Kai Nip

The School of Management announced a new master’s program in technology management on Tuesday morning. 

The program, which starts in fall 2024, will provide students with a Master of Management Studies degree. The program will only accept applications from undergraduate students who have studied engineering — or those who have “sufficient preparation for advanced engineering” courses — and either will graduate in spring 2024 or have graduated in the last three years. 

The collaboration between SEAS and SOM aims to bring together the resources of the two schools and prepare students to be “leaders in the fast-changing and widely influential domain where technology and business meet,” per the announcement. 

“Humankind’s greatest achievements have always been not feats of just technology, or just management, but marriages of the two,” Kyle Jensen, Associate Dean for Entrepreneurship and one of the main coordinators of the program, wrote to the News. “An ill-organized team of engineers could no more change the world than could a team of MBAs bereft of technology. But, when science and engineering is paired with leadership and management, wonderful things are possible.”

In this morning’s, Jeffrey Brock, dean of SEAS, explained that the program will combine technical training from a SEAS degree with the resources and networks of SOM.

According to Edieal Pinker, Deputy Dean for Strategy and co-organizer of the program, the new Technology Management master’s degree was jointly conceived by the leadership of both SOM and SEAS.

“Details were developed and approved by the SOM faculty with continuous dialog with SEAS deputy dean Vincent Wilczynski,” Pinker wrote to the News. “SOM has many collaborations with other academic units at Yale and this program creates yet another connection point and a basis for further developing our relationship with SEAS.”

To cultivate students’ management skills and technological knowledge, the program includes a variety of courses from both the SOM and SEAS on innovation, design, entrepreneurship, advanced engineering and finance, and students are required to take 36 credits over the year-long program.

Some of the courses offered for the master’s include “Principles of entrepreneurship,” “Advanced theories and application of design” and “Foundations of Accounting and Valuation.”

Vineet Kumar, professor of marketing at the School of Management, will teach “AI Strategy & Marketing” and “Digital Strategy” as a part of the program. 

“There is a lot of intersection between technology and business, and I think the intersection is only growing over time,” Kumar said. “And we need to have expertise. People who study that both from an engineering perspective or technology perspective, but also from a social and societal perspective.”

Career development is also a focus of the program.

In an email to the News, Jensen wrote that the curriculum will help students better prepare for leadership roles in technological organizations and in effect broaden their career choices. Students in the program will also work with SOM faculty and the SOM Career Development Office to find internships the summer before classes begin.

Joshua Rodriguez ’26, who is majoring in mechanical engineering, told the News that he is interested in how the program incorporates business with engineering and how that might influence a student’s future career. 

“It’s definitely interesting for someone looking at startups and entrepreneurship in engineering, but I do wonder how it would be treated in industry, whether it could be useful when trying to climb the management position in a well-established engineering company,” Rodriguez said.

The application for the program will become available this fall.