Expectations for Graduates

Graduates will be prepared for faculty positions in software engineering, for research positions in industrial laboratories, and for leadership positions in development in both computer industry and application shops.

• As faculty, they will be distinguished by their genuine understanding of software design and development issues, which can be expected to shape their selection of research problems and evaluation of research results.
• As industrial developers, they will understand not only academic research issues but also engineering constraints that arise from public policy, economic, regulatory, and market issues.
• As senior software system developers, they will have a distinctive perspective that addresses specific problems in the context of the principles and results of the field.

In addition to talent and research skills that will allow them to advance the field, graduates will have a clue about practical issues of software design and development from requirements acquisition through maintenance. They will be prepared to enter research or advanced development positions in application areas, distributed networks, embedded/critical systems, and other specialties as well as conventional software system development. They will know enough about managing projects and about the software industry that they will not be naive about business questions.