Marquette University in Milwaukee to Offer New Engineering Program

By Paul Snyder

Marquette University announced Tuesday that it will begin offering a new undergraduate degree program in construction engineering management in the 2008-2009 school year.

A statement from the university said the program will educate students to become professional engineers with the necessary skills in business and law to be become leaders in the construction engineering management field. Graduates will be well educated in terms of communication skills, as well as the importance of professionalism and ethics.

“There’s a growing demand in the market for construction managers that have a bit of a business background in addition to an engineering background,” said Dr. Stanley Jaskolski, dean of the College of Engineering. “This is a response to that demand.”

Jaskolski said that Marquette has been looking to implement the program for the last three years after a considerable push from alumni.

“We’re blessed with lots of alumni in the construction business that highlighted the need for graduates with a more diversified background, and they’ve told the school for a few years now it needed to take a serious look at offering this kind of program,” he said.

And while Marquette joins other Wisconsin schools that offer degrees in construction engineering, like the Milwaukee School of Engineering and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it looks to distinguish itself, not only in the state, but also in the country.

“We’re hoping to graduate about 25 to 30 students in the program each year, and after the first graduating class, we’re going to go after accreditation from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology,” he said. “There are only seven other programs like this in the country that are ABET accredited.”

Nine certification programsJaskolski added that the alumni who pushed for the program will also be providing some strong support packages for it.

In addition to the new undergraduate degree program, the College of Engineering has also developed nine new graduate certificate programs. Each program requires completion of four three-credit courses selected from a prescribed list and is designed for practicing engineers and other qualified individuals with bachelor’s degrees who wish to update or expand their knowledge in a specific technical area.

The certificates are in the following areas:

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Construction engineering management Structural design Transportation Water and wastewater treatment processes Water resources engineeringDepartment of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electric machine, drives and controls Digital signal processing Microwaves and antennas Sensors and smart sensor systemsThe timing on Marquette’s part couldn’t be better. Many companies are noting an increased demand for engineers, and the Department of Workforce Development released numbers recently projecting an 18.6 percent increase in the number of available engineering jobs between 2004 and 2014.

DWD has been working to integrate students into the field even before college with programs like Project Lead the Way, designed to get middle and high school students interested in engineering. The program is available through nearly 100 schools throughout Wisconsin.

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