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Integrated Engineering and Management Masters Program in Biomedical Engineering Entrepreneurship Patrick E. Crago and A. Dale Flowers The Institute for the Integration of Management and Engineering Case School of Engineering/ Weatherhead School of Management Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH 44106

The Case School of Engineering, in partnership with the Weatherhead School of Management, launched a new Master of Engineering and Management (MEM) degree program in 2001. This unique program combines the engineering and management disciplines. The program was developed in consultation with 28 major companies nationwide, including leading biomedical companies. In addition, representatives from University schools and departments including engineering, management, medicine, and the Health Systems Management Center participated in the design. The input from the companies indicated that industry needs engineers with not only a solid foundation in engineering but also additional knowledge and skills in management and business.

After extensive competitive benchmarking with many of the leading programs in the country that were joint business and engineering programs, we decided to take a different approach. Virtually all other programs take advantage of existing business and engineering courses and double count them in such a way that the student earns two degrees (an M.S. in engineering and an M.B.A. in business, for example) in less time in the joint program than would be required if the student completed the programs one at a time. This means engineering courses are taught by engineering faculty, and business courses by business faculty. Thus, in these other programs, it is left up to the student to integrate the subject matter between the two degrees.

Our new approach was to design, develop, and deliver an integrated learning experience wherever the input from our corporate partners suggested that was preferable. This meant that a faculty team consisting of one engineering professor and one business professor would work together to design an integrated learning component (course) for the program, as evidenced by the drafting of a syllabus. All of the faculty involved in developing the program would review and comment on this syllabus until it was formally approved by the team. Then the two faculty designers would actually develop the course. This included creation or selection of case studies and exercises, field trips, exams, presentations, reading material, etc. Finally, these same two faculty colleagues would deliver the course to the students enrolling in the program. We felt this design, development, and delivery continuity would benefit such an ambitious undertaking. In this approach, it is clearly up to the faculty to design an integrated learning experience for the students, rather than left up to the students to integrate the different courses from the various disciplines.

Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright . 2004, American Society for Engineering Education

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Crago, P., & Flowers, D. (2004, June), Integrated Engineering And Management Master's Program In Biomedical Engineering Entrepreneurship Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13054