Technology management Ph.D. approved at PSU
The State Board of Higher Education approved funding for a new Ph.D. program in technology management at Portland State during its July 14 meeting, with classes beginning fall term.
Dundar F. Kocaoglu, chairman of the Department of Engineering and Technology, said the program will be most helpful to students who are already working in the field of technology management. Kocaoglu said the new program will strengthen the relationships within the technology community that Portland State already has.
”The push was coming more from applicants in the [technology] industry than just us,” said Tim Anderson, a professor who will teach classes for the program this coming fall.
The department is expecting the program to be filled partly by students who already attend PSU and partly by students who are working at one of the local technology firms, according to Anderson. Half of the students are expected to come from abroad.
”There is a huge demand for the program, both in Oregon and in the 30-40 countries from which our students come,” Kocaoglu said.
The cost of adding the program to the School of Engineering and Science Technology will be minimal. “We already have all the courses and research activities needed for the new program, and there is no additional cost involved,” Kocaoglu said. “The only cost will be the GSA [General Services Administration] support for the additional Ph.D. students that we anticipate for the new program.”
”We will all be working harder, but I don’t think that’s a cost anyone will ever see,” Anderson said. “It will add more value to PSU than cost,” said Torgul Diem, a professor who will teach some of the classes. Diem worked at Intel for 10 years while completing his own Ph.D. at PSU.
The technology department already has a strong relationship with many technology firms in the Portland area. “It is unavoidable, so we work together,” Diem said. “We developed the courses to meet the need in the industry.”
Although the possibility for a Ph.D. program has been in the works for a few years, it has never coalesced into a reality until now.
”We have reached critical mass,” Anderson said. “We were too small then, and had not been established. Now we offer the leading conference in the world on technology management.”
The Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology Conference occurred July 8 ?” 13 and was hosted by the PSU Technology Department. This year’s conference was held in Istanbul, Turkey, and has taken place in numerous countries over the course of the last few years.
Currently, there are only 200 programs in the world that offer courses in technology management, and few at the graduate level, according to Anderson.
”It is a rapidly growing field,” he said. Kocaoglu said there was not as great of a demand for the degree 10 years ago as there is today.
”It is following an explosive growth curve now because of the large number of universities starting graduate degree programs in technology management and many of them looking to us to provide guidance and qualified professors to them,” he said.
Many of the classes will take place once a week and late in the day, after 5:30 p.m. “We asked students what they wanted,” Anderson said, “and they only wanted to have to park once a week and drive down the Sunset Highway once.”
The department currently offers classes at the masters level in Washington County, closer to many of the technology firms in the region that students work at and live near. PSU rents a small office, where students can take classes without having to commute to campus.
”The new program will strengthen the relationships that we already have.” Kocaoglu said.
