A new venture in graduate studies: engineering systems at the Colorado School of Mines

The Engineering Systems program at the Colorado School of Mines has evolved as a natural and necessary academic endeavor in the broad environment of resources and interdisciplinary engineering. It has fostered strong intellectual interest from current faculty and many hundreds of applicants for faculty openings, and from current and prospective students. The program is timely in that it responds to the perceived needs for interdisciplinarity and global perspectives in engineering education, and because it is compatible with many calls from research funding agencies for team based interdisciplinary research. The authors describe the start of the course, program composition, the curriculum, and program implementation.