New dual degree pairs industrial engineering with business

By Mel Tenkoff 11-06-2026

When Sofia Pastor began applying to colleges, she faced a choice she didn't want to make. Her mother is an engineer. Her father works in finance. She was interested in pursuing both disciplines, not just one, but college applications forced her to pick one path.

But at the University of Miami, she wouldn't have to choose.

The University was on the cusp of launching a dual degree that allows students to earn a bachelor's in industrial engineering and a bachelor's in business administration, finance or management, in four years.

Pastor talked with Nina Miville, associate dean of undergraduate studies at the College of Engineering and director of its undergraduate industrial engineering program, about the new program and was sold. She committed to the University.

Created by the College of Engineering and the Business School and developed by Miville and Alex Horenstein, associate professor of economics and associate dean of undergraduate studies at the Business School, the program launched in July. The inaugural class of 10 students began this fall, including Pastor.

Built for the AI era

Industrial engineering students at the University have long added business minors or second majors, Miville said. Other universities offer hybrid degrees, but most pair general engineering, which lacks engineering accreditation, with general business. The University's version retains the accredited Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering.

Industrial engineers already study the math behind optimization and machine learning, skills that financial institutions increasingly need. The business degree allows students to use them.

"With the advent of AI, machine learning [and] reinforcement learning, these financial institutions need people with very highly technical mathematical modeling skills, which industrial engineers have," Miville said.

Greg Victory, associate vice president for career services at the Toppel Career Center, said employers want exactly that combination: technical skills and AI fluency paired with communication and critical thinking. "The working world is interdisciplinary," he said.

Miville, who spent 20 years in the industry and holds degrees in both engineering and business, called herself "an example of living in both worlds." She said she would have chosen a dual degree had one existed when she was a student.

Horenstein sees the same shift as AI takes over narrow, repeatable tasks. "AI can replace you at that one thing," he said, "but AI cannot replace us, at least as of now, at having the broad picture of the problem."

Blending two degrees in four years

Students could already earn both degrees at the University, Horenstein said, but without coordination, the combined credits made finishing in four years nearly impossible. To fix that, he and Miville spent months laying the two degrees side by side. They identified courses that could count toward both, such as probability and statistics and operations management, and mapped out engineering classes offered only in certain semesters.

For Horenstein, the effort reflects a broader conviction. "I'm a strong believer in interdisciplinary education," he said, "and these two programs are an outcome of that belief."

The result is demanding by design. Horenstein expects the program to stay small, perhaps 10 to 20 new students per year, and to attract students who enjoy highly technical work.

A strong start for the inaugural cohort

Sophomore Dev Sakhuja arrived as a finance and economics student but wanted more math. When he asked engineering advisors about adding a degree, they sent him to Miville just as the program was rolling out.

This semester, in Miville's Work Design Systems course, Sakhuja is analyzing a process at a local business, a project he likened to consulting work.

"It's really easy to use perspectives from both schools to give input," he said.

Victory said that crossover pays off. A candidate who speaks the language of both engineers and business teams, he said, is more valuable and earns more trust from colleagues. He encouraged the first cohort to tell employers they took a chance on something new and adapted as it grew.

For Pastor, that open door is the point.

"I want to build a strong foundation in both of the fields and see where that takes me," she said. "That's literally the reason I chose it."