Master’s of Science in Engineering Management

The Engineering Management Program combines a practical business approach with an in-depth technical track and emphasizes how to manage people and complex projects. The aim of the program is to provide students with a basic and focused set of advanced business and management skills coupled with advanced skills in a specific technical area commensurate with student’s interests and likely technical employment.

The combination of these advanced skills and knowledge will help students assimilate and integrate practical technical experience for the management of technology-based enterprises or government functions. Although not required for participating in this program, it is expected that students are, or intend to be, employed in a technology-oriented enterprise or government program.

Learning Outcomes

M.S. Engineering Management Program Requirements:

Students must complete 10 courses (30 credits) as follows:

• Management courses (6 courses)
  • 4 required core courses (12 credits)
  • 2 elective courses (6 credits)
• Engineering or Information Technology track courses (4 courses)
• Download the Academic Planning Form as unofficial guidance in planning your MS program.

Required Core Courses (12 credits)

ENMG 650: Project Management Fundamentals

Students learn the fundamentals of managing projects in a systematic way. These fundamentals can be applied within any industry and work environment and will serve as the foundation for more specialized project management study. Principles and techniques are further reinforced through practical case studies and team projects in which students simulate project management processes and techniques.

ENMG 668: Project and Systems Engineering Management

This course will cover fundamental project control and systems engineering management concepts, including how to plan, set up cost accounts, bid, staff and execute a project from a project control perspective. It provides an understanding of the critical relations and interconnections between project management and systems engineering management. It is designed to address how systems engineering management supports traditional program management activities to break down complex programs into manageable and assignable tasks.

ENMG 652: Management Leadership and Communications

Students learn effective management and communication skills through case study-analysis, reading, class discussion and role-playing. The course covers topics such as effective listening, setting expectations, delegation, coaching, performance, evaluations, conflict management, and negotiation with senior management and managing with integrity.

ENMG 656: Engineering Law and Ethics

This course provides a comprehensive overview of important legal principles affecting engineers, engineering sciences and corporate management, with a focus on the intersection of these legal principles with business ethics. The student learns how to think through and process legal problems consistent with ethical norms, and how to analyze business risks in light of operative legal constructs, taking into consideration ethical issues, to arrive at a range of correct business decisions. Throughout the course, the student will learn substantive legal principles including an overview of constitutional, contract, tort, corporate and regulatory law. Students will work in groups during certain exercises, role play in real and hypothetical case studies, and make a final presentation of a comprehensive legal and ethical engineering problem.

ENMG 658: Financial Management

This course will cover the fundamentals of setting up, reading and analyzing financial statements and reports in a business setting. Course topics will include: project budgeting, profit planning, return on investment and basic corporate finance. Students will analyze case studies from specific industries.

Elective Courses (choose two)

ENMG 654: Leading Teams and Organizations

Students analyze leadership case studies across a wide range of industries and environments to identify effective leadership principles that may be applied in their own organizations. Students learn how to influence people throughout their organization, lead effective teams, create an inclusive workplace, use the Six Sigma process, implement and manage change and develop a leadership style.

Prerequisite: ENMG 652: Management, Leadership and Communication

ENMG 659: Strategic Management

This course is intended to integrate the learning from the previous management courses and to focus it on the perspective and problems of the Chief Executive Officer and other organizational strategic managers. The theme of the course is that any organization improves its chances of sustained success when its managers formulate an action-oriented strategic business plan based on the strategic management process. Case studies are included to illustrate the concepts and their applications.

Prerequisite: Minimum of three engineering management courses

ENMG 660: Systems Engineering Principles

This course provides the foundational framework to understand the system engineering (SE) process, selection of specialized SE tools and the execution of SE under differing design or acquisition philosophies. the courses addresses: (1)SE principles (2)SE processes and metholodogies (3) integration of technical disciplines and (4) SE management.

This course can be counted as either a management course or an engineering course for the M.S. in Engineering Management.

ENMG 661: Leading Global Virtual Teams

This course is designed to help the student apply managerial concepts and skills to managing and leading virtual and/or global work teams. Geographically dispersed work teams have great challenges: tone is difficult to convey electronically, time zones limit audio communication opportunities, work oversight requires more reposting, and team building is exceedingly difficult using technological – rather than in-person – tools. Language and culture differences in multinational teams compound these challenges. Students will learn to empower others, build credibility, communicate appropriately and adapt quickly across cultures and technologies.

ENMG 663: Advanced Project Management Applications

This advanced course in project management builds on the beginner level project management courses to expand the hands-on applications, with a focus on critical evaluation of project performance and ultimately creating an environment for maximizing one’s own project management performance. With a strong emphasis on the importance of learning through application, the course will bridge academia with the professional business environment to provide opportunities for students to interact with industry professionals as the students execute their course work. Students will also confront the real challenges facing project managers associated with the growing global and virtual workforce through the use of on-line learning tools and methods of collaboration. At the successful completion of the course, students will have the requisite skills and experiences necessary to function effectively, and artfully, as skilled project managers.

ENMG 664: Quality Engineering & Management

This course provides an overview of the basic principles and tools of quality and their applications from an engineering perspective. The primary quality schools of thought or methodologies, including Total Quality Management, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma, and quality approaches from key figures in the development and application of quality as a business practice, including W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran will be analyzed. Some of the key mathematical tools used in quality systems will be discussed, including Pareto charts, measurement systems analysis, design of experiments, response surface methodology, and statistical process control. Students will apply these techniques to solve engineering problems using the R software. Reading assignments, homework, exams, and the project will emphasize quality approaches, techniques, and problem solving.

This course can be counted as either a management course or an engineering course for the M.S. in Engineering Management.

SYST 672: Decision and Risk Analysis

This course provides an overview of decision and risk analysis techniques. It focuses on how to make rational decisions in the presence of uncertainty and conflicting objectives. This course covers rational decision-making principles and processes; competing objectives, multi-attribute analysis and utility theory; modeling uncertainty and decision problems using decision trees and influence diagrams; solving decision trees and influence diagrams; uses of Bayes’ Theorem; defining and calculating the value of information; regression analysis; incorporating risk attitudes into decision analyses; and conducting sensitivity analyses. A significant portion of the course is devoted to the use of various applications of analytic, empirical, and subjective probability theory to the modeling of uncertain events. As such, students will find it useful to have some experience with basic probability.

This course can be counted as either a management course or an engineering course for the M.S. in Engineering Management.

ENMG 680: International Project Management

This course explores the best management practices of international projects, emphasizing the importance of leadership skills and virtual teamwork to successfully navigate through managing an international project. International projects differ from domestic projects by their complexity of culture, increased communications and collaboration requirements, local customs and practices, differing languages and currencies, processes, and the type of resources that may be available. The course describes how to conduct project planning in each of the life cycle acquisition process phases and then to execute the plan through recommended international organizational structures.

ENMG 690: Innovation and Technology Entrepreneurship

This course offers an overview of innovation and its role in entrepreneurial ventures, both in new companies and within existing corporations. The basics of entrepreneurship with specific emphasis on technology-based business start-up are investigated. For the purposes of this course, technologies include IT, engineering and biotech. The course covers where to find innovative ideas and how to determine if a business idea is feasible along with an overview of the critical success factors in a new venture start-up.

ENMG 692: Principles of Organization Learning

Corporations are applying radically new management techniques to remain competitive. Today, information forms the basis for competitive advantage as companies are competing as much on their ability to create and manage new information, as they do on marketing and selling their physical products and associated services. This course studies how organizations create and use knowledge to support their operations and strategic planning. A “knowledge-creating” company is said to be one that consistently creates new knowledge, disseminates it widely throughout the organization, and quickly embodies it in new technologies and products, and whose sole business is continuous innovation. Actions are investigated which corporate executives and managers can take to improve their management, translation, and utilization of knowledge, to increase their organization’s absorptive capacities and ability to learn quickly, to posture themselves for innovative responses to changing market conditions, to handle disruptive technology cycles, to implement the effective use of data analytics, and to develop sustainable business models and improve organizational performance.

Businesses collected more customer information in 2010, than in all prior years combined. The amount of corporate data being collected is said to be doubling every 6 months. The intellectual property of these companies will take a second seat and their ability to compete will depend on their current absorptive capacity, and their capacity to learn as an organization faster than their competitors. This course prepares students for future market environments where innovative businesses will compete based on their ability to process information and learn, and learn quickly. This course has selected the most relevant research papers in the fields of knowledge management, organizational learning, and strategic planning. After this course, you will be familiar with the most significant research dedicated to optimizing business and project processes that has been released in the last decade. Each research paper has been summarized in 2 to 3 page reports to help students manage the significant amounts of information and to track the key points being made in each paper. The future may already be here, so why not be prepared for it!

CYBR 620: Intro to Cybersecurity

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of cybersecurity by discussing the evolution of information security into cybersecurity, cybersecurity theory, and the relationship of cybersecurity to nations, businesses, society, and people. Students will be exposed to multiple cybersecurity technologies, processes, and procedures, learn how to analyze the threats, vulnerabilities and risks present in these environments, and develop appropriate strategies to mitigate potential cybersecurity problems.

Prospective students who have earned the CISSP designation within the past 5 years may, if admitted, substitute another course for CYBR 620 “Introduction to Cybersecurity” in their first semester of the CYBR MPS program. Students should provide evidence of successful completion of the CISSP exam within that timeframe (such as a transcript or official documentation from the certifying authority) to UMBC as part of their application.

Prerequisite: Enrollment in the CYBR program or in at least the second semester of graduate study. Other students may be admitted with instructor permission.

CYBR 621: Cyber Warfare

This course addresses some of the unique and emerging policy, doctrine, strategy, and operational requirements of conducting cyber warfare at the nation-state level. It provides students with a unified battlespace perspective and enhances their ability to manage and develop operational systems and concepts in a manner that results in the integrated, controlled, and effective use of cyber assets in warfare.

Prerequisite: Enrollment in the CYBR program or in at least the second semester of graduate study. Other students may be admitted with instructor permission.

CYBR 623: Cybersecurity Law & Policy

Students will be exposed to the national and international policy and legal considerations related to cybersecurity and cyberspace such as privacy, intellectual property, cybercrime, homeland security (i.e., critical infrastructure protection) and cyberwarfare, and the organizations involved in the formulation of such laws and policies. Broader technology issues also are discussed to demonstrate the interdisciplinary influences and concerns that must be addressed in developing or implementing effective national cybersecurity laws and policies.

Prerequisite: Enrollment in the CYBR program or in at least the second semester of graduate study. Other students may be admitted with instructor permission.

CYBR 622: Global Cyber Capabilities and Trends

This course focuses on four general areas of cyber capabilities and trends in the global community: the theory and practice of cybersecurity and cyberwar; cyber capabilities of nation-states as well as non-state actors; trends in cyber-related strategies and policies; and cyber-related challenges facing the U.S. government. The course concludes with a national cybersecurity policy exercise that helps demonstrate the challenges and complexities of the dynamic and global cybersecurity environment.

Prerequisite: Enrollment in the CYBR program or in at least the second semester of graduate study. Other students may be admitted with instructor permission.

Specializations

To achieve technical depth in a discipline, students are encouraged to take four courses from one of the following specializations. However, students may take courses from multiple specializations.

Before enrolling in any courses in Engineering, Computer Science, or Information Technology specializations, students should ensure that they meet the prerequisites for the course or receive permission from the course instructor. In addition, students should consult with the Engineering Management Graduate Program Director to ensure selected courses meet program requirements.

• Chemical/Biochemical Regulatory Engineering
• Chemical Engineering
• Computer Engineering
• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Data Science
• Electrical Engineering
• Environmental Engineering
• Human Centered Computing
• Information Systems
• Mechanical Engineering
• Systems Engineering

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