This workshop provides a forum for interested parties from management, the profession, and educators to lay out a vision of what students should learn in the way of knowledge and skills for a career in systems engineering. The workshop will allow these constituencies to discuss the kinds of attributes they believe are needed in systems engineers in the framework of their models with the goal of finding common ground regarding the basic educational needs required to support the variety of models that rely on a systems approach.
The workshop was held on Friday March 30 at UWT. Attendees included:
Larry Wear presented background on what prior discussions (with representatives from Boeing, primarily) had led to in outlining a standalone degree in systems engineering. Our original idea was to design an undergraduate degree program and then seek ABET accreditation. As it turned out, our CES program is already listed as an accredited SE program! Therefore we only need to decide on some set of courses that would fulfill the profession's requirements. Several options were put on the table as to how we could accomplish this. A new standalone program is the least likely for a variety of reasons. Another option would be to have a track or concentration within the CES program that would focus on SE coursework. One possibility to make this work is that we could offer a number of systems engineering courses as electives to students who are doing a double major in CSS and CES. These courses would fill out the concentration's requirements and the Institute might then provide a certification to accompany the transcripted degrees. A third option is to reorganize the CES program more radically to offer the full complement of courses. Wear and Mobus will be working on various designs for these two options.
The selection of which option will depend on how much course content we determine will be needed to meet the recommendations. This workshop was a first step in trying to identify a reasonable curriculum for undergraduates.
The faculty and administration of the Institute of Technology wish to acknowledge and thank all those who participated and/or provided additional suggestions and help for this workshop.