ISE Department at Lehigh University

PhD Program Requirements

A student graduates with a degree in doctoral of philosophy (Ph.D.) from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) are subject to the following requirements:

Complete a set of core courses.
Declare a primary and a secondary field of study within ISE and complete the associated core requirements.
Declare a minor field of study and complete at least two 400-level courses outside of the ISE department.
Complete a formal end-of-year review for first year students, which includes a qualifier exam.
Satisfy the Ph.D. degree requirements of the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science (refer to Lehigh University Catalog), which includes a formal proposal, general exam, and dissertation defense.

Declaration of Fields and Course Requirements

The general core set of courses for all Ph.D. graduates is:

Math 301 Principles of Analysis I
Math 338/ECO 416 Regression Analysis
IE 429 Stochastic Models
IE 406 Introduction to Mathematical Programming

A student must declare a primary and a secondary field of study in the following areas:

Financial Engineering
Information Systems
Manufacturing, Production and Logistics
Optimization
Stochastic Processes and Applied Statistics

Core requirements for each field of study are located on the following pages, each area is defined by a set of core courses. A student must take at least four courses in his/her declared primary field, and at least two in his/her declared secondary field.

A student may declare a minor field of study outside the ISE department. Subject to approval, the minor fields of study may include Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Economics, Finance, Marketing, Materials Science, Mathematics, and Mechanical Engineering. At least two 400-level courses in the minor department are required to satisfy the minor requirement (may be included in primary/secondary core).

To satisfy the Ph.D. course requirements, a student must take:

The general core courses (4)
Core courses in the primary field of study (4)
Courses in the secondary field of study (2)

As an additional requirement, at least two courses must be taken outside of the ISE department at the 400 level (may be included in core). The minimal Ph.D. course requirements total 10 courses (30 credits). For students that enter Lehigh with an M.S. degree, completion of the degree requires an additional 18 credits (via courses or dissertation), totaling 48 credit hours. For those entering with a B.S. degree, they need to complete an additional 42 credits, totaling 72 credit hours.

Thelists below define the core courses for each major field of study and faculty interested in the area. Regardless of the field of study, at least two courses from the major field must be in IE.