Benefits of Teaching Systems Thinking as part of an Engineering Curriculum

In this Research-to-Practice, Work in Progress paper, we examine the benefits of teaching systems thinking in an engineering curriculum. The call to include systems thinking and systems engineering courses as part of general engineering curriculum has received an increased amount of attention during the past few years. The need to improve the skills of all engineering students to help them deal with realistic, unbounded and complex problems, in a multidisciplinary environment that would produce viable and robust solutions, along with new ABET criteria has also helped this call. In this paper, we present supporting arguments to include one or more courses in systems thinking and engineering systems design as part of an engineering curriculum. This is done by identifying key common requirements between innovation and systems thinking. Including these courses will enhance professional skills and directly impact several “student outcomes” requirement under ABET. We also argue that these courses will positively impact and enhance innovation and entrepreneurship abilities.