Lessons Learned from Introducing a Skills Line into a Systems Engineering Curriculum

Academic skills refer to a broad set of capabilities that students need to acquire as part of their engineering program to be able to work effectively within a professional or scientific environment. Despite the importance, skills are underemphasized in many educational and engineering programs. In this paper the development of a new skills line within the System Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management (SEPAM) bachelor and master program is presented. The skills line in the bachelor program consists of nine different skills, in the categories: project skills, personal skills and academic skills. In contrast, the skills line of the master program focuses on a set of skills categorized into design, professional and academic skills. The introduction of the skills line has helped students not only to acquire the necessary skills, but external parties also better understand the program when the typical skills are presented. Evaluation results from an Alumni survey show that the skills are important to their current jobs and the skills are treated well in the program. It is important that the relationship between education and practice is explicitly addressed.