Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 1 The Systems Engineering University Affiliated Research Center 1st Workshop on U.S. Undergraduate Programs in Systems Engineering What are Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates? Drew Hamilton Auburn University April 7,

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 2 Overview of Auburn’s Systems Engineering Program Strengths Focused on Engineering –Excellent faculty with real world experience –Hands on laboratory experiences integrated with course work –Team projects are emphasized Strong culture of multidisciplinary research Conducting classified research Critical mass of faculty and graduate students who are U.S. Citizens –~33% female students –~20% minority students Applied, innovative technical solutions engaging undergraduates are our specialty

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 3 Where our Systems Engineering Students Go….. ~50% to manufacturing industries (primarily aerospace and automotive) ~10 – 20% directly to graduate school Remainder to: –Government –Utilities –Energy –Computing –Transportation –Health Care –Consulting

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 4 Key Course Overview Foundations: –probability and statistics –computer programming –mathematics Three electives required: –decision support systems –information technologies –six sigma –lean manufacturing –safety engineering –others Advanced courses: –operations research (2 courses) –production systems –manufacturing systems –modeling and simulation –quality control –ergonomics and safety –methods engineering –engineering economics Capstone: –real world enterprise project in a three hour course

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 5 What Can DOD do to Promote Systems Engineering Education?

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 6 Systems Engineering Education Challenge: Military Scale Handheld PalmOS Linux WIN CE..... Desktop Solaris Windows Mac OS Linux..... USB Serial IR Versus Commercial Model Military Model

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 7 System Interoperability “The usefulness of an architecture varies inversely with the size of the domain.”

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 8 Software Architecture Bridging Requirements and HI Requirements Engineering Software Architecture Horizontal Integration Software architecture is the high-level design developed from the requirements Horizontal integration is achieved by low-level design which conforms to the software architecture

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 9 DOD Artifacts for System Security

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 10 Anti-Tamper Connecting Systems of Systems –Dealing with multiple Vendors –Software Anti-tamper –Anti-Forensics Industrial Anti-Tamper –Obfuscation –Encryption Battlefield Anti-Tamper –Anti-Tamper (AT) techniques and application of system security engineering measures allow the United States to meet foreign customer needs for advanced systems and capabilities while ensuring the protection of U.S. technological investment and equities.

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 11 Systems Engineering in a Computing- Intensive Environment Two-course sequence, 3 semester hours each –introduces students from a diverse set of engineering majors (including computer science) to systems engineering in an environment that focuses heavily on secure and reliable computational technology. Both courses being developed and taught jointly by –Industrial & Systems Engineering –Computer Science & Software Engineering. First Course is a broad spectrum overview –Objective is to give students who are already familiar with a specific engineering discipline a more holistic and systemic perspective of complex solutions to hard real-world problems. Second Course is a hands-on sequel to the first course –Real World capstone project, where student teams are given a semi-defined problem and must navigate their way to a hardware/software solution that takes into consideration a systems perspective with the oversight of both an academic advisor and an industry advisor.

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates 12 Conclusions The organizations that hire our systems engineers expect hard technical skills as well as management insight. Auburn ISE graduates have solid engineering and mathematic backgrounds. Auburn ISE undergraduates have the background to pursue graduate engineering education in other engineering fields. –This model fits nicely with military graduate education requirements. Auburn MS/PhD in systems engineering accepts students with many UG degrees (all engineering, CS, math, some sciences) The SERC has been a catalyst in promoting closer collaboration between our systems engineering and software engineering programs.