New master’s for practicing engineers announced

Graduate education’s total-immersion agenda, packed with research and teaching assignments, can seem like a daunting lifestyle change for most working professionals.

A new World Wide Web-based master’s degree created by the UW–Madison College of Engineering may solve that problem by allowing professionals to advance their careers without interrupting them.

The Master of Engineering in Professional Practice (MEPP), slated to begin in summer 1999, represents what many see as the next wave in graduate education: Capstone- style degree programs that take instruction to the professional. Laptop computers will replace lecture halls, allowing students to complete assignments in the office, at home or on the road.

“We recognize that we may not be the center of (students’) universe. That’s very different from a traditional masters program,” says Karen Al-Ashkar, an adviser in Engineering Professional Development. “These students will have a lot of different priorities, all of which are important.”

While traditional graduate education stresses research, MEPP students will take a different track, she says. The curriculum, likened to an engineer’s version of an MBA, focuses on technical and organizational skills critical to modern engineers. These include computer applications, project planning and communication skills.

Thomas Smith, director of engineering telecommunications programming, says the advances in web technology will give the course a real-time, interactive quality. Courses will include computer-aided problem-solving, technical project management, communicating technical information and quality management. The second year will include a collaborative project with teams of students.

Michael Corradini, associate dean for academic affairs in the college, sees MEPP as part of a larger trend in engineering to meet the increasing demand for distance learning. The college has two other graduate programs approved this year — technical Japanese, and polymer science and engineering — that cater to the professional in the field.

The engineering programs are following a successful UW–Madison model in administrative medicine, which has offered a web-based advanced degree for years, he says. Like medicine, engineering is a field with near-constant change, and continued education is essential, he says.