Year One of the Systems Engineering Experience Accelerator

Systems engineering educators are struggling to meet the workforce development demand for senior systems engineers. Systems engineers are critical for addressing a broad set of increasingly complex systems problems faced by industry and government. However, the discipline is experiencing an outflux of senior systems engineers reaching retirement age with no ready source of systems engineers available to replace them, at a time when the demand for systems engineers is increasing (NDIA, 2010). The workforce challenge is to shorten the time it takes for a systems engineer to reach the senior level. The Systems Engineering Experience Accelerator (SEEA) research project was conceived as a critical response to these needs and challenges. The SEEA focuses on a solution that leverages technology to create an experience intended to accelerate the learning of systems engineering related competencies. This paper summarizes the operation of the preliminary version of a prototype SEEA simulator after the first year of the SEEA project. A review of the plans for future research is also included.