The role of software engineering in undergraduate education

Abstract

Summary form only given. Many masters-level programs have been created to address the need for more professional software engineers. A question remains, however, as to the place for software engineering in undergraduate studies. To date, most work in undergraduate software engineering education has been performed by small clusters of computer science and engineering faculty, widely dispersed throughout academia. Building on recommendations from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the IEEE Computer Society, these initial efforts have begun to bear fruit. Typically, the result is a set of software engineering courses arranged according to one of the following formats: (a) an elective or required course sequence; (b) elective noncredit paracticums; and (c) software engineering topics introduced in existing courses. The paper discusses: (a) What is the proper relationship between typical engineering programs and those in software engineering? (b) How should software engineering education differ from both computer science and computer engineering? (c) If undergraduate program degrees in software engineering are developed, how should such programs interact with other engineering programs? and (d) How are minors and concentrations in software engineering affected by the presence of a baccalaureate in software engineering?.