The Whiting School contains nine departments:  The Engineering for Professionals (EP) program is a part-time and online program at Whiting School. EP offers master's degree programs and courses in 21 distinct disciplines. The Johns Hopkins University first offered courses to working engineers in 1916, held “Night Courses for Technical Workers” in response to the potential for United States involvement in World War I. The part-time undergraduate engineering program realized its largest enrollments for a time after World War II when returning servicemen and women received GI Bill benefits for a college education. Until the late 1950s, part-time courses were primarily offered at the undergraduate level on the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus. In 1958, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) began to offer advanced technical courses at the graduate level with credit toward Johns Hopkins academic degrees under the auspices of that institution’s Evening College. By 1963, APL established a formal center for the Evening College to meet growing demand. Over the years, the number and variety of engineering and applied science courses and master’s degree program expanded, so that by 1983 five master's degrees were offered at the APL Education Center: Applied Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Numerical Science, and Technical Management. In 1983, the APL-based programs came under the oversight of the re-established engineering school at Johns Hopkins, the G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering. At that time, eight additional degree programs were added: undergraduate programs in Civil, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering and five master's degree programs in Chemical Engineering, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Materials Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. Johns Hopkins professionals engineering education has changed its name several times to reflect added programs, advancing technology, and a changing workforce. Its name was the Part-Time Engineering Program from 1983 to 1987, Continuing Professional Programs from 1987 to 1992, Part-Time Programs in Engineering and Applied Science from 1992 to 2004, Engineering and Applied Science Programs for Professionals from 2004 to 2008, and Engineering for Professionals from 2008 to the present. Also, several degree programs have changed their names to reflect changes in focus, and in several cases, concentrations in existing programs have become new programs in their own right. EP is accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools.