Academic Program

As a student in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, you will earn a comprehensive bachelor of science degree that includes extensive hands-on learning, teamwork, technical expertise, and system-level multidisciplinary thinking.

You will develop in-depth technical knowledge, effective communication skills, and a systems engineering perspective that will enable you to produce creative solutions to complex problems. See more on our Curriculum and Course Sequence pages.

Our program also offers a Bachelors-Accelerated-Masters, traditional Master of Science, Professional Master's, and PhD degrees.

We are accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, http://www.abet.org.

In the first year, technical foundations for engineering disciplines are established. In addition to creating a solid math and science foundation, you will also work in teams on first year projects and develop your computing skills.

Sophomore year is when you will begin exploring the core subjects of aerospace engineering. The combination of lecture with experimental and hands-on design labs will provide you the opportunity to explore and gain a broad understanding of aerospace engineering, and will open your eyes to the rigors of the field and the possibility it offers. 

In junior year, you will strengthen your technical skills and knowledge across the core aerospace disciplines. Courses such as aircraft and spacecraft dynamics and control and aerospace electronics, combined with analysis tools and hands-on experiments, teach common practices in the field.

The senior year is defined by a comprehensive, year-long, hands-on capstone design experience conducted in a team environment.

Senior design is a defining experience as you learn the complete design lifecycle of industry projects from conception, to design reviews, development, construction, testing, and analysis of results.

Teams partner with outside corporations or research labs to solve a real-world engineering problems. Current teams are working with organizations including Ball Aerospace, JPL, the Air Force Research Lab, and Aurora Flight Sciences.

Find out more about our senior design projects