The Department of Management Engineering was established in 1977 with the initiative of the economists and jurists who were working in Economic Development and General Economics chairs at the ITU Faculty of Basic Sciences. The department, which was first founded as a faculty with the initiatives of Prof. Dr. Reşat Nalbandoğlu who was coached by former Minister Mehmet Tevfik Hamdi Biren who taught economics as an economics professor in 1910 at İTÜ (which was then named as the High School of Engineering) and of his successor Prof. Dr. Zeyyat Hatipoğlu, has continued its activities under the roof of the Faculty of Management with the change in the higher education system in 1982.

Since then, the Department of Management Engineering continues to improve itself by diversifying the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs it offers to students and supporting research within the various research units it has established.