Technical Management Courses

Note: Not all courses are offered every semester, and new courses may be added at any time. Check the schedule of classes for the latest offerings.

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 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 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 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. Students will engage in weekly discussion board postings, completing quizzes and three individual papers.

ENMG 658: Financial Management

This course focuses on analysis and interpretation of financial statements with an emphasis on the measurement of results of operations and financial position of business organizations. The course covers the fundamentals of reading and analyzing financial statements and reports and applying to a business or work setting. The course will cover budgeting, profit planning, return on investment, risk and return, strategy and other financial information used in business decision-making. Students will discuss various types of contracts based on cost structure and prepare budgets as used in grant funding proposals.

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/SYST 660: Systems Engineering Principles

This course provides an introduction to the discipline of Systems Engineering (SE) and Systems Architecting (SA). Key industry standards for SE and SA and a standard definition for the “The Systems Engineering (SE) Process” are provided and are used throughout the course. The course describes how the SE process is implemented in standard life cycle models and through various standard organizational structures. Students will develop a requirements document, and integrated architecture, and a Systems Engineering Plan (SEP). Homework and Exams are designed to provide the opportunity to practice the concepts learned in class.

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 online 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 first aspect of this course is focused on an overview of basic quality principles and applications from engineering and engineering management perspectives. Students will examine philosophies of key figures like Deming, Juran, and Crosby and discover the value of a variety of quality management approaches (Baldridge Performance Excellence, ISO, and Six Sigma/Lean Six Sigma, and others). The second aspect of the course will focus on discussion, analysis, and application of some of quantitative tools including: Pareto charts, measurement systems, design of experiments, statistical process control, and six-sigma methods. Students will apply these tools and methods to solve engineering and management problems. Reading assignments, homework, exams, and the final project/paper will emphasize the application of quality approaches, techniques, and problem solving. Note: Students in undergraduate engineering programs or graduate degree programs other than Systems Engineering or Engineering Management need permission from their academic advisor in order to apply this course to their respective degree programs. This course can be counted as either a management course or an engineering course for the M.S. in Engineering Management.

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.

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 modeling uncertainty; rational decision-making principles; representing decision problems with value trees, decision trees, and influence diagrams; solving value hierarchies, decision trees, and influence diagrams; defining and calculating the value of information; incorporating risk attitudes into the analysis; and conducting sensitivity analysis. Students are expected to have an elementary understanding of probability theory.

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!

ENMG 693: Management Project

The Management Project course is the capstone for management programs. This course is normally taken in the final semester of their management program. Students will carry out individual research in a management topic of interest to the student and approved by the faculty member. The students work shall demonstrate mastery of the management and leadership skills obtained in the program. The result of the research is typically in the form of a case study of management problem of interest. This course meets in person approximately five times during the semester.

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