The College of Civil Engineering and Mechanics (CEM) was established in 2004 as a merger of the Department of Architecture Engineering and the Institute of Rheological Mechanics, which was approved to establish in 1984 by the Hunan provincial government and was the first research institute specializing in rheology inChina. The college now comprises 2 test and measurement centers, 3 laboratories and 4 departments. The college has 1 state key discipline, 1 provincial key discipline, 1 postdoctoral research station, and offers 1 PhD degree program, 3 master degree programs and 3 undergraduate programs.

The CEM college currently enrolls over 1100 full-time students, including more than 150 graduates and doctoral candidates. The college has a faculty and staff of 60, dedicate to the education of undergraduate and graduate students. Among them, there is 1 recipient of the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of China, 4 recipients of the Program for Hunan Provincial New Century 121 Talents, 5 Ph.D. supervisors, 12 professors, 15 associate professors and 18 lecturers. Over 30 faculties have gotten their Ph.D. degrees.

The CEM college covers 2 first-class disciplines: Mechanics and Civil Engineering. The faculty research efforts include rheology, damage and fracture mechanics, mesomechanics, computational mechanics, engineering structure analysis, soil and rock mechanics, civil infrastructures, disaster prevention and reduction, road and bridge engineering, novel structure, advanced materials and nanotechnology. The faculty members have received support from a wide variety of government sources at the province and state levels. Representative government agencies include: National Natural Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, Hunan Provincial Department of Science and Technology, Hunan Provincial Department of Education and Hunan Provincial Department of Transportation.