It is the first minor at the campus to require students to apply as part of a selective admissions process. Taught by the faculty of the Graduate School of Management, the minor will combine business and management skills with the students' knowledge of engineering and science.
"Students taking the minor will learn from leading academics in technology management," said Donald A. Blodger, assistant dean of admissions and student services at the management school. "And, as graduates, they will already be ramped up to contribute where business and technology meet."
Prasad Rampalli, vice president and chief architect of the Architecture and Integration Platform Group at Intel, said today's technology environment is moving faster than ever, with focus on agility, quality, innovation, total-cost management, and supply-chain management and integration.
"I feel this minor will give that extra edge to potential job candidates in the high-tech field -- allowing the candidates to demonstrate both depth in their discipline, as well as the critical ability to drive practical application of these concepts in the real world," Rampalli said, who is a member of the dean's advisory council at the management school.
Professor Nicole Woolsey Biggart, who holds the management school's Suran Chair in Technology Management, is among the faculty who will teach the minor.
"In the industrial era, technology management was primarily concerned with machine technology and how to make it efficient," she said. "But today, technology is at least as much about the generation and management of knowledge. Profits come increasingly from new ideas and processes."
Woolsey Biggart said the minor will introduce students to current thinking about innovation in firms.
