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Since August 2007, a group of more than 30 professionals from academia, industry and government, known as the Integrated Software and Systems Engineering Curriculum (iSSEc) Project, have been developing a new reference curriculum leading to a Master’s Degree in Software Engineering.  Distinguished Research Professor Dr. Art Pyster, of Stevens Institute of Technology, has been leading the Graduate Software Engineering Reference Curriculum (GSwERC) initiative, and is proud to announce the release of Version 0.5 on Friday, October 31, 2008 (available at http://www.GSwERC.org). Already, some universities are beginning to adopt elements of GSwERC.  Adoption on a larger scale is expected beginning in 2009.

GSwERC integrates systems engineering into the education of software engineers and reflects the dramatic changes in how software is used and developed since the early 1990s, when the last major graduate reference curriculum was published.  The effort is endorsed by the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and the US National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) Systems Engineering Division.  The IEEE Computer Society Educational Advisory Board has a participating author and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has a volunteer contributor.  Sponsorship and funding for this effort are being provided by the US Department of Defense.

One of the novel features of GSwERC 0.5 is the inclusion of explicit comparisons of existing graduate software engineering programs to GSwERC recommendations and the inclusion of hypothetical modifications to two of those programs to better match GSwERC.  These comparisons and modifications offer a window on how well GSwERC aligns with existing practice and will help faculty understand how to adopt GSwERC in their own universities.  The GSwERC author team welcomes additional comparisons and hypothetical modifications from other universities to provide more insight into the gap between GSwERC and current practice and how to close that gap.

The GSwERC author team is seeking comments from the broad software engineering community to ensure the reference curriculum can be applied in educational programs across the globe. Comments can be submitted at the GSwERC website until January 31, 2009.  Version 1.0 of GSwERC is expected sometime in 2009.

Several individuals from Stevens Institute of Technology have contributed to GSwERC, including Professors Richard Turner, Larry Bernstein, and David Klappholz, and graduate students Deva Henry, Nicole Hutchison, and Kahina Lasfer.

Dr. Arthur Pyster is a Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Systems and Enterprises at Stevens Institute of Technology, Deputy Executive Director of the Systems Engineering Research-University Affiliated Research Center sponsored by the Department of Defense, and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Council on Systems Engineering. He has more than thirty years of experience as a successful senior executive, researcher, engineer, educator, and program and project manager in government, industry, and academia. He has created, delivered, and operated numerous leading edge systems and technologies in telecommunications, aerospace, defense, air traffic control, and information technology domains. Before joining Stevens in March 2007, Dr. Pyster served in several executive positions, including Senior Vice President and Director of Systems Engineering and Integration for SAIC and Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Federal Aviation Administration.