OverviewAreas of Focus
To create a well-rounded graduate, the Master of Engineering Management curriculum emphasizes three key areas: innovation, strategic thinking, and leadership.
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- Innovation
- Strategic Thinking
- Leadership
- Case Study: Listen to students speak on applying these skills to a real business challenges and their careers.
Innovation
We teach innovation from the following perspectives:
- Product development and marketing
- Organizational development
- New business development
From a product development perspective, we deliver a course that is specific to product development and the processes needed to bring a product to market. We also teach innovation from an organizational perspective, and lastly we have a series of courses that are focused on developing whole new businesses. These courses are called the NUvention series of courses that are focused on the processes needed by entrepreneurs to start a business by development of robust business models and concepts.
NUvention
The NUvention course series, offered through the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, teaches the processes used by entrepreneurs in the creation of robust business models and concepts. This series is dedicated to the development of whole new businesses and startups.
Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking is developed in several of our courses, focusing on developing the student's ability to:
- Synthesize a series of financial performances
- Understand the long term implications of business decisions in a competitive environment
- Understand the influence of macro-economic factors on the organization and product decisions
Leadership
In order to prepare our graduates for high-level business roles, leadership is core component of our coursework. The MEM leadership model focuses on:
Teamwork and Collaborative Decision-making
Students work in teams in virtually every course they take, but in courses like Engineering Management (402), students are exposed to business decision making in a team format. Students take turns performing in leadership roles in a competitive scenario. They are required to make time-bound decisions with quick feedback loops to see what the results of their decisions are. This allows the students to see the long term impact of their decisions over a ten year simulated period of time.
Management
The leadership model is also focused on task orientation and self management. These skills are developed in a variety of courses that focus on team-based deliverables, time-bound assignments, and introspective exercises where students get feedback about their behaviors and their styles both in leadership and followership.
Communications and Conflict Resolution
Communications is an essential part of every technical manager’s work day. The MEM program focuses on group verbal discussion skills, presentation skills, and written skills. Nearly every course in the MEM program has an element of each of these skills required. Students are graded on their communication skills and receive feedback from the rest of the class.
Case Study
Iqbal Arshad ('97)
Listen to Iqbal Arshad ('97), senior vice president of engineering and global product development at Motorola Mobility, talk about how the program accelerated his career, through teaching him broad-based thinking.
Shahid Ahmed ('01)
Listen to the MEM students discuss the opportunity to analyze data sets for Accenture, Aruba Networks, and Microsoft and present their findings to senior executives.
