Mechanical engineering is one of the broadest engineering disciplines you can enter. A mechanical engineer is involved in making almost anything manmade that you encounter-whether it be the car you drive to work, the potato chips you eat at lunch, or the heating and air-conditioning system that keeps you comfortable at home, an ME helped create it. Thus with an ME degree you can work in a wide spectrum of industries-the aerospace, automotive, bioengineering, communications, food processing, petroleum and product manufacturing industries are just a few. Diversity in work environments goes hand-in-hand with the scope of industries from which you can choose. You might find employment in a small, local company doing highly design-oriented office work, or on the plant floor of a large international firm, working closely with a manufacturing operation. If you become a project manager, you'll take projects from initial conceptualization all the way to production, integrating your technical knowledge with management skills. Whatever your interests may be, you'll have the opportunity to seek the type of work environment in which you're most comfortable. The master of science thesis program consists of a minimum of 30 credit hours, including the following requirements: at least 21 credit hours of lecture courses, at least 6 credit hours of MECH ENG 6099, at least 9 credit hours of lecture courses in the MAE department (of which at least 3 credit hours must be at the 6000-level), at least 3 credit hours of mathematics, statistics, or computer science (AERO ENG 5830/MECH ENG 5830 Applied Computational Methods may be used to satisfy this requirement), and at least 6 credit hours of 6000-level lecture courses. A master of science non-thesis program consists of a minimum of 30 credit hours, including the following requirements: at least 24 credit hours in the MAE department and at least 9 credit hours of 6000-level lecture courses (of which at least 6 credit hours must be in the MAE department). Note that no course below the 5000-level may be applied to the degree requirements.