Creation of a System Engineering minor to support an electrical engineering program

The importance of the field of systems engineering is rapidly emerging across the academic engineering environment. In order to strengthen student understanding of system engineering theory, a new Systems Engineering minor has been created in the Department of Engineering at Western Kentucky University. This minor was created to support the efforts of the faculty in the delivery of a project based program. A foundational component of the minor is a course, Principles to Systems Engineering, which is required for all students enrolled in the minor. The topics of project life cycle, scope and concept of operations, system architecture, analytical hierarchy, robust design, and design fundamentals are included in this course. The Principles of Systems Engineering course has been offered in several different semesters to upper division engineering students. The electrical engineering students at Western Kentucky University are required to complete a senior capstone project course sequence. The first course in the sequence typically includes minimal instruction on project management and planning. The students begin executing the project plan during the first semester and then complete the project work and documentation during the second course in the sequence. A set of surveys was created to assess the impact of the Systems Engineering minor on performance in the senior project sequence. It is assumed that students who have completed the course will more effectively plan and execute their projects. Some of the senior project teams were composed of students that had completed the Systems Engineering course while some teams were mixtures of students who had completed the course and who had not. There were also teams composed of student who had not completed the course or were enrolled in the minor. This paper presents the results of the assessment and the impact of the course and minor on the performance of this cohort of WKU electrical engineering seniors in their capstone experience project.