Officials will start reviewing applications today for Northwestern’s first master’s degree program in product development, which creators say will give about 30 mid-career professionals a chance to study the emerging academic field.
The two-year program in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science has received about 65 applications, said Lindsay Currie, associate director of the program.
Unlike the science and math base of most McCormick classes, product development focuses on the process of a creating a product and offers a range of courses on topics such as materials, communications and operational behavior.
“Product development starts right from the very kernel of an idea for a product all the way to bringing a product to market,” said mechanical engineering Prof. Richard Lueptow, co-director of the program.
“The masters in product development is quite different in that it focuses on issues like innovation and creativity, understanding what the consumer wants and needs and making sure the design is appropriate,” he said.
Mid-career workers will benefit more from the course because they can place the information learned into the context of their professional experiences, Lueptow said.
Applicants are required to have a minimum of three years of professional experience and must submit a portfolio of projects on which they have worked.
“One person gave us a portfolio that had 55 patents in it,” Lueptow said.
McCormick hired Currie specifically to help develop the program.
Curie said it is important to have a diverse group of students and classes because product development often requires workers to dip into fields with which they might not be familiar.
“Maybe they do statistics on a daily basis, or maybe they do a lot of marketing, but they don’t have very formal education,” Currie said. “This program will help them do that.”
The students will take all 22 classes together, which Lueptow said will help them learn from each other.
“It provides a lot of learning between the students, with one of the best aspects being the students all have a lot of experience in product development, but in a lot of different areas,” Lueptow said.
About six adjunct professors will be hired to each teach a specialized class, Currie said. All the new courses are being developed for the program.
Since product development is an emerging academic field, Lueptow said it would be difficult to say how the degree would help students advance once they return to the workplace.
Businesses with whom McCormick workers discussed the program while were enthusiastic about it, he said.
One business asked McCormick to reserve three spaces for its workers to enroll, Lueptow said.
“It’s not like an M.B.A., where you can say ‘You finish this program, you expect to make this much more,'” he said.
“What we do expect is that the students trained in this program will become product managers and vice presidents for research,” Lueptow added.
