Senior design project: ABET 2000 certification

The senior design course sequence SYST 490/495 at George Mason University (GMU), USA, is designed to give systems engineering students hands-on experience in applying the methods taught in the Systems Engineering Undergraduate degree. The 1998-1999 Systems Engineering Senior Design class project was to create a system to aid the Systems Engineering Operations Research (SEOR) Department in the preparation for ABET 2000 certification of the Systems Engineering Undergraduate degree. The purpose of the project is: to provide systems engineering seniors with hands-on experience in applying the systems engineering process to the problem of developing and maintaining a real-world system; to provide systems engineering seniors with hands-on experience in interacting with clients to understand their needs and develop solutions that meet the clients' needs; and to provide the SEOR department at GMU with an ABET 2000 program evaluation process. This paper documents the process the students and the professor went through in developing a viable system to help in this endeavor.