The field of aerospace is currently experiencing a golden age of flight and space exploration. This rise to popularity in recent years has sprouted boundless opportunities in companies such as NASA and Lockheed Martin. Subsequently, Stevens has decided to meet this overwhelming demand with our very own Aerospace Engineering major for graduate students.
The aerospace engineering curriculum consists of various graduate-level courses that each focus on critical topics within the aerospace industry and beyond, including, but not limited to, advanced fluid mechanics, space system design, and solid mechanics. The program also provides students with opportunities to collaborate alongside well-known names in the aerospace industry such as NASA. To match the growing pace of newly developing technologies within the engineering industry as a whole, the aerospace major has been outfitted with AI electives and hands-on experiences to enrich student expertise and critical thinking.
The major was founded by Assistant Professor Jason Rabinovitch. Professor Rabinovitch is highly experienced in the aerospace industry, having worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). There, he worked on both the Mars Perseverance rover and the Mars Ingenuity helicopter, both of which provided invaluable insight into our Martian neighbor. “It was a great experience, really, to get to work in the aerospace industry,” Rabinovitch says. He often still collaborates with JPL and has just recently completed a summer alongside two Ph.D. students at JPL.
In comparison to some of the more well-renowned aerospace majors such as those of Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and California Institute of Technology, Rabinovitch describes the graduate program as more “mechanically oriented.” “We wanted to cater our program to those who have a mechanical focus or are interested in advancing mechanical engineering fundamental skills within the aerospace kind of realm,” Rabinovitch states. “We wanted to make the classes accessible to someone with a mechanical engineering background.”
But why now? To Professor Rabinovitch, “Aerospace is becoming more and more prevalent, for a while now […] With the growth of the new space industry, kind of the larger role that a lot of aerospace applications are having, be it aeronautics and civilian transport, national security applications, satellites […] It’s everywhere.” He views the immense impact that the aerospace industry has on our world right now as the appropriate time to reveal the aerospace major. Rabinovitch cites additionally that the basis for the aerospace major was present beforehand. “We already have a significant amount of aerospace content at Stevens to begin with. So, it’s kind of like reworking some of our courses and packaging that as an aerospace major.”
He also describes the development timeline for the aerospace program as spanning years, initially beginning as an internal discussion between coworkers. Rabinovitch elaborates that he had often been “working [their] external advisory board to make sure that this level of education, this style of education, and how [they] would develop the program would be useful to students.”
Rabinovitch insists the major’s inception was not a solo endeavor: “The development of this new master’s program was a group effort — the entire Mechanical Engineering Department was very supportive. Professor Chang was instrumental in working through the approval process, and I worked very closely with Professor Parziale on developing the academic content for the program.”
