DEGREES & PROGRAMS Engineering

Gain the technical skills and deep understanding needed to address crucial engineering challenges.

Deeply grounded in the liberal arts, our new engineering program blends a mix of courses in engineering, physics, mathematics, and chemistry. We seek to equip our graduates to find innovative solutions to enduring problems by cultivating collaboration, problem-solving and moral discernment. Increasingly, solutions to local and global challenges require insights from engineers, especially when addressing social mobility, caring for the environment, reducing poverty and promoting human welfare. Our graduates will benefit from thorough technical and scientific training and the interdisciplinary sensitivity and moral imagination of the Christian liberal arts. We've embraced the challenge from the National Science Foundation to prepare adaptive engineers committed to blending science, engineering and the arts. 

A Message from the Director, Dan Jensen

Westmont Engineering is distinctive in many ways. Our program is built around three pillars:

1. Excellence in technical engineering training learned in small classes, focused on hands-on active learning, with professors that are very engaged with their students

2. Integration of Engineering Design and Innovation throughout the curriculum

3. A solid Christian liberal arts foundation

Westmont Engineering grants a General Engineering degree with an emphasis on Mechanical Engineering. The emphasis on Mechanical Engineering provides the largest set of possibilities for specialization, job opportunities and graduate school options. Our curriculum starts with our Christian liberal arts core and then combines a solid math and science foundation with in-depth content in all the critical technical areas of engineering. Our small class sizes (average engineering class size is about 10 students) are taught by Christian faculty who are experts in their fields. The small class sizes provide great opportunities for “learning by doing”, where we emphasize hands-on, design-oriented experiences that make the technical content come to life. In addition, the small classes allow you to really get to know your professors.

Our focus on engineering design and on innovation also distinguishes our program. Design is what differentiates engineering from other technical disciplines. Engineers create (design) products, processes and services to help people. This fits seamlessly into our Christian distinctiveness as we endeavor to love people by designing to help them live better lives. Westmont engineering has multiple courses where Design Innovation (DI) plays a central role. These courses include the first-year class “Engineering and the Liberal Arts”, the “Junior Design” class which focuses on designing to serve others and the 2-semester Senior Capstone Design courses where we work on industry sponsored projects. In addition, the Westmont Engineering curriculum weaves DI throughout the engineering curriculum by including mini design experiences that use the technical content for that course in a design experience.

The Christian liberal arts foundation of our engineering program provides a wonderful base for our engineering graduates to excel in their careers. While engineering practice requires great technical competence, engineering industry is increasingly demanding the thoughtfulness and skill set that a Christian liberal arts emphasis provides. Skills such as leadership, teamwork, conflict management skills, interpersonal skills, empathy and negotiation, as well as written and oral communication skills are seen as critical for successful engineering work.

Westmont Engineering works to integrate our professional endeavors with our faith experience. This is especially true as we creatively design things that help improve people’s lives. As Christian engineers, this aligns with Christ’s command to “love others as ourselves” (Matt. 22:39).  In particular, our junior design course has an emphasis on “designing for service”.

Engineering graduates have tremendous opportunities across a broad range of possibilities. Mechanical Engineers (MEs) have opportunities in industries such as design, energy, sustainability, environmental resources, robotics, automation, vehicle design, aeronautics, space, manufacturing and internet of things (IoT). 

International opportunities are available both during the time at Westmont and after graduation. Opportunities for females and ethnic minorities are especially abundant. In addition to all the engineering-specific highlights of the Westmont Engineering program detailed above, our students have the privilege of living in beautiful Santa Barbara, CA. Living just minutes from both the beach and the mountains is quite a thrill! Being just far enough from Los Angeles to avoid the traffic, but close enough to go enjoy the big city when you want to, is also wonderful.

Westmont Magazine Stories

Designing a Strong and Innovative Engineering Program

Proposed Building to House Engineering