Ever thought about pursuing a Bachelor of Civil Engineering at Monash?
Engineers play a super important role in our day-to-day lives. Most of us can’t go five-minutes without using a structure where a civil engineer has had some sort of involvement in its creation.
Take, for example, the roads you use to get to school each day, or the familiar building that you call home. Civil engineers have featured in the making of all of them.
If this sounds exactly like what you’d like to do, then we’ll walk you through exactly what a Civil Engineering degree at Monash entails. Keep reading to find out more!
What is a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) at Monash?
Core Units for this Degree
How to Get into a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) at Monash
What’s the Teaching Format?
What’s the Faculty and Culture Like?
What is a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) at Monash University?
A Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) at Monash University teaches its students all of the necessary science and mathematics skills needed to become civil engineers. This knowledge is used to construct safe structures, design road networks, erect bridges and dig tunnels — essentially everything needed to build safe and efficient cities.
Graduates leave the degree qualified as fully accredited engineers who are ready to jump straight into the professional workforce.
Honours
The Honours component of this degree takes place in the final year. Students must complete a capstone project as part of this program — a substantial individual or small group project that integrates all of the learning throughout the course so far.
Double Degrees
This degree can also be taken alongside another degree of your choosing. This means that come graduation, you will be leaving university with double the qualifications and double the likelihood of standing out to future employers.
Some of the available courses combinations include:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Bachelor of Information Technology
- Bachelor of Commerce
- Bachelor of Science
- Bachelor of Laws
To find out more about the different combinations, click here!
Career Paths
A Civil Engineering degree is a very valuable one. Nowadays, workplaces value the critical thinking and problem solving skills taught to its graduates.
This makes them highly sought after employees across multiple industries, giving graduates a wide variety of potential career options.
Some of these include:
- Construction manager
- Water engineer
- Structural engineer
- Building control surveyor
- Architectural engineers
Curious about the other roles you can get with a Bachelor of Engineering? Find out here!
Core Units for this Degree
Civil Engineering as a Specialisation
A Bachelor of Civil Engineering at Monash branches off from the uni’s Bachelor of Engineering degree. This means that students complete a generic first year of engineering study before pursuing their specialisation in second year.
To complete a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) at Monash University, students must select Civil Engineering as their specialisation.
Minors
To qualify for a minor, you only need to take four units specific to that discipline. This is done in place of your electives.
There are nine minors to choose from:
- Artificial Intelligence in Engineering
- Computational Engineering
- Civil Engineering
- Environmental Engineering
- Mining Engineering
- Sustainable Engineering
- Smart Manufacturing
- Micro and Nano Technologies
- Renewable Energy Engineering
First Year
Regardless of what specialisation you choose, every engineering student completes the same core engineering units in their first year. Some of these consist of Engineering Design and Engineering Mathematics.
Engineering Design is the very first class taken by the first-year cohort. In this unit, students learn the fundamentals of analysing and designing structures such as beams and trusses. Students are introduced to basic engineering concepts of force, motion and model building.
Second Year
Second year is when the course structure starts focussing on units specific to civil engineering.
Civil students must complete units such as Structural Mechanics, Transport and Traffic Engineering, as well as Water Systems.
These second year courses are designed to introduce students to the core features of civil engineering; structures, transport and water.
Third Year
In third year, the units look at these different features in more depth.
Engineering Hydrology teaches students all about how to construct hydrological systems.
“We basically design all the pipes and gutters so that we don’t flood our cities, it is all about safely transporting water.” — Viseshta Chandra
Students also learn important engineering skills such as working with statistics in Engineering Investigation.
Fourth Year
Fourth year students complete Final Year Project A and Civil and Environmental Engineering Practice. These units include two major design projects, where students must work on projects which mirror what can be expected in the industry.
Placements
This degree requires 420 hours of professional industry development. This can be in the form of relevant industry employment or internship experience.
These hours can be completed at any point in your degree, however all 420 hours must be finished in order to graduate.
How to Get into a Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) at Monash University
The minimum required ATAR for entry into this degree is 86.
Students must have successfully completed Year 12 to be eligible to apply for this course. They are also required to have scored at least 27 in English (EAL), or at least 25 in Mathematical Methods and either Chemistry or Physics.
This is because the degree is very demanding and students need to be able to prove that they can handle the rigorous workload.
Alternative Pathways
If you are interested in applying for this degree, but do not meet the requirements, there are multiple alternative pathways into Civil Engineering at Monash.
The Monash College Diploma
This program provides guaranteed entry into the second year of the Bachelor of Engineering degree for students who complete the diploma with the required scores. The diploma takes 20 months to complete and revisits all the necessary content from high school, while slowly introducing the important first year engineering units.
It has small classes with strong tutorial support and fewer contact hours than a traditional degree, meaning it makes the daunting transition from high school to university a lot less scary and a lot more manageable!
Transfer from another Monash Course
If you have completed one semester of full-time study in any other relevant Monash course (e.g. Bachelor of Science), you can transfer directly into a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours).
You simply need to maintain a minimum WAM of greater than 60% to be considered. This minimum average mark is 65% or greater for those wanting to enter into an engineering double degree.
Open Universities Australia (OUA)
Open Universities Australia allows students missing necessary prerequisites to complete these classes online.
For example, students who need to complete their Mathematical Methods prerequisite can enrol in MAS110 Fundamentals of Mathematics, while students looking for an acceptable equivalent for Year 12 English can complete PHIX1037 Critical Thinking.
Students should aim for a minimum average of 70%, however this does not guarantee direct entry.
Scholarships
Monash’s Faculty of Engineering offers a wide range of financial scholarships. They are awarded to students for various reasons, including celebrating academic successes and supporting disadvantaged students.
Some of these scholarships include:
- Engineering Excellence Scholarship
- Engineering Indigenous Scholarship for Equity
- Women in Engineering Scholarship
What’s the Teaching Format?
Monash University uses a semester structure to organise their teaching year. This means that each year is divided into two teaching blocks of approximately 15 weeks, with large holiday periods in between.
Civil engineering is taught using a combination of weekly lectures, tutorials and labs. An average week of study, including attending class and performing self-directed study, consists of about 40 hours.
Class Structure
Lectures
Lectures are weekly classes which last 2-3 hours and are held in large lecture theatres to host the approximately 200 students that attend. These classes introduce students to the content being covered that week.
Tutorials/Workshops
Tutorials are an opportunity for students to better understand the content covered in lectures. For civil engineering students, these classes are also referred to as workshops and they usually consist of about 50 students.
In tutorials, students complete activities relating to that week’s content, as well as engage in group discussion.
Labs
Labs operate similarly to tutorials. In a class of about 50, students complete industry-related tasks under the guidance of tutors and academics.
This helps to reinforce the content of lectures and tutorials by giving students opportunities to practically apply their new knowledge.
What are the assessments like?
Quizzes, exams and assignments make up the assessment load for this degree.
The end of semester can get quite stressful with different assignments and exams piling on top of each other. However, practising proper time management and reaching out for help when needed can make this assessment period a lot easier.
Skills You Refine and Learn
A Civil Engineering degree at Monash teaches you a whole range of really valuable skills.
Critical thinking is an important skill taught to graduates. Civil engineers are constantly solving complex problems in order to build efficient and forward-thinking cities. Hence, out of the box thinking is super useful.
Learning how to lead teams and effectively manage projects is crucial. Civil engineers must be able to communicate properly, articulating their plans accurately so that they can see them turn into real, physical structures.
Students are also taught the importance of acting with honesty and integrity — the betterment of a city and its population must be at the forefront of their minds when designing structures.
What’s the Faculty and Culture Like?
The campus culture at Monash has been described as great!
Engineering students have access to countless state-of-the-art facilities and technologies. The Woodside Building for Technology and Design on Clayton campus is one example of this. It houses a whole range of super cool learning environments, as well as a 3D virtual reality space.
“They have great facilities and a great set of teaching staff.” — Viseshta Chandra
The Civil Engineering faculty is also amazing. They are said to be very helpful, going above and beyond to help out struggling students or answer any questions.
Societies Relevant to this Degree
A Bachelor of Engineering at Monash has a lot of different relevant societies that students can join. Each of the degree’s areas of specialisation have their own clubs and societies which host individual networking events, engineering challenges and casual meet-ups.
One particularly worthwhile society for female identifying students is Female Engineers at Monash (FEM). Their mission is to support women in engineering, science, technology and maths, helping promote engineering as a career for female identifying students.
To check out the full list, click here!
Development and Support Programs
At Monash, there are a wide range of support programs designed to help Engineering students make the most of their time at university.
The Engineering Leadership Program is a development program that prepares students to be engineering leaders. It teaches students effective communication, project management and decision-making through a series of modules and seminars hosted throughout the teaching year.
It is a one-year program that is completed in conjunction with the Engineering (Honours) degree and it is designed to help students confidently jumpstart their career.
The Monash Industry Team Initiative (MITI) is another available development program. This initiative sees high performing students from various science disciplines come together to work in teams to create real-world projects. This occurs under the guidance of industry experts, making it the perfect opportunity to network and gain valuable career advice.
Monash also offers mentoring services to Engineering students. The Friends and Mentors in Engineering (FaME) group mentoring program helps students settle into university by providing them with a peer mentor. Later on in the degree, alumni group mentoring is also available.
Jessica Arentz is a Content Writer at Art of Smart and an undergraduate student at the University of Sydney where she studies a Bachelor of Arts/Advanced Studies (Media and Communications) (Marketing). She currently volunteers at 2SER community radio station as a producer and newsroom reader. When not writing, you can find Jess searching the web for cheap flights or spending her days with her head buried deep in a book.
