2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Creating a novel Industrial Engineering (IE) program at a local, resource-limited university poses challenges, requiring innovative solutions to deliver high-quality, ABET-aligned IE education to students. Founded in 2025, the University of South Carolina Upstate’s IE program was deliberately designed to leverage the region’s vast automotive and manufacturing base via iterative consultation with local industry partners. Guided by informal industry surveys assessing market demand for local engineering programs, founding program documentation, and structured interviews with founding faculty and industry partners, this study documents the dynamic, practice-oriented development of the program and the creation of a novel “Lab-in-Industry” framework.
Rather than replicating manufacturing processes with academic equipment, USC Upstate elected to embed laboratory experiences directly within partnering industries. Students participated in hands-on, immersive exercises alongside engineers and technicians at facilities such as OP Mobility, Sage Automotive Interiors, and Dräxlmaier. This allowed students to gain practical exposure to production systems, ergonomics, lean operations, and safety practices. Early results and first-cohort qualitative feedback suggest that these engagements strengthen students’ understanding of systems integration and increase the perceived relevance of course content through sustained industry contact.
This paper synthesizes qualitative data from interviews with the program’s founding creators, program proposal materials, and early student reflections, and documents the program’s dynamic development cycle, which implements continuous-improvement principles. The authors discuss lessons learned from building a program that responds to regional workforce needs while maintaining ABET alignment without dedicated campus laboratories, and from scaling experiential learning while preserving educational quality and safety. The USC Upstate model demonstrates how smaller institutions can leverage regional partnerships to establish sustainable, ABET-aligned engineering programs that prepare students for modern industrial practice.