The roots of the Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) department are in the Engineering Management (EM) graduate program. The EM program was founded in 1990 and was open for engineering graduates with an original focus on operations research and project management. Over the years, the EM program grew to become one of the most popular graduate programs at AUB with additional concentration areas in financial engineering and technology management. In August 2014, the EM program began offering undergraduate courses in Industrial Engineering (IE). In August 2015, the IEM department was established housing both a new undergraduate IE program and the legacy EM program.
Currently, the number of full-time undergraduate students in the IE program is around 200, and the number of graduate students in the EM program is around 60. IEM currently has seven faculty members who pursue world-class research on a variety of topics at the forefront of IE and EM. Future plans include growing the faculty body, increasing the undergraduate student enrollment, and offering a Ph.D. program.