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Online Courses

The College of Engineering offers fully online degrees and certificate programs through Penn State World Campus. To learn more about these programs and courses, visit our degree programs page.

Online classes are also offered outside of World Campus degree programs to meet the needs of resident students and students from other institutions. Students can consult the schedule of classes in LionPath for a full list of online courses.

If you are not sure when and how to register for classes, consult the Registration Timetable and Registration Instructions.

The classes listed below are those most commonly offered by the College of Engineering in the summer. Students from other institutions can use this list to provide course descriptions and syllabi if your institution requires it for transfer credit approval. If you are interested in taking a course that is not on the list below, contact the instructor listed in LionPath for more information.

Aerospace Engineering

AERSP 309: Astronautics
Introduction to space and space flight; laws of particle mechanics; orbits and trajectories; space vehicles and propulsion.
Description | Sample Syllabus

Architectural Engineering

AE 308: Introduction to Structural Analysis
Algebraic and graphical methods of analysis of determinate members, deflections; introduction to indeterminate analysis methods. Course includes practicums.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

AE 531: Legal Aspects of Engineering and Construction
Basic legal doctrines, contractual relationships between parties, analysis of construction contract clauses, contract performance, and professional practice problems.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

AE 579: Sustainable Building Project Leadership
Examines leadership skill sets, team competencies, and strategic methods for leading sustainable building construction projects and retrofits.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

Civil Engineering

CE 321: Highway Engineering
Highway engineering principles, vehicle and driver characteristics; geometric and pavement design; highway drainage; traffic engineering, capacity analysis, and signal timing.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CE 332: Professionalism, Economics & Construction Project Delivery
Introduction to engineering management process; economic analysis; pricing; contract documents; estimating; ethics; professional practice and engineering economy.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CE 335: Engineering Mechanics of Soils
Soil compositions, classification, subsurface exploration, ground water flow, stress analysis, compaction, soil behavior, bearing capacity, lateral earth pressure, slope stability.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CE 336: Materials Science for Civil Engineers
Introduction to civil engineering materials; their structure and behavior: relationship between structure and behavior.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CE 340: Structural Analysis
Analysis of statically determinate and indeterminate trusses, beams, and frames; reactions, axial forces, shears, moments, deflections. Introduction to influence lines.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CE 341: Design of Concrete Structures
Design of reinforced concrete beams, slabs, and columns, with emphasis on ultimate-strength methods; prestressed concrete; building and bridge applications.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CE 342: Design of Steel Structures
Design of steel tension members, beams, columns, beam-columns, and connections; elastic and plastic methods; design applications.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CE 360: Fluid Mechanics
Mechanics of fluids; flow in conduits and around bodies, friction and energy loss, fluid measurements.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CE 370: Introduction to Environmental Engineering
Nature and scope of environmental issues; air, water, land impacts; fundamentals and processes of pollution control.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CE 476: Solid and Hazardous Wastes
With industrialization, humans have produced a variety of solid and hazardous wastes that have negatively impacted ecosystems and human health around the world.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

Chemical Engineering

CHE 220: Introduction to Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics
This is the introductory course in chemical engineering thermodynamics and is normally scheduled in the sophomore year.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CHE 320: Phase and Chemical Equilibria
This is the second course in chemical engineering thermodynamics and leads to the study of separations and reacting systems.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CHE 450: Process Dynamics and Control
Analysis of time-dependent variables in chemical process plants; reactor design and control; computer applications.
Description | Sample Syllabus

Computer Engineering

CMPEN 331: Computer Organization and Design
Introduction to major components of a computer system, how they function together in executing a program, and how they are designed.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CMPEN 454: Fundamentals of Computer Vision
Introduction to topics such as image formation, segmentation, feature extraction, matching, shape recovery, object recognition, and dynamic scene analysis.
Description | Sample Syllabus

Computer Science

CMPSC 101: Introduction to Programming
This course introduces the fundamental concepts and processes of solving computational problems through the design, implementation, testing, and evaluation of basic computer programs.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CMPSC 131: Programming and Computation I: Fundamentals
This course introduces the fundamental concepts and processes of solving computational problems through the design, implementation, testing and evaluation of efficient and robust computer programs.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CMPSC 132: Programming and Computation II: Data Structures
This course builds upon the foundations of programming and computation by introducing and studying the data structures and programming language features that support the design and construction of large-scale software systems.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CMPSC 200: Programming for Engineers with MATLAB
This course introduces basic programming concepts including algorithm development, simple data types, number representation, control structures, functions, plotting, and basic numerical analysis techniques, all in the context of science and engineering.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CMPSC 201: Programming for Engineers with C++
Development and implementation of algorithms in a procedure-oriented language, with emphasis on numerical methods for engineering problems.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CMPSC 221: Object Oriented Programming with Web-Based Applications
The course covers advanced object-oriented principles and their application to web-based, net-centric computing.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CMPSC 311: Introduction to Systems Programming
Unix system programming in C; organization of programs and data; program analysis and support tools; software standards; common system functions.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CMPSC 360: Discrete Mathematics for Computer Science
Discrete mathematics and foundations for modern computer science. Topics include sets, relations, logic, algorithms, graphs, finite state machines and regular expressions.
Description | Sample Syllabus

CMPSC 451: Numerical Computations
Algorithms for interpolation, approximation, integration, nonlinear equations, linear systems, fast Fourier transform, and differential equations emphasizing computational properties and implementation.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CMPSC 465: Data Structures and Algorithms
Fundamental concepts of computer science: data structures, analysis of algorithms, recursion, trees, sets, graphs, sorting.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

CMPSC 473: Operating Systems Design & Construction
Design and implementation of computer operating systems; management of various system resources: processes, memory, processors, files, input/output devices.
Description | Sample Syllabus

Computer Science and Engineering

CSE 820: Software & Hardware Project Management
Students study the theory and practice of hardware and software project management.
Description | Sample Syllabus

Electrical Engineering

EE 211: Electrical Circuits and Power Distribution
D.C. and A.C. circuits, transformers, single and three-phase distribution systems, A.C. motors and generators.
Description | Sample Syllabus

EE 212: Introduction to Electronic Measuring Systems
Electronic devices and characteristics, amplifiers and feedback, electronic instruments and recording systems. Designed for non-electrical engineering students.
Description | Sample Syllabus

EE 454: Fundamentals of Computer Vision 
Introduction to topics such as image formation, segmentation, feature extraction, matching, shape recovery, object recognition, and dynamic scene analysis.
Description | Sample Syllabus

Engineering

ENGR 111: Introduction to Cross-Cultural Communication for Engineers
Introduction to theoretical approaches and practical applications of intercultural communications for engineering students.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

ENGR 310: Entrepreneurial Leadership
This course develops leadership and entrepreneurial skills using collaborative, problem-based projects, with engineering and business students working in teams.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

ENGR 408: Leadership Principles
A project-based exploration of theories and principles of engineering leadership applicable to technical careers.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

ENGR 409: Leadership in Organizations
Development of leadership skills essential for engineers to guide colleagues or an organization in a productive direction.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

ENGR 411: Entrepreneurship Business Basics
Three critical entrepreneurship skills are covered for non-business majors: business finance, intellectual property, and marketing.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

ENGR 425: New Venture Creation
Via problem-based learning, students define new business ventures to meet current market needs, develop business models, and present to various stakeholders.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

Engineering Mechanics

EMCH 211: Statics
Equilibrium of coplanar force systems; analysis of frames and trusses; noncoplanar force systems; friction; centroids and moments of inertia.
Description | Sample Syllabus

EMCH 212: Dynamics
Motion of a particle; relative motion; kinetics of translation, rotation, and plane motion; work-energy; impulse-momentum.
Description | Sample Syllabus

EMCH 213: Strength of Materials
Axial stress and strain; torsion; stresses in beams; elastic curves and deflection of beams; combined stress; columns.
Description | Sample Syllabus

EMCH 315: Mechanical Response of Engineering Materials
Mechanical response measures and design theories for engineering materials; elastic and plastic response as affected by stress, strain, time, temperature.
Description | Sample Syllabus

EMCH 524A: Mathematical Methods in Engineering
Special functions, boundary value problems, eigenfunctions and eigenvalue problems; applications to engineering systems in mechanics, vibrations, and other fields.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

Industrial Engineering

IE 302: Engineering Economy
Principles and methods for analyzing the economic feasibility of technical alternatives leading to a decision or recommendation.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

IE 305: Product Design, Specification and Measurement
Principles of product design and specifications and methods for product verification.
Description | Sample Syllabus

IE 307: Additive Manufacturing Process and Reverse Engineering 
The study and application of rapid prototyping technologies in design and manufacturing.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

IE 323: Statistical Methods in Industrial Engineering
The study and application of statistics in the solution of engineering problems.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

IE 327: Introduction to Work Design
Job analysis, cognitive and physical considerations in design of work, work measurement.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

IE 408: Cognitive Work Design
Design and evaluation of cognitive work, including the human/computer interface, visual displays, software design, and automated system monitoring, with emphasis on human performance.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

IE 419: Work Design - Productivity and Safety
Methods improvement, physical work design, productivity, work measurement; principles and practice of safety.
Description | Sample Syllabus

IE 424: Process Quality Engineering
Statistical methods for engineering process characterization and improvement. For non-Industrial Engineering majors.
Description | Sample Syllabus

IE 425: Stochastic Models in Operations Research
This course will be an introduction to the modeling of stochastic systems.
Description | Sample Syllabus

IE 433: Regression Analysis and Design of Experiments
Theory and Application of Regression Analysis and Design of Experiments to build models and optimize process and product parameters.
Description | Sample Syllabus

IE 552: Mechanics of the Musculosketetal System
Structure and biomechanics of bone, cartilage, and skeletal muscle; dynamics and control of musculoskeletal system models.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

Mechanical Engineering

ME 201: Introduction to Thermal Science
Application of the basic concepts of thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and heat transfer to the solution of engineering problems.
Description | Sample Syllabus

ME 300: Engineering Thermodynamics I
Basic thermodynamics concepts, properties of pure substances, first and second law analysis of systems and control volumes.
Description | Sample Syllabus

ME 320: Fluid Flow
This course is an introduction to fluid mechanics, and emphasizes fundamental concepts and problem-solving techniques.
Description | Sample Syllabus

ME 360: Mechanical Design
Specification of components such as shafts, bearings, and power transformers; optimal designs for operational, environmental, and manufacturing requirements.
Description | Sample Syllabus

ME 370: Vibration of Mechanical Systems
Modeling and analysis of vibration characteristics of mechanical systems with single degree and multiple degrees of freedom. Vibration control by isolation, absorption and balancing.
Description | Sample Syllabus

ME 410: Heat Transfer
Thermal energy transfer mechanisms: conduction (steady, transient), convection (internal, external), radiation; lumped parameter method; heat exchangers; introduction to numerical methods.
Description | Sample Syllabus

ME 423: Introduction to Numerical Methods in Fluid Dynamics
This course provides an introduction to the important and growing field of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).
Description | Sample Syllabus

ME 450: Modeling of Dynamic Systems
Modeling and analysis of dynamic interactions in engineering systems. Classical and state variable methods; digital simulation; stability and dynamic response.
Description | Sample Syllabus

ME 461: Finite Elements in Engineering
Computer modeling and fundamental analysis of solid, fluid, and heat flow problems using existing computer codes.
Description | Sample Syllabus

ME 564: Elastic and Dynamic Stability of Structures
An introduction to the concept and analysis methods of structural stability; structures under static/dynamic loading and high speed conditions.
Description | Sample Syllabus (coming soon)

 

 
 

OFFICE FOR DIGITAL LEARNING

The Office for Digital Learning in the College of Engineering supports engineers in lifelong learning - the process of acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to remain current in a chosen field. In today's rapidly-changing, knowledge-based economy, engineers must devote the time and effort to learn new skills and technologies in order to add value for their employers and clients and to remain personally marketable.

Office for Digital Learning

College of Engineering

301-A Engineering Unit C

Penn State University

University Park, PA 16802

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