Establishing A Community College Pathway to Baccalaureate Systems Engineering Programs

Abstract

A fundamental principle guiding engineering course schedules and student advisement at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) is to offer courses a student would take in his/her second year at target universities to minimize the chance that s/he would be on the “five (plus) year plan” after transfer. We describe how the model is implemented with respect to systems engineering in this paper. Planning for this new academic track took place in Fall, 2011; the pilot of the Introduction to Systems Engineering course occurred in Spring, 2012 and Fall, 2012. The course is consciously structured after the introductory course at the University of Virginia (UVa), the transfer target for a majority of PVCC students, to ensure that the transfer credit is accepted and students are prepared for success. Based on our experiences in the pilots, the syllabus became slightly modified to prepare students for study in other undergraduate programs in systems engineering. Course goals, objectives, and content are described. Finally, we offer student reflections on their experiences and course utility as they prepare to transfer to university engineering programs. The availability of the second year systems engineering courses proved to be attractive to both students who want to major in systems engineering as well as students wanting to fulfill technical electives. It is our hope that this model will inspire adoption by other community college – university partnerships as a means of increasing the number of students preparing for careers in systems engineering.