Systems engineering and technology management education for the 21st century

The fields of systems engineering and technology management have developed rapidly in the last forty years to evolve a discipline with considerable breadth and depth. Educational institutions around the world report significant student interest in this broad field. It is this author's experience and perspective that they have become an integrated focus area. The increased complexity, increased mix of different integrated technologies (e.g., Mechatronics and software engineering), reduced time to market of higher performance quality and reliability, and to budget and cost targets, products, increases the importance, and sophistication, of the management of the engineering and technologies process for developing these new products. Global business competition is forcing the need for a continuous stream of new products. The above listed challenges have driven the increased numbers and importance of academic programs that address and respond to this systems engineer, SE&TM, education need. This paper will present some background history and describe the MS in systems engineering and technology focus area in the Fenn College of Engineering at Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, as an example. Students from over 30 major northeast Ohio companies and agencies (including NASA) have participated in this program over the past six years.