The predecessor of the School of Environmental Engineering was the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering established by the university in 1986. The School of Environmental and Urban Construction was established in 2005 and renamed the School of Environmental Engineering in 2015.
The school has four undergraduate majors: Building Environment and Energy Application Engineering, Water Supply and Drainage, Environmental Engineering, and Environmental Science. Among them, Building Environment and Energy Application Engineering is a Hubei province brand major; Environmental Engineering is a characteristic discipline of university in Hubei Province; Environmental Science and Engineering is the first-level discipline authorized for master's degree and the first-level characteristic key discipline of Hubei Province. There are more than 1,000 full-time undergraduates and more than 40 graduate students.
The school has a strong faculty, with 56 full-time teachers, including 6 high-level experts. Among the teachers, there are nine professors, including one second-level professor, one industrial professor of Hubei Province, thirty-three associate professors and senior engineers, and forty professors with doctor's degrees. Two of them enjoy the special allowance of the State Council and Hubei Provincial Government, two of them are awarded by Hubei Province The title of young expert, and one of them is the Excellent teacher of Hubei Province. In addition, Nevsky, an academician of The Russian Academy of Engineering; Fu Jie , a researcher of Fudan University and other professors were employed as chair professors of "Sunshine Scholars Program ". The institute also have excellent young and middle-aged science and technology innovation team of Hubei Province, provincial teaching team and other excellent teaching and research teams.
The school has characteristics and advantages in the fields of water pollution control engineering technology, air pollution generation and control technology, solid waste treatment and resource utilization, textile printing and dyeing clean production technology and equipment research .In recent years, the school has been in charge of more than 10 major projects, including the National Science and Technology Support Plan and the National Natural Science Foundation. It also has won the second prize of National Technological Invention Award, the first prize of China Textile Industry Association industry Science and Technology Progress Award, and other scientific research awards.
The school has provincial and ministerial-level scientific research and innovation platforms, such as the Engineering Research Center of the Ministry of Education for Textile Printing and Dyeing and Cleaner Production, the Hubei Provincial Water Pollution Control Technology Research Center, and the Ecological Ramie Industry Key Technology Innovation Center. The school also has more than 20 laboratories, including fermentation engineering laboratory, thermal engineering laboratory, refrigeration and air conditioning laboratory, large water-treatment laboratory, fluid mechanics laboratory, aseptic laboratory, microbiology laboratory, water pollution controlling laboratory, environment monitoring laboratory and college students’ innovation and entrepreneurship laboratory. It also has built the first batch of university student innovation and entrepreneurship nursery, building a good platform for scientific researching and talents training.
In recent years, the employment rate of graduates of various majors has remained above 95%. And most of them have been employed by domestic well-known enterprises and government departments in the construction, environmental protection, water affairs and other industries such as China Construction Third Engineering Bureau, China Construction, Tongji Hospital, Wuhan Construction Engineering, etc. In recent 3 years, more than 300 graduates pursued further education in Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, Wuhan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, the University of Manchester, and other domestic and foreign scientific research institutes and universities.
