Master of Software Engineering
[Program Requirements] [Sample Schedule]
Software engineering ranks among the best jobs in the country. Indeed.com listed 9 software-engineering related careers among their top 25 jobs in the nation. In a similar repot on the top 15 emerging jobs in the United States, LinkedIn reports that more than half of them are tied to engineering. CNBC, Yahoo Finance and others echo the high salaries and upward mobility of careers accessible to a software engineer.
Software Engineers understand the basic building blocks of software systems and can write high quality software systems that power the world. Software Engineers are creative thinkers, problem-solvers, and leaders who understand the worlds high-tech economy. Software Engineers are leaders who can communicate effectively and manage teams. These skills form the core of our MSE program.
The Master of Software Engineering (MSE) program is focused on teaching advanced state-of-the-art technologies in software development with hands-on experience, and on applying that knowledge to challenging real-world problems. Students will acquire both technical skills and software project management skills that are required to lead and to carry out software development projects. This focus makes it distinct from more traditional Masters programs in Computer Science.
Students must complete 24 credits of coursework and and additional 12 credits of capstone project development. The capstone project is a central part of the MSE degree that gives students experience and skill with cutting-edge technologies that have high marketplace demand. Early in the MSE program, students present a project proposal which must be approved by a faculty review committee. Past projects span a wide range of topics, technologies, and stakeholders. Alumni have developed programs for layering security protocols on top of Bluetooth, creating formal specifications for software systems, generating city maps for fantasy games, extracting data from handwritten forms, a system for automatic detection of traffic objects for self-driving cars and many others.
Several entrepreneurial alumni have commercialized their capstone projects. One student developed a mobile application for managing a large-sized frozen foods warehousing service. This application is currently used to run the day-to-day operations of a multi-million dollar business. Another student developed a personal financial management application that is currently available on Google play. If you are interested in developing commercially viable software, you are encouraged to use the capstone project towards that end.
Students will typically complete this program in a two-year time span.
Dual Degree Program
Students who come to UWL seeking an undergraduate degree in Computer Science are encouraged to consider staying one additional year to obtain both an undergraduate Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science AND a Masters degree in Software Engineering. This program is time and cost effective as it compresses the time to graduation from what is commonly a six-year academic experience into five. Please note that there are two variants of this program; one for the Computer Science major and one for the Computer Science Cybersecurity emphasis major. The program requirements are slightly different for each program.