USUCGER Geoengineering survey Institutions PhD degrees MS/MEng degrees Geological Engineering GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING Geoenvironmental Engineering URMs Education

USUCGER publishes report on the Survey of Geotechnical programs in the US

*USUCGER Report on Results from the Annual Geo-Engineering Graduate Programs Survey*

The United States Universities Council on Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER) Board has published a report focusing on the number of graduate degrees that were awarded in Geo-Engineering Programs during the 2018-2019 academic year.

In the present survey, the term Geo-Engineering refers to all the programs that include Geotechnical, Geological, and Geoenvironmental engineering studies. The degrees accounted for the study were both PhD and MS/MEng.

The survey was conducted between May 26, 2020, to July 17, 2020. The questions posed are presented in the following Table:

1. What is the name of your institution?

2. What is the highest degree awarded by your institution? (PhD, MS, BS)

3. How many T/TT faculty belong to the Geo-Engineering group in your department?
3a. How many of these faculty are women?
3b. How many of these faculty are from an Underrepresented Minority Group?

4. How many PhD degrees in Geo-Engineering did your department confer for AY 2018-2019?
4a. How many to women?
4b. How many to an individual from an Underrepresented Minority Group?

5. How many MSc degrees in Geo - Engineering did your department confer for AY 2018-2019?
5a. How many to women?
5b. How many to an individual from an Underrepresented Minority Group?

6. Does your department track placement of your graduating MSc and/or PhD students? (yes, no, I don’t know)

Out of the 138 institutions that belong to the USUCGER, 67 responded to the survey. 56 of them were PhD granting institutions, 10 were MS/MEng granting institutions and 1 was a Baccalaureate granting institution.

90 PhD degrees were awarded during the 2018-2019 academic year. 65% of them were granted to men and 35% to women. Moreover, 10% of the degrees were awarded to Underrepresented Minority (URM) students.

When it comes to MS/MEng degrees, the survey findings included 230 degrees, 72% granted to men, 28% to women while 23% awarded to URMs.

Information on whether institutions provide post-graduate placements for both PhD and/or MS/MEng graduates was also collected. 42% of the answers were positive, 29% were negative and 19% of the respondents stated that they did not know at that time.

The authors of the study recognize that there were certain limitations on the findings of the survey since 49% of the USUCGER membership responded. Nevertheless, according to the report, they represent a good sample of the graduate degree-granting Geo-Engineering programs in the US.

The current initiative is new and similar surveys will be conducted annually.

The USUCGER report is permanently archived using a DOI within Geoengineer.org.