Majors & Minors

Be Blown Away by the Opportunities

If our signature undergraduate experience is a journey, your Duke Academic Plan is a personalized map of must-see attractions.

Duke is chock-full of choices —including 6 majors and 3 engineering minors. Learn about tissue engineering, deploy AI, explore mechatronics and more. And that’s just the beginning.

You also can explore all of Duke, which offers dozens of degree-enhancing and horizon-expanding options.

Lots of Options and Flexibility

Majors

Picking a major is a big decision.

But making it doesn’t close out options, it widens the horizon. Selecting a major is picking a road from which a huge number of multidisciplinary paths branch off.

During the summer after First Year, you’ll declare your major. As you move down that road, you’ll encounter options to layer on minors and certificates, and perhaps even a second major.

Biomedical Engineering

Take on societally critical challenges in biology and health care, including the design of medical technology.

Study Areas Include

  • Imaging and instrumentation
  • Tissue engineering
  • Double-major options with civil, environmental, electrical and computer, mechanical, and computer science

Civil Engineering

Design structures and systems that enable sustainable supplies of shelter, water, energy and mobility.

Study Areas Include

  • Structural engineering and mechanics
  • Environmental engineering and water resources
  • Double-major option with biomedical engineering

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Integrate computing and electronic knowledge with design skill to create new devices and software.

Study Areas Include

  • Computer engineering and digital systems
  • Solid-state devices and integrated circuits
  • Double-major option with biomedical engineering

Environmental Engineering

Develop strategies and technologies to protect and restore the planet’s air, water and soil.

Study Areas Include

  • Water resources engineering
  • Biotechnology and bioremediation
  • Double-major option with biomedical engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Invent machines that improve lives, in fields as varied as health care, manufacturing, energy and transportation.

Study Areas Include

  • Mechatronics
  • Mechanical design
  • Double-major option with biomedical engineering

Interdisciplinary Option – IDEAS

Take a deep exploration of category-crossing topics that are important to you. Through IDEAS, you’ll design a customized major or select a pre-approved template.

Review the template for Risk, Data & Financial Engineering.

IDEAS Topics Have Included

  • Materials science
  • Biochemical engineering
  • Ocean engineering

ABET Accreditation

Each of the five departmental engineering majors at Duke is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET.

Each IDEAS interdisciplinary major is a customized and rigorous curriculum that a student designs with their academic advisors, and is not formally accredited.

Minors

A minor is a sequence of courses focused on a discipline. There are three engineering minors and 50 more across Duke.

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Enhance your engineering major with a minor in the digital technologies that are increasingly embedded in machines and devices.

Energy Engineering

Explore renewable energy technologies while you prepare for a career designing solutions to challenges in generation, transmission and storage.

Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence

Build a solid foundation of the theory behind—and the possible applications of—AI technologies.

Duke’s Curricula for the Curious

There’s no wrong way to navigate the Duke academic experience.