11.5.2 Systems Engineering the U.S. Education System

Abstract

This 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. CloseNext 1367 Next Prev First 1368 Next Prev First Next Prev First Next Prev First 1375 Next Prev First Next Prev First Next Prev First

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) career attractiveness system dynamics modeling

“…The run assumes a steady small decline in K-12 STEM literacy. It does not attempt to explore the cause of the decline; this has been done in the work described in [3] and [4].…”

“…The goal of all of these stakeholders is to produce people educated in STEM that enter and stay in the STEM workforce. Prior modeling efforts focused heavily on the K-12 education portion of the system (see [3] and [4]). The Boeing/MIT model and the Raytheon model described in [3] explore teacher salary in comparison with the salary for STEM educated people in industry along with teacher quality and quantity.…”

“…Prior modeling efforts focused heavily on the K-12 education portion of the system (see [3] and [4]). The Boeing/MIT model and the Raytheon model described in [3] explore teacher salary in comparison with the salary for STEM educated people in industry along with teacher quality and quantity. The Raytheon model touches on higher education and the entry of the STEM literate into the workforce, but does not explore those segments in detail.…”