“I sat down, and I’m definitely an engineer, and I put together a spreadsheet and I just started researching,” said Amy Jo Moore, systems engineer at Northrop Grumman. “Started with a google search. And went through my SWE (Society of Women Engineers) community network, I put out a forum … some people shouted out programs and I stared looking into these programs specifically. The one that I did at Ohio University jumped out at me because of the timeline and also because I never had to visit the school. I know some people had to go to their school at least once or twice. I didn’t know if that would be an option for me when that time came around. So putting the spreadsheet together that had all my pros and cons, had the costs laid out, had what kind of equipment I would need to buy … that’s how I picked.”
Time was a factor for Amy Jo when deciding on a masters in engineering management online from Ohio University. Not surprising for someone who works on US Air Force projects at Hill Air Force Base. She also makes a good point about looking to your peers for advice. As a deputy speaker of the senate at the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) it was easy for her to tap into a great source of advice from successful engineers.
As for Henri Begin, he received his masters in engineering management from the University of Colorado Boulder. Currently, Henri helps develop software architecture and long term software system design for digital communication devices at Qualcomm.
“For me it was a couple of factors. Again I did the spreadsheet thing,” said Henri. “I wanted to do the online degree for the time flexibility piece. But I also wanted the ability to be able to run in if I had a question. I live and work about halfway between the University of Colorado and Colorado State University so I pretty much focused on those programs. I did look at some of the ones in the Denver area as well … So I was mostly focusing on the local area.”
Henri also mentions some variables you might want in your spreadsheet: “The next piece I was looking at was related to cost. My company was doing some company reimbursement on education so that definitely weighed in on my decision making … Lastly the one you might not hear about often is that I actually looked through the faculty list … I wanted some professors who actually spent some time in industry. There were some programs that I looked at that had a bunch of professors who spent their entire careers at the University and I didn’t feel that gave them the depth of real world situations.”
The professionalism of professors was also important to Matt Toter, industrial engineer at Williams International where he conducts simulation work for a future jet engine factory. His bachelors was in industrial and systems engineering at Oakland University where he is currently pursuing his masters in engineering management online.
Matt explains that he “also made a spreadsheet. I’m sure that every engineer that has had to make a decision always pulls out Excel and makes a spreadsheet it seems. Always looking at the data it’s funny … My masters is the same [university] where I got my undergrad from. One of the components to that was that I knew how the online program would work. I knew the format and that teachers would give lectures that are live which are recorded … It wasn’t up to me to have to read a textbook and understand it … I know that in some online courses they say read the first five chapters and we will have a test on it next week. To me reading it in combination with someone that has experienced it and explaining it to me was something I was looking for.”
From tuition, additional costs, distance, teacher experience and professionalism there is quite a lot of data one has to keep straight when choosing an online masters. It seems that a spreadsheet really is the perfect place to produce this decision matrix. The real question then is what would you put in your decision matrix? Let us know in the comments.
If you want to hear more about what Matt, Amy Jo and Henri had to say about online education and engineering management then check out their webinar.