A new degree program in industrial engineering — one the fastest-growing engineering fields and the only program of its kind in 鶹ӳ — launched this fall and already is attracting student interest.
Students like Dylan Graf, a freshman from Oregon whose interests range from track and field and photography to engineering. Like many first-year students, she wasn’t sure what degree program to pick, but a meeting with Engineering advisor Hadia Kalsoon got her thinking about industrial engineering.
Industrial engineering optimizes processes, systems and resources for maximum efficiency and effectiveness, and is utilized across all types of industries, from manufacturing to health care to transportation and entertainment. The retail, energy, automotive, aerospace, finance and construction sectors also employ industrial engineers.
Graf said she isn’t sure what she wants to do after college but hopes to fine-tune her career plans in the coming years.
“I would love to be able to see what opportunities are out there,” she said.
What do industrial engineers actually do?
In 鶹ӳ, where the manufacturing industry grew 68% from 2014 to 2024 according to the Governor’s Office of Economic Development Q2 2024 report, many of the opportunities will be in manufacturing, particularly in the mining and aerospace industries.
Those would be mid-level jobs requiring four- or six-year degrees that involve plant layout and design, said Tom Simpkins, director of Manufacture 鶹ӳ, a program embedded within the 鶹ӳ Research & Innovation unit with the purpose of supporting 鶹ӳ’s growing manufacturing ecosystem. Those types of jobs could involve designing facilities and improving processes as well as analyzing how workers interact with machines and materials. It could involve automation and robotics, Simpkins added — “where is robotics really deployed? In manufacturing” — as well as managing supply chains, the networks that move a product or service from the initial stage to the consumer.
“As manufacturing continues to grow in our state,” Simpkins said, “we need to create a talent pipeline to fulfill that potential.”
Hugh Broadhurst, general manager of Lithium Americas, a North American lithium company developing the Thacker Pass project in 鶹ӳ’s Humboldt County, echoed that sentiment.
“We’re thrilled this program is being launched at UNR,” he said.
Broadhurst was one of several industry executives who provided input on the new program at the College of Engineering’s Industrial Engineering Forum in March. He also is serving on the steering committee for the new program.
Lithium Americas plans to start lithium mining and processing operations at Thacker Pass in Humboldt County in the second half of 2027, Broadhurst said, and will be hiring industrial engineers. While the Thacker Pass project is mainly a chemical plant, Broadhurst said industrial engineers will be needed to handle such functions as discrete event modeling (a method to simulate the operation of a system as discrete sequence of events in time) and stochastic modeling (a computational approach used to model systems of processes that involve randomness or uncertainty.)
In addition to manufacturing, industrial engineers also can be found in the entertainment and the transportation industries, Michael Riley, emeritus professor of Industrial & Management Systems Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said. He cited Disney, which moves large numbers of people around its theme parks and resorts, as “one of the greatest employers of IEs.” Airlines are another type of business that utilize industrial engineers to calculate factors such as load planning as well as scheduling and routing to ensure maximum efficiency.
Riley, who also attended the Industrial Engineering Forum in March, added that industrial engineering is different from other engineering disciplines in that it focuses on humans as well as technical aspects of systems.
“Humans are not as predictable as machines,” he said. But they still are part of the overall processes and systems that keep society running.
National need
At the 鶹ӳ, Industrial Engineering organizes under the College of Engineering’s Department of Chemical & Materials Engineering.
This is the only bachelor’s degree program for industrial engineering in 鶹ӳ, according to the University’s Academic Program Proposal Form submitted to the 鶹ӳ System of Higher Education in August 2023. The proposal also cited U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data: employment of industrial engineers is projected to grow 10% from 2021 to 2031; and about 22,400 openings for industrial engineers are projected each year, on average, over the decade.
