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2542

An Analysis of the Career Value of a Graduate Engineering Management Degree Revisited

William J. Daughton Lockheed Martin Engineering Management Program University of Colorado at Boulder

Abstract

The Lockheed Martin Engineering Management Program in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder has been granting graduate degrees for 16 years, and in that time well over 200 engineers have graduated. The focus of the graduate program is to prepare individuals who have been working as professional engineers for two to approximately six years for technical management career paths. We have been interested in the value of this degree to the career advancement of our graduates. A preceding paper analyzed the overall value of the degree to our students, and in this paper the career value of individual course subjects is analyzed. The data from faculty course questionnaires (FCQ) provided by students for the last three years has been used to evaluate the career value of these courses and is presented here.

Background

The program evolved from discussion between the College of Engineering and Applied Science and local industry about the need to provide engineers with a practical set of management skills prior to undertaking early management assignments. Local high technology companies were concerned that many engineers were entering management positions responsible for project or development teams or promoted to managers of small departments or work groups with little preparation. Ironically, these opportunities sometimes came as a reward for a job well done for engineering contributions but placed the individual in an awkward position. As Matson1 and Lancaster2 have reported, and this author observed while working in industry, engineers usually find themselves very poorly equipped to take on their management assignments.

As the program evolved over the next 16 years, the enrollment grew to include students from Colorado, from across the United States, and from around the world. As pointed out in a previous paper3, the students are very interested in the value of this graduate education to not only an initial promotion into a management position but also to their long-term career opportunities. Since the previous paper focused on the career value of the Engineering Management degree itself, the focus of this paper is on career value of individual course subjects in the curriculum. The approach was to utilize the formal course evaluation forms competed by students at the end of each course to develop the data for this study.

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright  2002 American Society for Engineering Education

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Daughton, W. (2004, June), Assessing The Career Value Of A Graduate Engineering Management Degree Revisited Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13097