Program Criteria for Software Engineering Accreditation Programs

N o v e m b e r / D e c e m b e r 1 9 9 9 I E E E S o f t w a r e 3 1 raditionally, to register as an engineer, you must first graduate from an accredited program. Consequently, to establish academic programs and to gain recognition as a profession, software engineering must have accreditation guidelines. The Software Engineering Education Project, a Software Engineering Coordinating Committee (SWECC) project, became active in 1997 with a mandate to develop accreditation criteria for undergraduate software engineering programs. The criteria—completed by November 1998 and approved by both the IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery—appear to have already significantly affected the accreditation development process. Gerald L. Engel, University of Connecticut, Stamford Program Criteria for Software Engineering Accreditation Programs The S of t ware Engineer ing Educat ion Pro jec t ’s ob jec t ive i s to recommend cur r i cu la to prepare pro fess iona ls in so f t ware engineer ing. Th is a r t i c le rep or ts on SWEEP ’s in i t ia l p rogress and i t s fu ture goa ls to address undergraduateand graduateleve l accred i tat ion for so f t ware engineer ing and technology programs.