Distance Learning Tools Link Project Management Students
Project managers are core to the engineering and construction workforce, but they face new pressures as jobs grow more complex, workloads boom and veteran managers retire. In what could be a unique partnership, Parsons Corp., Pasadena, Calif., and Texas A&M University, College Station, are using the collective strengths of their employees and students, linked through virtual technology, to forge a master’s level project management degree program that also includes broader, nonengineering skills.
The program will graduate its first class next May and is the result of a linkage between Parsons and A&M’s departments of civil engineering and industrial/systems engineering, both units of its Dwight Look College of Engineering. “There are very few project management programs out there, and many are not in engineering,” says the program’s catalyst, John A. Scott, Parsons’ president and chief operating officer, who also is an Aggie graduate-level industrial engineer.