No longer can engineers get by on yesterday's technical excellence. Today's engineer must be able to work effectively with competing groups, take a lead role when necessary, win the fight for scarce resources, and understand how his or her efforts can translate into improving productivity, quality, and financial results. Tomorrow, getting down to business will mean that an engineer must learn how to work effectively with other functional groups and then integrate and interconnect his or her efforts with the broad-based aspects of managing the business, while it making daily course corrections to be more responsive to customer needs. Although top-notch technical skills continue to be required, the demand for frequent demonstrations of management skills is expanding. Prerequisites include an undergraduate degree and eight years of supervisory experience.
Course work integrates theories from text and discussions into applied work implementations.
Instead, they can concentrate on developing and applying general systems skills. This is important because in General Systems Theory, everything is connected to everything else. When participants take a broad, non-functional perspective, opportunities for individual and organizational improvement that were otherwise hidden become more evident. The St. Thomas IMBA program also recognizes that some people, particularly those with younger families, do not have time to participate in the regular program. Thus the university offers an extended course that allows participants to take as few as two courses a year, a feature especially helpful to single parents.