UT Dallas is offering two new graduate-level certificates that provide working professionals with the knowledge and skills to engineer and manage complex projects containing many interdependent pieces.

Dr. Duncan MacFarlane  

Dr. Duncan MacFarlane (above) and Dr. Rajiv Shah developed the program.

Rajiv Shah

Leveraging the University’s strengths in both engineering and business education, the Systems Engineering and Management Program is offered as a unique partnership between the UT Dallas School of Management and the University’s Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.

“The program is designed for employees of local and regional companies who design, develop, engineer, manufacture, manage, plan or research all aspects of large and complex systems,” said Dr. Rajiv Shah, a clinical professor of entrepreneurship, who developed the program in collaboration with Dr. Duncan MacFarlane, a professor of electrical engineering.

The program is intended for working professionals with a minimum of a bachelor’s degree in engineering, mathematics, physics, chemistry, economics or finance and at least five years of industry experience.

“Engineering training has traditionally involved the study of small systems, however there’s a large and growing unmet need for formalized engineering and management education in increasingly complex macro systems that have a large number of interdependent parts,” MacFarlane said. “These areas are at the intersection of the usually separate disciplines of engineering and management, hence the need for this program.”

The program’s objective is to produce graduates capable of undertaking challenging projects that encompass wide-ranging scientific, engineering and management disciplines. Two certificates are offered: a certificate in systems engineering and a certificate in systems management. Each requires the completion of four three-credit-hour classes.

Classes are provided in an executive-education format, meeting once a week for 10 weeks on Fridays or Saturdays for four hours each. The program’s four initial classes begin this fall and feature two classes from each certificate plan:

Systems Engineering

  • SYSM6301: Systems Engineering Architecture and Design
  • SYSM6303: Systems Engineering Risk Assessment and Management

Systems Management

  • SYSM6306: Engineering Economics and Finance
  • SYSM6317: The Management of High-Tech Products

For more information, visit http://sem.utdallas.edu.