Auburn University and NCAT provide Premier Graduate Program in Pavements and Materials

Auburn Civil Engineering Assistant Professor Benjamin Bowers supervises graduate student Elizabeth Turochy.

 

This is an exciting time to be a civil engineer, and your expressway ramp to a rewarding career in pavement engineering may begin with graduate school at Auburn University and a research assistantship through the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT). 

Over the past three decades, more than 100 pavement engineers began their careers with a graduate degree from Auburn. We are proud of all our former graduates who have become leaders in all segments of the industry and are making a difference around the world. 

Today, our exceptional students are involved in developing technologies that will lead to net-zero carbon pavements that will continue to serve as the backbone of our transportation infrastructure and support a growing economy.   

A Master’s or Ph.D. degree at Auburn combines a top-notch classroom education from Auburn’s outstanding Civil & Environmental Engineering faculty with practical, hands-on experience with materials testing, pavement construction, pavement design and analysis, and pavement preservation.  

We currently have 16 graduate students in the Pavements & Materials area. 

With nine Pavement & Materials faculty members and 11 additional highly qualified NCAT research engineers, each grad student interacts daily with a phenomenal team of experts who love sharing their knowledge with students. 

Each student earns a Research or Teaching Assistantship that includes a tuition waiver, and most receive an additional financial fellowship to live humbly without a student loan. 

The Auburn experience is captured in the Auburn Creed, penned by Dr. George Petrie in 1943. 

Petrie held various positions during his long tenure at Auburn including professor of history and Latin, head of the History Department, and dean of the Graduate School. Petrie also organized and coached Auburn's first football team in 1892. 

The first line of the Auburn Creed is: 

I believe in a practical world and that I can count only on what I earn.
Therefore, I believe in work, hard work.

The creed goes on to read:

 

The faculty and staff work hard to teach our students practical lessons, connecting theory to practice. We value hard work and recognize it will take hard work to meet the challenges of building and maintaining our infrastructure in a circular economy. 

We conduct courses in person and online, hosting students in our state-of-the-art lab for a hands-on-experience (this goes for our online students too). We focus on helping our students achieve their educational goals, we want to see them happy and successful. 

In addition to the traditional on-campus graduate student experience, the Pavements & Materials program offers other excellent educational opportunities for working professionals through distance learning. 

Auburn’s online graduate programs are among the nation’s best, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 Best Online Program rankings released earlier this year. 

In fact, Auburn’s Civil & Environmental Programs ranked 3rd nationally. Even if a master’s degree or Ph.D. is not for you, there may be specific pavements-related courses that interest you, and fortunately, all of the courses taught by Auburn’s pavements faculty are available online. 

For more information about courses, programs, and degree options at Auburn University, please visit our website at https://aub.ie/PAVOnline. 

The median starting salary for a student with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering is $74,749 while the median starting salary for a master’s degree in civil engineering is $83,092, according to indeed.com. 

Generally, engineers with graduate degrees have higher earning potential throughout their careers, and the advanced coursework and knowledge open advancement and leadership opportunities and certain career paths that may not be open to engineers with bachelor degrees only. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the program(s) visit https://aub.ie/PAVOnline or contact Dr. Benjamin Bowers, Graduate Coordinator of the Pavement and Materials Group at bfbowers@auburn.edu or any of the other NCAT faculty. 

   

Contact Randy West (left) at westran@auburn.edu or Benjamin Bowers (right) at bfbowers@auburn.edu for more information about graduate studies at Auburn.