Curriculum

Platform for Success

The Accelerated Master’s Program (AMP) consists of 10 courses that provides students with rigorous curriculum of analytical courses that provide the foundations of data-driven decision-making with the softer business skills critical for effective technology leaders.

The AMP curriculum is divided into 5 conceptual topic modules described below.

Systems and Design Thinking

  • Provides foundations of systems engineering that will be incorporated into all subsequent courses.
  • Overview of systems engineering as a professional and intellectual discipline relating it to other disciplines, such as operations research, management science, data science, and economics.
  • An introduction to the analysis, design, and evaluation of human-centered systems including topics such as user interface design principles, human cognition, information processing, human perception, and usability testing.

Quantitative Methods

  • Presents the foundations of mathematical modeling and optimization with an emphasis on problem formulation, solution techniques, and decision-making.
  • Develops a practical understanding of probabilistic modelings, such as basic principles, Bernoulli and Poisson processes, and Markov Chains.
  • Core skills from data science are presented, such as linear and logistic regression, data mining, statistical modeling, and machine learning.

Strategic Innovation and Business

  • Examines the critical soft skills needed in business to successfully manage existing products and launch new ones through a practical, case-study-based curriculum.
  • Why do some products succeed while others fail?  This question and many others are considered when examining how to manage products in the modern, technological age by balancing the business, technological, and business needs associated with any product.
  • Students also examine the core skills needed to drive innovation internally or externally through a real-world, case study-based course.

Elective Track

  • The vast portfolio of graduate engineering online courses is accessed in the elective track giving students the ability to pursue their own, unique interests.
  • Systems engineering is a discipline with applications across a wide range of industries, and the elective track enables students the flexibility to learn more about topics of interest to them.
  • Topics of interest to students might include smart traffic courses provided by Civil engineering, sustainability offered by Environment engineering, and risk analysis or dynamic programming offered by Systems engineering just to name a few possible options.

Capstone Project

  • The final, culminating class of the program requires students to pull upon all of the classes from the program.
  • Students work in groups with real-world clients on a complex problem the client is currently facing.
  • After an intensive, final week students will present a final report and a briefing to an expert board consisting of personnel from the client, University of Virginia faculty, and industry experts.