Core Disciplines for Unifying Engineering Education Revisiting with a focus on Modelling and Simulation

International audienceEngineering education is losing its focus as new engineering courses continue to be created. This is not to say systems engineering education is not considered. It does say each discipline's course tends to be taught in isolation. As a result our students are getting confused by so much diversity with no visible connection. This contributes to the creation of virtual borders between electrical, mechanical and computer engineers and induces artificial barriers for teamwork. Such improvement can come by making the systems view central to the educational process.. This includes giving students experience in working in interdisciplinary teams. Our proposal is that systems engineering core courses be made the nucleus around which all engineering disciplines are centered. Furthermore it is proposed curriculum be modified to include case studies in core disciplines that can taught in many departments: modeling and simulation, requirements engineering, and validation and verification. In this way all students would be introduced to the basic elements of the system engineering conceptual framework. Process methodology would also be addressed