separate banners. The accomplishment of the split made the faculty and students very happy. Each department thinks that since the names of the departments reflect what they do, it will be better for recruiting top students and faculty, and for relating to industry and government.

"This is a new and exciting development," said Peter Jaffe, chairman of CEE. The split allows civil engineering a greater opportunity to pursue its own interests. Environmental engineering has traditionally been a part of the study of civil engineering, and the department's new title better represents that symmetry. CEE offers four programs of study: architecture and engineering, environmental engineering, geological engineering, and structural engineering.

"We are trying to understand the design of nature," Professor Jaffe said. "We are linking the study of structural engineering to the resulting environmental impact that structures make. This is a new and exciting development. As engineers, we have to work better with ecologists to learn how not to negatively impact the environment."

Professor Jaffe explained that no longer can a civil engineer design a highway, bridge, or dam without considering how the structure will impact the ecological system of the surrounding environment. A new course on tap this fall is CEE 263: Rivers and the Regional Environment. Students will study river basins and the fundamental frameworks for examining the natural environment and its interaction with the works of society. These works, exemplified by major dams, are the basis for the agriculture and industrial development of modern society. The course will explore the historical, scientific, and engineering of water resource development.

"Operations research is a discipline that uses the mathematical techniques of engineering to solve problems in business and industry," said Erhan Cinlar, chairman of ORFE. The independent designation should make the program more attractive to graduate and undergraduate students and allow it to recruit more specialized faculty." ORFE is appropriate for students who want an engineering education that emphasizes mathematics and computers as preparation for careers in management consulting, finance, industrial management, and public policy. This department is the first of its kind to have "Financial engineering" as part of its title, Professor Cinlar said. The Princeton program takes special interest in the problems of financial and insurance industries. It uses probability theory, statistics, and optimization theory to assess the risk involved in various activities and to create financial instruments to deal with them.

Offerings include courses such as electronic commerce, financial risk management, and the theory of games.

"We were really like two college roommates with different majors," Professor Cinlar said of the former department structure. "Eventually you begin to see opportunities for yourselves in different towns and move on."

These two departments will continue to cooperate when there is an intellectual glue. For instance, they will likely work together when studying the aftermath of natural disasters, from earthquakes and wildfires to rainstorms and hurricanes. The task of forecast and insurance involves statistics and probability, as well as buildings, structures, and water resources. They will come together when they see the same opportunity. Let us offer our congratulations and best wishes to these two new departments, as they are accelerating their paces to find their places in the sun.