A case study in rapid introduction of an information assurance track into a software engineering curriculum

Disciplines such as software engineering are expanding rapidly, and both the new knowledge gained as the discipline matures and the need to prepare students for changing environments make it important for departments to find a balance between evolving curriculum to match and shrinking or relatively static budgets. We describe program additions at Seattle University, a small private university in the Pacific Northwest. They were designed to expand its graduate curriculum in software engineering to include an information assurance focus. This was done with only a moderate budget increase and without hiring additional permanent faculty. A deeper look at one of the courses added, and the lessons learned from this effort, could prove useful to other universities contemplating similar attempts.