The mission of the Mechanical Engineering Department is to provide a high quality, practice-oriented, design-focused curriculum that prepares students for both graduate studies and leadership roles in industry.
Mechanical Engineering is very broad in scope and is pertinent to a variety of engineering activities and products including vehicles for ground, sea, air, and space transportation, power plants, machines, manufacturing systems, structures, and process plants.
The Mechanical Engineering program provides a solid foundation for work in all of these fields. Engineering design is a major emphasis of the curriculum and is supported by modern, well-equipped laboratories. Laboratories include:
- the computer-aided design, engineering and manufacturing laboratory,
- the materials processing and structures laboratory,
- the thermal/fluids laboratory and
- the Engineering Design Center.
The curriculum covers contemporary technology as well as the fundamentals for future technologies. It is designed to prepare students for graduate school as well as for employment in industry.
Students can participate in national design competitions, including the ASME Student Design Competition and the SAE AeroDesign Competition. Students can also participate in the work of the U.S. Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center located on the LMU campus. THE DOE/IAC affords LMU engineering students the opportunity to gain income, academic credit, and professional experience as they perform on-site energy, pollution, and productivity audits for small- and medium-sized manufacturing firms.
The undergraduate program is augmented by graduate programs in Mechanical Engineering and in Systems Engineering. Undergraduate students can take 500-level graduate courses as electives. Parttime faculty of the graduate programs include individuals with worldwide reputations in their fields.