A growing area of graduate education mixes the art of management with the technology of engineering.

By Jean Thilmany, Supplement Editor

These days, more and more engineers are continuing their postgraduate education. To aid their climb up the management ladder, they're going on to earn master's degrees in engineering management. They may go back to school after they've worked in their fields a few years or they may enter a master's program fresh from their undergraduate studies. But today, engineers are finding that—if they want to be managers—a master's degree in management gives them a leg up.

Between 1994 and 2002, the number of U.S. schools and universities offering master's programs in engineering management increased from 159 to 269, a 69 percent increase, according to numbers compiled by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in New York.

There's legitimate reason for the increase, say the administrators of those programs.

No matter what the degree is called—master's in engineering management, master's in management of technology, or master's of business administration—the classes engineers take are intended to give them a grounding in across-the-board engineering management issues, said Brad Fox, executive director of the master's of engineering management program in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

The step up from engineer to manager differs in some important ways from the move other business people make when they move into management. Master's programs typically address challenges engineers can expect when they make the transition.

"Success in the business world is often more determined by nontechnical than by technical skills," Fox said. "Yet you spend four years getting an undergraduate degree in engineering, which almost exclusively emphasizes the technical.

"But your ability to communicate is a big part of being successful in business," he added. "We stress communication quite a bit; presenting your ideas to others, and talking about your concerns and issues with them."

Fox sees the master's program as a way to supplement an engineering undergraduate education. Graduates generally go on to seek more job responsibility or to be fast-tracked into leadership programs within their companies. A good portion of students become consultants. Because Duke's program is a cooperation among the university's engineering, business, and law colleges, some engineering master's students go on to become lawyers.

Through the law school, students take a course on how intellectual property and patent issues affect corporations. A number of graduates decide on a new career path based on that class, Fox said.

"Either they're writing patents as a patent agent or they're going on to be patent attorneys," he said. "It's an interesting career that hadn't occurred to most engineering students."

Duke's is a one-year program. Students take four business classes: marketing, finance and management, business law, and entrepreneurship. They also choose from four technical electives. Some students focus on engineering disciplines like mechanical or electrical, others on an interdisciplinary area like biotechnology or nanotechnology.

At Duke, students complete the program with a three-month corporate internship to get real-world experience in a business environment, Fox said.

Duke's program, which graduates about 40 students each year, was founded in 1997 after professors continually heard the same statements from recent alumni.

"They were telling us engineers can no longer work in isolation," Fox said. "Sure, they needed to understand technology, but they found they also needed to understand business.

"With globalization and business competitiveness, it's very hard for engineers to work alone and be successful," he added. "They need to understand all aspects of the business. They don't need to be a finance person, but they do need to know how to communicate with them using their language and in their terms so they can solve problems better."

Not the Usual MBA

This academic year, the National Technological University of Minneapolis is making big changes to its MBA program for engineers.

The school is a bit different from traditional universities in that all classes are offered virtually; that is, via the Internet on streaming video or on DVD, CD-ROM, or videocassette. The engineering students are employed by major engineering corporations that have banded together to support the school. Students take classes from engineering professors at a number of colleges and universities, who tape their lectures.

A few years ago, NTU administrators went into the field to speak to what they call their customers, usually Fortune 500 businesses that sponsor their employees' NTU education, said Mark Ferguson, the school's general manager.

The customers asked for an MBA program not quite as general as the fairly standard one NTU had offered.

"They wanted a program that addressed the strengths and weaknesses of engineers," Ferguson said. "Because our students come in as adults in the working world, they have a different skill set than a typical student.

"We posit that the engineer coming into a program, as compared to the general population, would have superior math, problem-solving, and project-management skills," he added. "If you're talking about the stereotype of the engineer, they'd enter the MBA program less skilled in organizational behavior, team building, and communication. The stereotype we use is that the typical engineer enrolled in an MBA program sleeps through the first three classes and is totally lost in the next three."

Where walks of life cross: "Engineers can no longer work in isolation." As much as they need to understand technology, they find they also need to understand business.

A typical MBA course trains students to run a business. But because NTU students are all engineers working in their fields, they don't need a broad overview on how to lead all types of businesses. NTU students already know they'll work for a major engineering corporation. They don't need to take a class that includes a case study on managing a flower shop, Ferguson said.

Under the revised MBA program, NTU students will take six core classes that focus on the strengths a business leader needs: team building, communication, organizational behavior, finance, marketing, and accounting. Then, depending on where they want to take their careers, they choose among five tracks within the program.

One of the tracks emphasizes planning cross-functional projects, which is helpful for mid-level managers who need to oversee large projects. Another focuses on emerging technologies. Information strategies is the track that most closely mirrors a traditional technological MBA. Quantitative studies are for those who want to stay in highly technical fields. There is also a track for creation and distribution.

Other programs might call that last track a manufacturing course, but Ferguson said today's business world includes many products, like software, that aren't really manufactured, yet are tangible goods. Calling the track creation and distribution bridges the divide, he said.

To round out the program, students can elect to take any two classes that NTU offers, to help them personalize their master's degree to their career paths.

"Let's say you work for a cellphone company," Ferguson said. "You go through your core classes and find you want to specialize in managing emerging technologies because it's fast-paced, fast-moving, and new technologies are always ahead. You choose your last two courses to be electrical engineering and telecommuni-
cations. Hardcore engineering courses will beef up your technical skill set in that area."

Administrators at NTU reconfigured the school's 10-year-old MBA program based on alumni feedback, as well as on corporate input. They asked former students which classes worked best for them and how they had applied their education in the working world.

"We decided to make our program more on-target by reworking the curriculum to focus on the group we're trying to take care of," Ferguson said. "We're trying to take out the 20 percent of MBA courses that put engineers to sleep, and to keep them engaged."

The People Side of Engineering

Michelle Batt earned a master's of engineering management from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College because, she said, she's a people person and an engineering person. She wanted her real-world job to tap both sides of her personality. She received her master's in 2000 and immediately put it to use.

After earning an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Dartmouth, Batt had realized that, while she loved the problem-solving that engineering entails, she wanted to complement that training. Her master's studies gave her a better idea of both the real world of engineering—she'd gone directly from undergraduate to graduate studies and hadn't worked in the field—and what she called the people side of business.

"Most of my classmates said the same thing," Batt said. "They felt they wanted to broaden themselves. They knew they wanted to be on the business side of things, but they wanted to also leverage their technical background."

Batt liked her program so much that she returned after a stint at Ford Motor Co. to take an academic job. She's now the assistant director of the master's of engineering management program at the Thayer School of Engineering.

Several of Batt's classmates found unique ways to put their master's degrees to use, she said. For instance, one graduate who also has an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering, now works for a large advertising agency in New York, advising them on their advertising accounts with technical companies.

About 30 percent of the students in each class come from industry, while the rest arrive directly from their undergraduate studies, Batt said. The number of students within the program is deliberately kept small. The last class graduated about 50 students.

Students generally realize they want to be managers, though they don't want to earn what Batt termed a pure MBA; that is, an advanced degree that focuses broadly on business. "Our students want to stay tied to their technical roots and want to learn how to manage in technical companies," she said.

Dartmouth founded its 15-year-old program because administrators continually heard from industry contacts about the need for managers with a technical background and a good grasp of engineering issues.

Meanwhile, for those with management experience who may not have a degree to prove it, ASME is developing a certification program. The Society is working with engineering management professionals to develop an examination that will evaluate the leadership skills of experienced engineers. Those who pass will receive certification that acknowledges their management abilities.

According to an article in the inaugural issue of Engineering Management last March, ASME has approached a number of other professional societies to enlist them in the program. Chor Tan, ASME's managing director of education, said the first exams may be offered in 2005.

Engineering management fills a particular demand.

"Traditionally, engineering companies would bring in a manager without a technical background," Batt said. "Maybe they'd have an MBA, but they wouldn't get the technology side of things. Or, you'd bring in an engineer, but engineers often have trouble transitioning to management."

The word about master's of engineering management programs continues to spread.

More focused than a conventional MBA, the master's of engineering management degree is quickly becoming respected and sought in the field. And to have skills that are sought after can only help a career.



Return to Index