The Mechanical Engineering Graduate Program prepares graduate students:
- with fundamental concepts as well as practical knowledge of modern engineering,
- for immediate engineering challenges and scholarly or professional advancement, and
- with an understanding of professional and ethical responsibilities, including economic, environmental, and societal aspects.
The Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering is a thesis path or project path program that requires the completion of 30 or 36 semester hours of graduate work.
Research laboratories are available for work in robotics and automation, intelligent systems and controls, composite materials and structures; additive manufacturing and smart systems; computer aided engineering design. Excellent computer facilities are available.
Mechanical Engineering deals with power and the design of machines and processes used to generate power and to apply it to useful purposes. These machines and system/process designs may be simple or complex, inexpensive or expensive, luxuries or essentials. Items such as kitchen food mixer, the automobile, heating/air-conditioning systems, nuclear power plants, practical autonomous and teleoperated robotics, and interplanetary space vehicles would not be available today were it not for the mechanical engineer. Important areas in which mechanical engineers work at this time also have to do with the use of solar, wind, and tidal energy and of cogeneration from wastes for domestic and industrial uses.