The University of Washington Master of Infrastructure Planning & Management online program gives you the knowledge required to sustain and ensure resiliency of major infrastructure against both man-made and natural disasters. Hear the program director and alumni talk about the innovative curriculum, career opportunities and the convenient online format. Learn more at [ Ссылка ].
Video Transcript:
[Phil]
So, infrastructure's all around us, and it basically falls into various sectors, you know, whether it's energy, food, water, transportation, communications and so on. These are parts of our society that help make it run.
[Barbara]
I mean, we've set up our country in nice silos, and that's done us well for a couple of centuries. This helped us build our industrial prosperity, but now as we interconnect everything, those boundaries are being belied, and so we need to be looking at infrastructure in a different way. We need to look at it as systems, and systems of systems, and they need to be managed in this way.
[Phil]
We started off with an introduction to critical infrastructure protection and strategic planning and things of that nature. So you develop that baseline of knowledge. And then from that, because it is a master's program, you're focused in on specific sectors.
[Barbara]
Students very early on are encouraged to consider specializing in one or more of these infrastructures so that by the time they get to their second year when they start to decide which of these infrastructures they want to study, they'll have a pretty good idea of their priorities.
[Ginger]
People come from all over the place for this degree because they want to study transportation specifically, or they're in the utilities industry, they want to understand water systems.
[Barbara]
Well, we decided that this was a professional degree that somebody would be inclined to take after they'd had some working experience and they realize that they want to gain particular knowledge in infrastructure. It's something that they would do in their off hours, so we've arranged the program to be entirely online.
[Phil]
So, I mean, we've had students that would be in Afghanistan at a forward operating base. You'd have someone who could be in Germany.
[Ginger]
For people who are working, or at a distance in some far-flung place, can't come to Seattle, it's a terrific opportunity.
[Phil]
One of the key attractions of this program to me was just the high caliber quality of the faculty here.
[Barbara]
So we draw faculty from across the University of Washington who are specialists in their particular area, and they come into the program.
[Ginger]
I felt I was working with some of the most seasoned staff that I could imagine. These were people who had years of practical as well as academic experience. Their depth and breadth was amazing. I think they were at the same time, very accessible.
[Barbara]
We've seen people go onto some very interesting career opportunities. When employers look at the degree content and look at what people know, there are interesting opportunities that open up for folks.
[Phil]
In fact, when I was hired as the director of intelligence for Microsoft global security, the individual that hired me specifically hired me because of my MIPM background and that I was a graduate of this program.
[Ginger]
I'm a fan of this program. It opened up opportunities professionally that I would not have otherwise had available to me.
[Phil]
I would absolutely recommend the MIPM to anybody interested in dealing with some of the challenges that our 21st century society has to face.
