11.5.2 Systems Engineering the U.S. Education System

AbstractThis paper presents the recent and on‐going activities that are applying systems engineering to the U.S. education systems to identify potential improvements that will increase student proficiency and interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Because applying the methods of systems engineering to a complex human system, like the U.S. education system, is somewhat novel, system dynamics modeling, which is not typically used in aerospace systems engineering projects, was required. Also, because of a lack of systems specific expertise and the need for new and diverse ideas, the project was performed as a student project with competing teams. The complexity of the U.S. education systems required an examination of the total system and then focusing on a limited portion of the system. This paper shows how the complexity was dealt with and how the particular area for detailed examination was selected. Current activities and plans are also presented.