Industry driven engineering management program within a distance learning environment

Abstract

Summary form only as given. The Engineering Management Program at Washington State University (USA) is a state-wide program currently serving industries at WSU branch campuses in Tri-Cities, Vancouver, and Spokane, and in-house industry at The Boeing Company, Seattle. There is a constant demand to expand the program to other locations such as local area industries in other cities as well as direct industry sponsorship. The program is delivered via closed circuit, live, two-way interactive television. The students are working engineers with an average age of 35 and 10 years experience. The Engineering Management Program is thus formed to serve a mixture of industries in a setting of branch campuses and private industry sponsorship. This mixture brings together a special set of forces on the program to form a leading edge Engineering Management Program. These forces create an industry driven Engineering Management Program in a distance learning basis. This paper addresses the advantages, pitfalls and ramifications of such a program.