The Academic Forum is intended to further systems engineering (SE) education. In this forum, professors, students, university administrators, short course and tutorial instructors, researchers, intellectuals and innovators will share news and views regarding the education of SEs as well as the SE of education. Topics will range from innovations in SE to SE research, from internationalization of SE higher education to educational philosophy, from quality assurance in higher education to the pragmatics of accreditation. All Symposium attendees are welcome to attend all or part of this eclectic forum. For more information, email the Chair Terry Bahill at terry@sie.arizona.edu.

• Academic Forum at Netherlands symposium, 2008, Reinhard Haberfellner
• Academic Council, Bill Rouse
• NSF Connection 1 Consorsum, Bill Rouse
• SE University Leadership Roundtable, Dinesh Verma
• CESUN, Donna Rhodes
• SEANET, Donna Rhodes
• IEEE Council on Systems, George Friedman
• INCOSE ABET participation status, Wolt Fabrycky
• INCOSE technical committee on education, Rashmi Jain
• CSER conference, March 2007, Rashmi Jain
• SECOE, Terry Bahill
• Auto Racing Working Group, Bill Mackey, Jack Ring, or Stan Settles

• Should universities be allowed to offer a BS is SE?
• Why do SEs get no respect?
• What is a system of systems?
• Should universities be involved in the INCOSE certification system?
• How can we introduce systems engineering topics into K-12 education?

You may bring slides relevant to these topics.

Maximum presentation time = two minutes.
Maximum discussion time = ¥

Biologically inspired systems concepts - witch include artificial intelligence and artificial life - represent an enormously rich and - to many - fascinating source of ideas for future systems engineering architectures and designs. However, this source has been fraught with many failures and is often controversial. The author has had the fortune to be exposed to many successes as well as failures in this field and attempts to summarize over 60 years of these experiences, with lessons learned.

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The Predator-Prey-Scavenger ecosystem of the African savannahs provides a real-world abstraction of network centric warfare (NCW). Prides of vultures scan the skies looking for dead or dying prey while packs of hyenas and lions fight it out on the ground to either track and kill their next meal or steal downed prey from their natural adversaries. When one of the circling vultures sights either downed prey or possible scraps from a ground-based struggle, it signals the other scavengers to descend. By doing so, they inadvertently share their intelligence with other predators on the ground. Based on distance to the prey, number of other predators in the area, and ratio of adversaries to allies, the race to the kill-site is swift and the outcome means the difference between survival to fight again and starvation.

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Large-scale engineered, organizational and natural systems present unusually difficult challenges for system engineering. This plenary lecture will address the nature of complexity in these types of complex systems, particularly as reflected by national challenges such as healthcare, the environment and security. Topics considered will include:

• Issues that underlie the essence of complexity in such systems
• Approaches to understanding, representing, and addressing this complexity
• Contrasts between private and public sector systems
• Implications for systems engineering research and education

This talk is based on a planning activity undertaken for the National Science Foundation for the purpose of formulating an interdisciplinary initiative focused on complexity and complex systems.

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This paper documents the activity of a workshop on defining a research agenda on Systems of Systems (SoS) Architecting which was held at USC in October 2006. After two days of invited talks on critical success factors for SoS engineering, the authors of this paper convened for one day to brainstorm topics for the purpose of shaping the near-term research agenda of the newly convened Center for Systems & Software Engineering. The output from the workshop is a list of ten high-impact items with corresponding research challenges in the context of SoS Architecting. Each item includes a description of the research challenges, its link to contemporary academic or industrial problems, and reasons for advocacy of that area. The items were assessed in terms of value and difficulty to determine a prioritization both for the CSSE's future research agenda and for others in the field.

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Accreditation for undergraduate engineering programs is challenging to faculty. Departments are required to accumulate data and then apply measures to both their outcomes and objectives in their program. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, ABET, is an accreditation organization for college and university programs in applied science, computing, engineering, and technology. The quality of engineering programs has become a fundamental issue in the educational system in the United States. Accreditation confirms that the institution or the program meets minimum quality criteria. ABET has become more important when licensure is required in many states for engineers to practice. According to information provided in ABET website, "Many state board of professional licensure in engineering and surveying require applicants to have graduated from an ABET-accredited program. In states where non-ABET graduates are permitted to be licensed, an additional four to eight years of work experience may be required." (www.abet.org). The purpose of this paper is to present the process used by the Systems Engineering and Operations Research Department at George Mason University to accredit our Systems Engineering undergraduate program with special emphasis on measurement of outcomes and objectives.

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There are some very basic things that systems engineers should be taught. These things are both fundamental and classic. They are fundamental because we can reuse them in a very wide variety of SE situations. They are classic in the sense that they have a very long usefulness half-life. They are probably useful for at least a career lifetime. When I was in my Twenties, I decided to collect, to learn and to develop these SE Basics. Now, in my Sixties, I am more than ever convinced that these fundamentals should be share with students. The fundamentals are: Principles (heuristics, laws), Measures (ways to quantify critical factors), Concepts (really useful definitions of fundamental SE ideas), and Processes (really useful SE processes). I have published these in several books and papers already. I would like to argue here why they need teaching in undergraduate systems engineering. I believe that their usefulness and longevity are demonstrated in my own work, are acknowledged by many professional colleagues and some academics, and are self-evident upon examination. Hopefully this paper can stimulate others to adopt at least the general idea, if not my exact artifacts.

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Australia is entering a period of forecast skills shortages in defence industry. The growth in demand for new complex defence systems, stimulated by Federal Government spending, has highlighted the need for additional systems engineers and systems integration specialists. At the same time, the size of many companies in the Australian defence industry mitigates against strategic investment in programs to address their skills needs. This situation is compounded by strong growth in Australia's resources sector, fuelled by high prices for minerals, and the consequent competition for the same engineering professionals. This impacts on Australia's capacity to achieve self-reliance in defence capability. Concurrent to this skills shortage, however, is a widespread recognition by all levels of government that action needs to be taken. The Skilling Australia's Defence Industry (SADI) initiative will inject approximately A$200 million over the next 10 years into programs to address the skills shortage. The initiative, run by Australia's Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO), has already allocated significant funding to companies that are engaging in new activities to address their skills requirements. This paper describes one such activity - the creation of a new Masters degree in Military Systems Integration.

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Summary of the ConOps http://www.incose.org/ProductsPubs/products/conops.aspx

The demand for significant increase in individual SE productivity and innovation. The need for a whole' learning environment collaborative -- the virtual "Julliard" for systemists. A Prediction Market concept to create 'the demanding customer' race.'
+Discussion question, "What's next after this ConOps or should this one (circa 2002) be revisited?"
+Discussion challenge, "Which systemist capabilities and levels of proficiencies, if any, are beyond what Universities can teach or educe?"

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