By MC2 Michael Ehrlich

The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS Department of Systems Engineering (SE) is launching an inspired outreach effort to improve the discipline’s awareness within the broader Navy, DOD engineering and technical workforce.

NPS Associate Chair for Distributed Programs and Outreach Wally Owen serves as the director for the series, and works closely with the department chair and faculty to identify topics, select speakers and determine site locations.

“Our goal is to deliver lectures on SE-related, relevant topics at key Navy sponsor and stakeholder locations, starting with our [system commands], and then extending to the other services and DOD commands,” explained Owen. “It offers the engineering and technical workforce with a relevant learning opportunity led by SE faculty, sharing cutting-edge engineering innovations and technology advances in research, education and practice.”

Lectures are delivered onsite, at no cost to the host location. And Owen says SE distance learning students located at lecture sites will be integrated into the program, providing insights into their own experiences with the discipline.

“Seminar presentations focus on technical topics but also include an overview of our SE department and programs,” Owen added.

The inaugural seminar will be hosted at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., on April 4, 2018, with Professor of Practice Warren Vaneman discussing, “Model-Based Systems Engineering De-Mystified.”

“Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is an ambiguous concept that means many things to many different people,” notes the presentation’s description. “The purpose of this presentation is to ‘de-mystify’ MBSE, with the intent of moving the sub-disciple forward.”