The newly-redesigned Master of Engineering in Systems Engineering is intended for today’s professional—to fit the needs of busy working adults who are balancing career and life. Courses are either fully online or a 50/50 online/in-person hybrid, combining the personal connection with instructors and intimate classroom setting of in-person education with the flexibility of online learning. This program is STEM designated. A STEM designated degree from Penn State Great Valley allows 36 months total of Optional Practical Training (OPT) compared to 12 months for non-STEM degrees.
The program is accessible to engineering professionals who wish to pursue advanced studies and is designed to address industry challenges like increasing mission complexity, increasing development cost, late discovery of design problems, and failure to recognize and deal with risk. Students complete the program prepared to advance in their career through a curriculum designed to provide them with the tools, experiences, and support necessary to attain programmatic or technical leadership roles in systems engineering or the management of complex systems.
Online and Hybrid Format
- Classes are offered in a seven-week format and are both hybrid and fully online.
- Each course is designated as either online or hybrid.
- In-person classes are held once a week in three-hour evening sessions, offering a convenient format for career professionals seeking to enroll on a part-time basis.
- Students will participate in online course activities throughout the week, which may include class discussion forums, teamwork, and various online learning activities.
- The online and hybrid class format allows students to participate in a program that suits their lifestyle, while benefiting from a collaborative and engaging experience designed to educate and assist students in their career.
- Students interact face-to-face with professors, developing personal, mentoring relationships, while also enjoying virtual classes that are accessible from anywhere.
- Our students are business professionals and managers in both the private and public sectors. We value professional and leadership experience as well as academic achievement in the classroom.
Program Highlights
The purpose of the program is to prepare engineers to develop the next generation of engineering products, systems, and services for industry and government.
- The program consists of 12 courses (36 credits).
- The addition of new core courses captures advances in the systems engineering discipline and imparts knowledge that is critical for today’s system engineers.
- This interdisciplinary degree involves the identification, modeling, analysis, architecture, integration, and management of complex systems and processes.
- Using real-world activities, students will learn to apply a systems thinking approach to complex projects and develop efficient systems at each stage of the project cycle.
- Contemporary methods, tools for integrated models, system architecture, and simulations are an integral part of the curriculum’s multi-level system analysis.
- All courses are taught by our distinguished Penn State faculty, who have significant systems engineering experience in industry and academia.
Students can select one of two options that counts towards their capstone experience:
- Research paper - Students interested in demonstrating their ability to think and work independently work with faculty to develop new insights in the field of systems engineering. A wide range of topics can be studied in collaboration with the research labs at Great Valley, including the Big Data Lab and the Do-iT Lab. Some recent research topics our graduate students have been working on include exploring the socio-technical aspects of engineering large scale systems and system-of-systems, such as transportation networks, Internet of Things, smart cities and resilience of complex systems, study of cognitive processes and preferences in technical problem solving, and cognitive and behavioral dynamics in design teams.
- Project – Under the guidance of faculty, students interested in demonstrating their ability to work in small teams apply systems engineering principles and tools to define, architect, and design a heterogeneous engineering system. Some recent projects include preliminary design and architecting of a disaster management system, and preliminary design and architecting of a life support system for Antarctic researchers.