Master of Science In Fire Protection
Engineering

Because saving lives is paramount, you will learn about the human dynamics that come into play as well — how people behave in fire events and how to keep smoke and heat at a survivable level while firefighters carry out evacuations.

At the end of the program, you will be qualified to work as a Fire Protection Engineer, a critical member of a multi-disciplinary team of other engineers. You also will be the go-to person for architects, building owners, and developers during the planning and designing stages, helping to determine what materials and fire protection systems to use. After a major fire event, you will be the investigator/analyst who determines what went wrong and why — and how to help ensure it doesn’t happen again.

The program also helps prepare you to take the Fundamental of Engineering Exam ( FE exam) to earn your engineering-in-training ( EIT) license — a prerequisite for becoming a licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) . If you further qualify as a P.E., the breadth of your career opportunities and your earning power will increase dramatically.

Outsmart “smart” buildings

The Internet of Things streamlined and simplified operations for buildings. All the systems that make a building function — heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting, security, fire safety systems, and more — can be digitally connected and controlled. For fire protection engineers the IoT can assist them through early detection and transmitting other critical information — or it can collapse into an epic failure. Think cyber attacks. Add such combustion-prone items as lithium-ion batteries to the mix, along with the plethora of new building codes and safety regulations, and you now have fire safety professionals facing their biggest challenges in history.

Our program’s emphasis on designing, analyzing, and modeling fire protection systems and performing risk analysis for rapidly evolving situations such as smart buildings, manufacturing plants, data centers, laboratories, and energy storage facilities will equip you with the skills to stay one step ahead of the technology that makes buildings hum with efficiency while presenting a potential perfect storm of safety failures.

Learn Fire Protection Engineering the hardcore way. Practice it.

There’s no substitute for rigorous, first-hand experience. Practice is the ultimate teacher, so it’s embedded into the program.

We specifically designed the courses to be experiential and collaborative. For example, you will learn to conduct real fire phenomenon measurements, such as temperature, flame height, smoke density, plume velocity, flame spread, and heat release rate.

A research project, internship, or thesis is the pinnacle of the program and will prepare you to be the leader that employers are looking for, whether your career leads you to the industry or academia.

What makes you a perfect fit for this program

This is a STEM program, and we designed it with three types of graduates in mind:

• those who earned an engineering bachelor’s degree from a college of engineering
• those who earned their bachelor’s degree in fire protection engineering from the Henry C. Lee College
• those with strong math, physics and chemistry skills who earned their bachelor’s in a field such as forensic science or physics