A Technical History of the SEI

The design studio was also implemented initially within the SEI facility. Students worked on year-long
projects for local industry and government organizations. Mentors for the students consisted of SEI
staff, faculty from CMU, and visiting faculty from other universities. Core courses made use of problems
in the design studio projects for examples and exercises.
As the CMU MSE program matured, faculty from SCS began to play a more active role. The core
courses were redesigned to take advantage of faculty expertise and to emphasize cross-cutting techniques
that could be applied throughout the software lifecycle [Garlan 1995]. Eventually, the program
was moved completely into SCS on campus, although some courses are still taught by SEI staff.
The Consequence: New Academic Programs Established
After the CMU MSE program started, several other schools created their own graduate software engineering
programs. In fact, the number of programs nearly doubled in the first three years after the
CMU program started. Some of these new programs benefitted from the videotaped courses provided
by the SEI. Others may have been inspired by the leadership of CMU. There are now more than 60
graduate software engineering programs in the U.S. and more than 40 undergraduate programs.
The SEI Contribution
The CMU MSE program was created as a joint effort of the School of Computer Science and the
SEI, with equal numbers of staff from each organization involved in the initial design. Once that
design was adopted, almost all the core courses and the design studio activities were taught by
SEI staff for about five years. Gradually, more and more SCS faculty became involved in the program,
and it was moved entirely into SCS. SEI staff members have continued to teach some
courses and to serve as studio mentors.
References
[Ardis 1988] Ardis, Mark. “The Design of an MSE Curriculum.” Proceedings of the SEI Conference
on Software Engineering Education. CSEE, Fairfax, VA, April 28-29, 1988. Published as
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 327, Springer, 1988.
[CMU 1996a] Carnegie Mellon University. “Masters of Software Engineering at Carnegie
Mellon” (Brochure), 1996.
[CMU 1996b] Carnegie Mellon University. “Masters of Software Engineering at Carnegie
Mellon” (Brochure), 1996.
[Garlan 1995] Garlan, David; Brown, Alan; Jackson, Daniel; Tomayko, Jim; & Wing, Jeannette.
“The CMU Master of Software Engineering Core Curriculum,” 65-86. Proceedings of the 8th SEI
Conference on Software Engineering Education, New Orleans, LA, March 29-April 1, 1995.
Springer, 1995 (ISBN 3-540-58951-1).
[Gibbs 1990] Gibbs, Norman E.; Ardis, Mark A.; Habermann, A. Nico; & Tomayko, James E.
“The Carnegie Mellon University Master of Software Engineering Degree Program.” 152-154.
Proceedings of the Software Engineering Education Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, April 2-3, 1990.
Published as Lecture Notes in Computer Science 423, Springer, 1990.
[Tomayko 1991] Tomayko, James E. “Teaching Software Development in a Studio Environment.”
SIGCSE Bulletin 23, 1 (March 1991): 300-303.
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