Program History

IIT to Start Transportation Engineering Program in Spring, Citing Need to Rebuild Nation’s Transportation Network Chicago, October 23, 1990 -

The pressing national need to find more trained engineers and planners to rebuild and rehabilitate the nation’s transportation system has spurred Illinois Institute of Technology to revive its program in transportation engineering beginning in spring 1991.

Offered through IIT’s department of civil engineering, the program is interdisciplinary, training students in techniques for managing, planning, designing, building, operating and maintaining transportation systems–including roads, airports, and railroads.

Professor C. Jotin Khisty, a national expert in traffic engineering and transportation planning, has joined the university’s faculty to organize the program. Khisty, formerly a professor of transportation engineering at Washington State University, has done extensive consulting work with metropolitan planning organizations in the Midwest and Northwest. He recently completed a freeway incident management study for the U.S. Department of Transportation and earlier this year published a textbook “Transportation Engineering: An Introduction,” which has been released worldwide by Prentice-Hall and adopted as a required text in several schools.

“The infrastructure in this country is in bad shape—whether you look at roads, bridges—even airports,” says Khisty. “Because of the need for trained professionals to rebuild our transportation network, and the fact that many veterans in the field are nearing retirement, I am convinced that this is the golden age for jobs related to transportation.”

At the undergraduate level, students can select transportation engineering as a specialization during their senior year. On the graduate level, students may earn a master’s degree or doctoral degree in civil engineering by taking a series of courses in transportation engineering. Even undergraduate students from other disciplines who possess the requisite math background may seek admission to the program.

The first transportation engineering graduate course, “Transportation Systems Management,” will be offered in spring 1991.