The role of industry in forming a distance learning engineering management program

The Engineering Management Program (EMP) at Washington State University (WSU) is a state-wide program currently serving industries at WSU branch campuses in Tri-Cities, Vancouver and Spokane, and in-house industry at The Boeing Company, Seattle. There is a constant demand to expand the program to other locations, such as local-area industries in other cities as well as direct industry sponsorship, with the major limitation being resources (faculty, classrooms and communications). The program is delivered via live, closed-circuit, two-way interactive television. The students are working engineers with an average age of 35 and 10 years' experience. With the advent of virtual technologies, the EMP is moving more toward a 'virtual education' program. The EMP is thus formed to serve a variety of industries in a setting of branch campuses and private industry sponsorship. This admixture brings together a special set of forces on the program to form a leading-edge engineering management program. These forces create a critical industry role informing the EMP within a distance learning environment. This paper addresses the advantages, pitfalls and ramifications of such a program.