The Pre-Kindergarten Learning Enterprise (PKLE)

To meet the challenges that today’s pre-Kindergarten children will face as adults, they need effective development and learning organizations. Together, those organizations form the pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) learning enterprise, whose characteristics and behaviors greatly influence what pre-K children learn and how well they learn it. In this paper, the pre-K learning enterprise is explicitly defined and modeled for the first time and then analyzed through a systems thinking lens using systemigrams and related causal loop diagrams. Defining and modeling the pre-K learning enterprise is itself valuable as a means to understand the various relationships that exist among the identified constituent systems (e.g., home environment, preschool, financial, health care, state, and government) and the stakeholders identified within the enterprise (e.g., parents, educators, health care providers, and policy makers). That value is enhanced through an analysis which reveals the predominant reliance of several key pre-K learning enterprise component systems on the financial system while exposing weak interactions among the three main participating systems (preschools, home environment, and government). Heavy reliance on the financial system in today’s economy reduces the effectiveness of the pre-K learning enterprise. To ease such reliance on the financial system while enhancing key interrelationships, three improvements to the existing enterprise are postulated: (1) enhance the role of parents through better education on child development, learning, health and nutrition and their increased voluntary involvement with preschools, (2) reduce the dependency on the financial system and promote partnerships among preschools, sports facilities, libraries and other learning systems to share resources, and (3) enhance government role through implementation of curriculum standardization, assessment and evaluation, and an effective policy towards mandatory education of low-income children

The Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge and Graduate Reference Curriculum - BKCASE

BKCASE is the acronym for the Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering. The BKCASE project is led by the Stevens Institute of Technology and the Naval Postgraduate School. The project scope is to define a Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) and to use the SEBoK to develop an advanced Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE). The planned outcome is that the SEBoK will be supported worldwide by the Systems Engineering community as the authoritative SEBoK for the SE discipline; and that the GRCSE will receive the same global recognition and serve as the authoritative guidance for graduate degree programs in SE. A distinguished group of systems engineers from across the world is volunteering as authors and reviewers on the project, to collaborate over a three year period, and to deliver the products, the SEBoK and GRCSE, to the public incrementally through 2012. This paper presents the results of the first two project workshops, and outlines the content of SEBoK version 0.25, which will be released in July, 2010, and GRCSE version 0.25 which will be released in October, 2010.Several professional societies have affiliated with the BKCASE project. They include INCOSE, ACM, NDIA Systems Engineering Division, the IEEE Systems Council, and the IEEE Computer Society. With the financial sponsor, OSD, collectively they are referred to as the project partners. The professional societies have nominated authors as identified in Table 1, and they provide financial support for their author's participation

BKCASE:Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering Panel Discussion

May 26, 2010: European Systems Engineering Conference (EUSEC®) BKCASE Panel at EuSEC by Rick Adcock, Bud Lawson, Dave Olwell, Art Pyster, Jean Claude RousselMuch of the funding and sponsorship for BKCASE was provided by the U.S. Department of Defense

Exile Vol. IX No. 2

FICTION Robert & Muriel or, If You Think of the Girl You Love Too Much As Someday Being Bald, You Can Always Remain Aloof by Johnathan Reynolds 7-14 Quentin Marsh by Margaret Polishook 15 Used To Be by Susan Smith 17-23 It Was a Chatham Day by Caroline Baird 33-37 Where All the Artists Go by George Estes 41-43 September by Cynthia Winzeler 45-50 ESSAY Carthartes Aura by Richard Boyer 27-29 POETRY To A Mouse by Kay Stein 24-25 Poem by Christine Cooper 26 For Sylvia Plath by Robert Hoyt 26 On Studying Shakespeare by Christine Cooper 29 Song by Judith Pyster 30-31 Prestidigitation by Michael Glaser 37 Poem by Sarah Conway 39 Poem by Barbara Thiele 50 An Old Man\u27s Lament by Robert Hoyt 51 GRAPHICS Pastel by Lynne Wiley 4 Pen Drawing by Elizabeth Surbeck 6 Pen Sketch by Martha Merselis 14 Pen and Ink by Matha Merselis 16 Brush Drawing by Martha Merselis 24 Pen Sketches by Martha Merselis 30 Pencil Drawing by Patterson Bouic 32 Pen and Ink by Katheryn Knapp 38 Brush Drawing by Sara Henry 40 Pen and Ink by Martha Merselis 4

Overcoming challenges on an international project to advance systems engineering

The Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering (BKCASE) project's dual product development cycle spanned a three‐year period from the September 2009 to December, 2012. During this timeframe, BKCASE authors met quarterly at various locations, primarily in various regions of the United States, but also in Stockholm, Sweden; Toulouse, France; London, England; and Rome, Italy (BKCASE, 2009–2019). The team successfully worked through challenges and differences to produce The Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) wiki and a Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering (GRCSE) publication. This article is a collection of personal stories from the team members that focus on overcoming obstacles to successfully produce the final published products

ScienceDirect

Abstract In an effort to explore the relationship between the disciplines of systems engineering and software engineering, professionals from academia, industry, and government gathered for a workshop to deliberate on the current state, to acknowledge areas of inter-dependence, to identify relevant challenges, and to propose recommendations for addressing those challenges with respect to four topical areas: 1) Development Approaches, 2) Technical, 3) People, and 4) Education. This paper presents the deliberations and recommendations that emerged from that workshop, and the proposed project to be launched

The Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering Project

October 2010: National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) SE Conference. “The Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering Project” by Art Pyster and David OlwellMuch of the funding and sponsorship for BKCASE was provided by the U.S. Department of Defense