Case Western Reserve’s Online Master of Engineering

More and more students are looking for a broad based engineering masters that can address their technical, business management, and personal efficiency skills. Students need a masters that will meet the needs of increasing technology, industrialization, and cross-disciplinary projects with teams that span the globe.

Ken Loparo, Program Director at Case School of Engineering.

Instead of focusing on two degrees, one to meet the management skills and one to meet the technical skills, an interdisciplinary masters of engineering could hit two birds with one stone. For instance, the interdisciplinary Masters in Engineering from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) has core courses that focuses on board room management skills and cross disciplinary elective courses for technical knowledge. For these electives, students can pick and choose courses in: Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Systems & Control Engineering, Engineering Innovation, Management and Leadership.

“Case School of Engineering offers a unique Master of Engineering Program that equips engineers in industry to continue along a technical career path but adds dimensions of business, management, and teamwork skills,” said Ken Loparo, Program Director at Case School of Engineering. “The program provides an academic environment to address the increasingly wide range of management, technical, financial and inter-personal skills demanded by an expanding and diverse global industry.”

Loparo explained that the program is different from your traditional Masters of Science degrees because it focuses on current industrial practices instead of research. In comparison to a Masters of Business Administration, this online Masters of Engineering program instead focusses on the technical and business landscape of engineering industries.

Case Western Reserve’s Online Master of Engineering Curriculum

What sets this program apart from others is that it focuses on skills needed for career advancement, leadership, and interdisciplinary technical advancements. Due to the customizable nature of the degree, Loparo is “confident that this program will be well suited to your needs.”

“The Master of Engineering degree will help practicing engineers better prepare themselves for both technical and business challenges,” said Loparo. “Students can choose from four concentration areas or sample from amongst different disciplines. These concentrations include: Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Systems & Control Engineering, Engineering Innovation, Management and Leadership.

Of the 10 courses needed to graduate, students will be able to choose their capstone project and 4 electives from various engineering specialties. The core courses focus on these leadership and career centric topics. Students will learn about professionalism, business management, product/process design, statistics, and economics. The online Masters of Engineering from CRWU therefore offers students the freedom to customize their education to fit their personal and professional needs.

 “The program places an emphasis on excellence—in education, in our faculty, in student support and quality of student colleagues,” added Loparo. As such, it should come as no surprise that the same faculty that teach the on-campus program courses also teach the online courses. The result is that the rigorous content of degree is maintained between both formats.

However, as the online version of the program is new, students should expect some kinks that will need to be worked out to perfectly translate the program from campus to the Web. As many of the courses available to the program appear to be under the control of other departments, these fixes might pose a greater challenge.

To this Loparo said, “We have been making continuous improvements in the on-campus program over the past 20 years, and with the launch of the online program the technical concentration areas are better focused on contemporary engineering practice.”

Though the customization opportunities of the program is vast, “our online courses and degree are not watered down,” assures Loparo. “Students should expect to spend 12 to 15 hours a week for 14 weeks on these courses. You will participate in forward-thinking and challenging coursework delivered in an engaging, immersive online environment with 24/7 technical support.”

Is CWRU’s Master of Engineering Right for You?

Though the customizable nature of the program is impressive, it will not be for every engineer. Some engineers will need to take a program that is more focused on either their technical field, project/engineering management, or business administration. However, for those that wish to gather a broad understand of all of these topics, the interdisciplinary nature of CWRU’s Masters of Engineering appears to fill that niche.

“Practicing engineers need to incorporate modern technological skills along with the economic realities of business operations,” said Loparo. “Rapidly changing organizational structures also require engineering professionals who can take on broad responsibilities while lending well-grounded technical expertise to effective work teams.”

 “The Master of Engineering Program from the Case School of Engineering offers a professional graduate engineering degree and an opportunity to broaden your understanding of the practice of engineering in today’s business environment,” said Loparo.

Thanks to the online asynchronous format, CWRU’s Masters of Engineering program is geared towards the working professional. Students will be able to gain a Masters of Engineering from CWRU from anywhere around the world while maintaining their professional, social, and family life.

Loparo suggested that, “graduates will enroll in our program because they recognize the courses are designed into a rigorous integrated curriculum delivering contemporary key-enabling knowledge, technology and techniques that address a rapidly developing industrial environment.”

Case School of Engineering has sponsored promotion of their Master of Engineering on ENGINEERING.com. They have no editorial input to this post - all opinions are mine.  Shawn Wasserman