Professional Master's in Applied Systems Engineering (Online) - Student Resources

INCOSE is a not-for-profit membership organization designed to connect systems engineering professionals with educational, networking and career-advancement opportunities in the interest of developing the global community of systems engineers and systems approaches to problems.

Yes, INCOSE offers three levels of Systems Engineering Professional (SEP) certification to formally recognize individuals’ progress through their career—as they develop and apply systems engineering knowledge and practices. The levels of certification include the following:

1. Associate Systems Engineering Professional (ASEP) certification is for people at the beginning of their career as a systems engineer. The ASEP has “book knowledge” but not yet significant experience as a systems engineer.
2. Certified Systems Engineering Professional (CSEP) certification is for practicing Systems Engineers with more than five years of SE professional work experience.
3. Expert Systems Engineering Professional (ESEP) is for SE leaders with substantial experience, technical leadership and recognized systems accomplishments, with at least 20 years of SEP work experience.

INCOSE approved an equivalency for the PMASE degree based on the determination that the PMASE curriculum provides students the academic equivalency of the INCOSE knowledge exam. Students that graduate with a B grade or higher (scoring 80% or more in ASE 6001 or the Supplemental Assessment, and ASE 6104) can bypass the INCOSE certification exam, apply for INCOSE membership and pursue certification post-graduation. 

As you likely know, employers greatly value INCOSE Certification. Many include it in job listings and encourage their employees to become certified. It gives them confidence in employees’ understanding of SE terminology, as the certification is based on the INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook, a primary reference book for SE practitioners.

INCOSE members receive access to the INCOSE handbook and other helpful content, including webinars, articles and tutorials (view this table of content available to INCOSE members). Also, members can collaborate and engage with a network of more than 18,000 professionals with similar interests. Read the INCOSE membership FAQs to learn more.

Georgia Tech is a member of the INCOSE Corporate Advisory Board (CAB). This is good news for you! While you are a student in the PMASE program, you can create a free CAB Associate account and get access to the INCOSE Systems Engineering Handbook and other content produced by INCOSE members.

After obtaining CAB Associate membership, INCOSE will assign you an ID, which you will then share with the PMASE program. Once we verify your eligibility, we will share your information with INCOSE, and after graduation they will invite you to apply for individual membership and certification. 

CAB Associate membership provides access to the INCOSE Handbook and content (including webinars, the Professional Development Portal, eNewsletters, selected technical products and more). Associate members also receive a discount on the individual membership application fee and certification.

Individual membership is required for certification. It includes all associate member benefits, along with access to discounts for INCOSE events, hardcopy products, tutorials and presentations, as well as the option to join a chapter.

INCOSE will provide you with details on individual membership rates for CAB Associate members after graduation.

You will need to apply for INCOSE Certification within 12 months of graduating. After 12 months, you’ll need to take the exam to meet the knowledge requirement for ASEP or CSEP certification.

No, you will need to take the exam. INCOSE certification via academic equivalency is only available for PMASE graduates in 2024 and beyond.

Students must be enrolled three-fourths to full-time to be eligible for INCOSE student membership. The PMASE program is part-time. Student members are not eligible for certification.

BuzzPort is Georgia Tech’s primary student portal designed to help you interact with Georgia Tech services and campus colleagues. You can use this portal to track your financial aid application, transfer credit evaluations, and to stay in touch with offices on campus.  

Canvas is the new learning management system (LMS) used by Georgia Tech for online courses. All classroom lectures will be captured, edited, and posted on Canvas for students to view. You’ll also be able to access your course syllabus, course content, assignments, and grades through this cloud-based platform.

DegreeWorks provides a comprehensive set of web-based academic advising, degree audit, and transfer articulation tools to help you and advisors negotiate curriculum requirements. 

Students use the OSCAR portal to access their schedule of classes and other content in the Student Information System (SIS). 

All online master’s students are given access to a Georgia Tech email address. Visit Passport to set up or change your Georgia Tech email address. Once your email is activated, you can access your email online at mail.gatech.edu and will use the same username and password for all Georgia Tech accounts. 

Students enrolled in Georgia Tech online courses have free access to Microsoft Office 365, a collection of services that allow you to collaborate and share your schoolwork. The service includes Office Online (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote), unlimited personal cloud storage, and SharePoint sites. To see what’s included, visit the Office 365 Education product page, and then sign up with your Georgia Tech email address. 

You may use Microsoft Teams, an application within the Office 365 online suite, to communicate with other students within the program. Teams is a hub for teamwork, a chat-based workspace that enables teams to be more productive by giving them a single and secure location that brings together everything a team needs: chats, meetings, calls, files, and tools. You can manage and monitor all features in one centralized portal in a digital workspace.

Teams is available on Desktop, Tablet, Browsers, Windows/OS X, iPhone, Droid, Edge, Chrome, Safari.

Learn more on how to access your account here.

Zoom is the interactive, online meeting tool you will use to join live sessions and collaborate with your colleagues. All Georgia Tech students have free Zoom accounts. 

For more details, visit https://gatech.zoom.us/. At the bottom of that webpage are links to help you get started, download the Zoom client, and access support if you need it.

Canvas is Georgia Tech’s learning management platform. This is where students access syllabi, course materials, course schedules, and collaborate with other students. For additional information, review the support articles and videos here.

All students are required to comply with the Academic Honor Code and are strongly encouraged to seek a full understanding of their instructors’ expectations regarding academic honor. 

Anyone who is qualified is welcome to seek admission to Georgia Tech, and anyone who applies for and accepts admission can be confident that the policy and regular practice of the Institute will not discriminate against him or her on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin. The criteria used in determining each applicant’s eligibility for consideration can be found in the admission requirements. 

A student may not apply for transfer credit until after matriculation at Georgia Tech. The courses to be transferred would typically be those appearing on the approved program of study form for the master’s degree. A doctoral student normally does not request transfer credit. The rules relative to and the process for obtaining transfer of credit for graduate-level courses can be found on the Registrar’s website. 

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the privacy of student education records. All rights can be found on the Registrar’s website. 

We know students face various challenges and demands on their time during the academic semester. If a student needs to step away from their studies at any time, they can do so by dropping or withdrawing from current courses. Students considering stepping away will need to coordinate this with their academic advisor.

All payments of tuition and fees are handled by the Bursar’s office. For instructions on how to pay, please visit the student payment portal.   

The Georgia Tech Bursar’s Office processes refunds via EFT, also known as Direct Deposit, Monday through Friday. Refunds and overpayments are electronically disbursed to the student’s checking or savings account and should be in the students account on the following day or sooner. You are not always eligible for a refund when dropping a course, so please read over the refund policy. 

Form Factor: Notebook (A netbook or tablet should not be used as the primary computing device*). A minimum of 4 hours of battery life is recommended.

Processor: 64 bit Multi-core processor or better. **

Memory: 8 GB or more. For best performance, we recommend that you install as much memory as affordable at the time of purchase.

Operating System: The recommend operating systems are Windows 10 or Mac OS X (10.11.14)

Browser:  The recommended browsers for web-based browsing would be the latest version of Internet Explorer/Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.

Primary Hard Drive:  500GB minimum. The larger the better as you may work with large datasets. Solid-state drives (SSDs) are recommended as they are much faster than hard disk drives (HDDs).

Backup Device or Service:  For local backup, an external hard drive with double the size of the internal hard drive or a subscription to a cloud based backup solution like Dropbox or OneDrive is needed. Having a quality backup of your important files is vital to your success as a student. While external drives are acceptable forms of backup, cloud based solutions are also an excellent alternative.  A quality backup service will run continuously as you work and will back up your documents to a cloud based storage location. Even if your laptop becomes unavailable due to loss, theft, or physical failure, the files will have been saved and are fully recoverable. The cloud-based backup will be accessible from any computer with an Internet connection.

Networking:  Dual-Band (2.4 GHz/5 GHz) Wireless 802.11n capable.

System options:  Webcam and microphone are needed in order to communicate effectively with faculty and classmates during live sessions and group work.

*Note that most netbooks and tablets (e.g. Apple iPad, Galaxy Tab and others that run on an operating system designed specifically for the device) do NOT meet the minimum hardware requirements above. While they may initially provide sufficient performance for basic tasks such as web browsing or simple word processing, use of technical software in courses may not be possible.

**The use of VLAB (a Virtual Lab that provides GT students a way to access 'virtual machines' on campus and use software such as MATLAB and AutoCAD from any computer with Internet access) does not diminish these requirements. Your system will still need to independently support the required software, as you will have access to install a subset of the software locally to your notebook.

Office of Information Technology (OIT) strives to offer the necessary tools for students to accomplish collaboration, research, scholarship, and innovation.  

IT Resources for online master’s students 

For generation information visits oit.gatech.edu or contact them at: 

Office of Information Technology 
Phone: 404-894-7173 
Email: support@oit.gatech.edu