Partnership Offers Reliability Education Opportunities for NASA Workforce

The Reliability Engineering program of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland and the NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA) have established a partnership that will provide enhanced educational opportunities for the NASA workforce (civil servant and contractors) in the areas of system safety, risk assessment, and reliability analysis. Under this agreement NASA employees and contractors, subject to meeting admissions requirements, will be able to take certain courses towards a Graduate Certificate of Engineering in Risk and Reliability or a Master of Engineering or Master of Science Degree in Reliability Engineering with a concentration in Risk Analysis or Reliability Engineering.

The partnership was developed due to NASA’s increased use of quantitative risk and reliability assessment, and the subsequent need to train more qualified risk and reliability assessment analysts.

The Reliability Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Maryland is the world’s largest and most comprehensive concentration of education and research activities in risk, reliability and safety of engineered systems and processes. With 21 full time, adjunct, and affiliate faculty, it offers 30 Graduate Courses in diverse areas of risk, reliability and safety. Many of the Reliability Engineering faculty have extensive experience in supporting NASA in various safety, risk and reliability projects.

The courses will be offered by 2006 during the regular semesters in two modes: an on-campus, traditional classroom with audio-visual instructional aids, and through electronic distribution of classroom lectures. In either mode the students are to have full access to the faculty, teaching assistant, and Graduate Students administrative support.

Similar agreements have been signed by the Reliability Program in the past few months with NAVAIR, General Electric Transportation Systems, and the Center for Risk Management of the University of Stavanger in Norway.

Published September 15, 2005