A Technical History of the SEI

The curriculum guidelines also suggested that about 20-40 percent of an MSE program should
consist of electives, and another 30 percent should be project work. Rather than recommend any
particular project course design, the guidelines described alternatives used by some of the existing
software engineering programs.
Finally, the curriculum guidelines recommended prerequisite knowledge needed by students entering
MSE programs, consisting of material in discrete mathematics and computer science topics.
The SEI curriculum recommendations were published at the annual Conference on Software Engineering
Education and Training [Ardis 1989], a series started by the SEI that continues today
with its own independent steering committee and sponsorship. Some additional material was
added to the guidelines in later years, primarily summaries of the courses as they were taught in
the Carnegie Mellon MSE program. In 2009, an update to the guidelines [Pyster 2009] was published
by an international project. Those guidelines have been adopted by the ACM and the IEEE
Computer Society as part of their computing curricula series.
The Consequence: New Academic Programs Established
After the SEI guidelines were published, 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 publication of the guidelines. Most of those programs followed the recommended guidelines.
Another outgrowth of the curriculum project was the development of curriculum modules and educational
materials that helped to transition the MSE curriculum and support faculty members
who wished to offer software engineering courses. This mentoring relationship helped to transition
the MSE curriculum and to establish many of the software engineering degree programs that
exist today. More than 50 graduate master’s programs have been created; they produced more
than 700 graduates in 2004 alone [Ardis 2005].
The SEI Contribution
The SEI education effort provided needed leadership during the early years of curriculum development
in software engineering education. In addition to publishing the first set of curriculum
guidelines, the SEI created many early educational resources, such as curriculum modules. These
were disseminated at the annual CSEET.
Similar to its work in other areas, the SEI engaged the academic community in creating the materials
and leveraged and amplified technology transition with government and industry by making
materials available to allow other organizations to teach material it has developed. For instance,
the Air Force Institute for Technology (AFIT) sent six officers from its faculty to the SEI as resident
affiliates to adapt the SEI MSE program. AFIT then offered software engineering education
as part of its continuing education program.
References
[Ardis 1987] Ardis, Mark. “The Evolution of Wang Institute’s Master of Software Engineering
Program.” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 13, 11 (November 1987): 1149-1155.
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