Stop for a minute and look at the world around you. The building where you work; the school you attended; the hospital down the street; the Boston Convention Center where you might have picked up this article. All of those places are facilities and behind the buildings, the rooms, the walls and the doors are facility managers.
Massachusetts Maritime Academy is a state university steeped in tradition dating back to 1891. The reputation of graduating well educated and highly dedicated students took the next step by creating a Master of Science in Facilities Management program. The first MSFM students graduated in 2005 and the academy has been turning out superb facilities managers on a yearly basis since then.
The mission of the MSFM is to give students the knowledge and skills to become creative problem solvers and thus to succeed in a variety of senior facilities management and leadership positions. The program forges home the thought that good ideas are not enough and that implementation is what separates excellence in management and leadership from mediocrity.
The learning outcomes of the facilities management program is to teach graduates how to better manage people, policy, projects, finance, energy, and emergencies. By doing so this provides current and prospective facilities managers with the personal, interpersonal, and group skills necessary to implement creative ideas and thus reduce the gap between good ideas and accepted practices.
Education is the best renewable resource a person can invest in. Our graduates know that and take that resource to power those facilities we use every day.