Our Programs

The electrical engineering programs provides a broad, fundamental education covering topics in electronics, digital systems, communications, and controls — the basics for system design. As an LMU electrical engineering major, you will develop a solid grounding in your technical discipline — and gain from first rate teachers, superb facilities, and strong connection to the industrial, environmental, and scientific organizations of Southern California.

The computer science program prepares graduates for a wide variety careers in many disciplines, including traditional software engineering. Undergraduate courses for the B.S. degree cover the expected core computer science areas of software systems construction, algorithms and data structures, systems programming, theory of computation, programming languages, operating systems, interaction design, computer graphics, database systems, and artificial intelligence. Several courses are taught in the apprenticeship style in laboratory settings, and the open-source culture of team-oriented software development and distribution is embraced. Opportunities for independent study are plentiful. Loyola Marymount University's Computer Science program was one of the first innovators of the undergraduate capstone project in the early 1980s. Such projects are now an expected culmination of a quality curriculum in Computer Science.

The LMU Advantage

No LMU graduate is a narrow specialist. All have experienced the personal growth and enrichment that flows from Loyola Marymount's core curriculum — an appreciation of the arts, sciences, philosophy, religion, and history that have shaped our world and its various cultures. And each has gained perspective from a university context which never loses sight of the moral and ethical values involved in science and technology. This not only develops the broad knowledge base and cultural awareness of an educated person, it also contributes to communication skills and disciplined thinking which have direct value in any intellectual pursuit.

LMU's computer science program provides courses in all major areas of computing and is augmented with mathematics, electrical engineering, science, and core courses. This broad-based education enables graduates to succeed in positions in both graduate school and in the technology industry where communication skills are a primary differentiator between staff workers and leadership roles. The department's strong emphasis on laboratory work and open-source computing practice better prepares its students for the collaborative work environments of the modern economy.

The electrical engineering curriculum's first three semesters are the same as for all engineering majors: engineering problem solving, mathematics, chemistry, and physics provide the common background for an in depth study of the field. In the fourth semester, the study of semiconductors in the materials science course and the electric circuits course provide the basis for the upper division electrical engineering program.

Junior and senior year courses concentrate on the fundamentals in the areas of analog and digital electronics, computers, communications, and systems analysis. Two and three course sequences in these areas provide depth. Four laboratory courses integrate the material from the lecture courses to provide many creative design opportunities for the students. The culmination of the program is the senior design project which simulates what industry expects of new graduates. In this design course, student teams work to define their approaches to the project, collaborate on the actual design, have regular meetings with faculty to present results, build, test, and demonstrate their final design.

Advanced technologies such as digital signal processing, Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) design, microelectronic based designs, and Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based design of digital systems are presented in courses. The department has modern laboratory facilities in the areas of electronics, microprocessors, communications, and VLSI design.

Oral and written communication skills are developed throughout the electrical engineering program, from freshman through senior year. LMU graduates are known for their ability not only to "get the job done" but also to document and communicate their results in a clear, informative manner.