United States' First Electric Car Engineering Graduate Program to Start Up this Fall

It’s a sign of the times that there is enough worldwide demand for electric car engineers that an institution of higher learning can establish a graduate program devoted to the subject.

Although in the last few years programs have sprung up in the United States that offer certificates or minors concentrating on EV engineering, yesterday Wayne State University in Detroit approved what they’re billing as the nation’s first graduate program offering a masters in the subject.

The ‘Electric-Drive Vehicle Engineering Program’ was funded by a $5 million grant made available from the DOE  as part of the stimulus funds. The program was created in response to what WSU sees as an exploding need for electric-drive engineers due to consumer demand for more fuel efficient vehicles and the recently enacted federal CAFE standards — in which manufacturers’ new cars must attain a fleet-wide average of 34.1 mpg by 2016. WSU says that a complex combination of factors have led to a “sense of urgency for electric-drive vehicle education.”

“We see a new era coming and we want to be a player,” said WSU College of Engineering Interim Dean Mumtaz Usmen in a statement. “Armed with this knowledge, our students will be sought after by the OEMs and their suppliers.”

In addition to the Master’s degree in Electric-Drive Vehicle Engineering, the new program, set to launch this fall, includes a bachelor of science in Electric Transportation Technology (another first of its kind in the US) and a graduate certificate program in Electric-Drive Vehicle Engineering. The bachelor’s degree in ETT also offers an interesting hybrid arrangement between WSU and area community colleges, enabling students to enroll at the community college level and get a two year electric vehicle technician associate’s degree, and then complete the bachelor’s degree at WSU after another two years.

The program’s curriculum was developed hand in hand with private industry to best address their needs and ensure that students leaving the program would have the skill set that employers are looking for. In a Detroit News article, Nancy Gioia, Ford’s Director of Global Electrification, said “The program is an outstanding collaborative effort for the universities and the private sector, working together to create new curriculums required to transform our work force for the technologies of the future.”

The program will only be capable of accommodating a couple hundred students at any point in time and will also be open to to engineers seeking to retrain who are either unemployed or still employed but want new options. But if this sounds like it’s right up your alley, act quick; to be considered for the fall semester you need to enroll by July 1st.

Source: Wayne State University

Image Credit: Wayne State University. Dennis Corrigan, professor of research and battery expert, holding nickel metal hydride and cylindrical cells (left) and Prius prismatic cells.

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