An Undergraduate Curriculum in Software Engineering
Software development and maintenance is only a human generation old, but is already practiced widely in government, business, and university operations on a trial and error, heuristic basis that is typical in such a new human activity. The term software engineering is also widely used as a commercial buzzword for marketing short courses and tools for specific heuristic approaches to software development and maintenance. But legitimate engineering processes, such as found in civil, mechanical, or electrical engineering, have foundations in mathematics and science that require four year university curricula, not three day short courses. Foundations in mathematics and computer science are just reaching the point where legitimate undergraduate engineering curricula are possible for software engineering. Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) plans to develop an undergraduate software engineering curriculum to provide students with new capabilities and standards for software development, evolution, and maintenance.