Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates

1hamilton@auburn.edu

The Systems EngineeringUniversity Affiliated Research Center

1st Workshop on U.S. Undergraduate Programs in Systems Engineering

What are Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates?

Drew HamiltonAuburn University

April 7, 2010

www.stevens.edu/SERC

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates

2hamilton@auburn.edu

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

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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

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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

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What Can DOD do to Promote Systems Engineering Education?

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates

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Systems Engineering Education Challenge: Military Scale

HandheldPalmOSLinux

WIN CE.....

DesktopSolaris

WindowsMac OSLinux

.....

USBSerial

IR

Versus

CommercialModel

MilitaryModel

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates

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System Interoperability

“The usefulness of an architecture varies inversely with the size of the domain.”

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates

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Software Architecture Bridging Requirements and HI

RequirementsEngineering

SoftwareArchitecture

HorizontalIntegration

• 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

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DOD Artifacts for System Security

Best Practices in Teaching Systems Engineering to Undergraduates

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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

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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

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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.