Presentation

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

The Catholic Faculties, which gave rise to PUC-Rio, were created on 30/10/1940 by Decree 6.409 of the President of the Republic granting authorization to install the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Philosophy at the Santo Inácio school, in the neighborhood of Botafogo da city ​​of Rio de Janeiro. On 15/01/1946 the Catholic Colleges were elevated to the category of Catholic University and on 20/01/1947 the institution received from Pope Pius XII the title of Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. On 17/07/1955 the current campus was inaugurated in the Gávea neighborhood. In 1960, the first large computer for academic use in Latin America was installed at the university.

On 21/01/1948, the Polytechnic School was authorized to operate, with the first class of engineers graduating on 30/12/1952. In the 1960s, with the implementation of the Brazilian university reform, the university's academic structure was replaced with the creation of departments, including the Department of Civil Engineering, linked to the Scientific Technical Center (CTC) of PUC-Rio. The University has been training civil engineers for over 70 years, initially through the Polytechnic School and since 1968 through the Department of Civil Engineering. In 2020 the number of graduates reached the mark of 3131 civil engineers (Graph 1) and from 2009 onwards an undergraduate course in Environmental Engineering has also been offered. With the integration of civil engineering and environmental engineering courses, the department was renamed the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2016. There is strong interaction between the undergraduate and postgraduate programs, as the vast majority of professors, with academic degrees, PhD, teaches subjects at both levels, providing a research environment with opportunities for direct participation by undergraduate students in basic research and development projects.

The Master's in Civil Engineering was the first Postgraduate Program in Civil Engineering in Brazil (Postgraduate studies in Brazil: Training and work of Masters and Doctors in the country, volume 1, p. 203, Capes, 2002) in the areas of Structures (1965) and Geotechnics (1967). In 1969 it was already recognized by the CNPq as a Center of Excellence and by the Organization of American States (OAS) as a Latin American Postgraduate Center. The Doctorate course began in 1985, also in the areas of Structures and Geotechnics, and in 2009 the Professional Master's Degree in Urban and Environmental Engineering was created. In its more than fifty years of existence, as a pioneer in postgraduate studies in Civil Engineering in the country, the Program has contributed significantly to the training of qualified human resources, with graduates who work as teachers in more than 100 universities in the country and abroad, including the main public HEIs in Brazil.