People in today’s workforce often need disciplinary and practical scientific training that goes beyond a bachelor’s degree. And modern industry also demands enhanced management and communication skills of its employees. One increasingly effective solution is the professional master’s degree, which provides a greater level of career-specific education than a bachelor’s degree and imparts valuable expertise in other areas that employers emphasize.

For fall 2002, the Wiess School of Natural Sciences is developing three new professional master’s degree programs: Nanoscale Physics, Energy Exploration, and Environmental Analysis and Decision Making. The degree programs are part of an initiative sponsored by the Sloan Foundation, which has helped institute numerous such programs nationwide.

Prospective students for the Sloan Professional Master’s Degrees will be new B.S. graduates in technical disciplines and personnel working in the industrial sector who want to expand or enhance their career opportunities. Each program will require 21 months for completion and will combine detailed scientific instruction and practical training with teaching of business practices and communication skills. This combination will allow students to move more easily into management careers in the research and development, design, and marketing of new science-based products or into consulting in fields where their technical training is valued. The programs will include courses in leading-edge science and technology; management, in cooperation with the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management; and science policy and ethics, in conjunction with the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Other elements of the program will include exposure to careers, disciplines, and speakers in each focus area; an extended internship to gain practical experience in an industrial setting; writing and presentation coaching by Rice’s Cain Project in Engineering and Professional Communications; and exposure to entrepreneurial development and the business investment communities via the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship.

“Individuals with an educational background in these interdisciplinary areas are very few in number,” says Ken Smith, a distinguished faculty fellow at Rice, executive director of Rice’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the Rice Quantum Institute, and co-founder of Carbon Nanotechnologies, Inc. “Rice University’s idea of combining a rare and highly demanding technical education with a modest exposure to training in business will produce students who are truly unique, and these students will be highly recruited by industry.”

For details on the Sloan Professional Master’s Degree programs, check out http://sloan-pmp.rice.edu.