Software Engineering BSSE

Major: Software Engineering
Degree Awarded: Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering (BSSE)
Calendar Type: Quarter
Minimum Required Credits: 187.0
Co-op Options: Three Co-op (Five years); One Co-op (Four years)
Classification of Instructional Program (CIP) code: 14.0903
Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code: 15-1132; 15-1133

About the Program

Additional Information

For more information about this program, please visit the BS in Software Engineering webpage on the College of Computing & Informatics website.

Degree Requirements

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Co-op cycles may vary. Students are assigned a co-op cycle (fall/winter, spring/summer, summer-only) based on their co-op program (4-year, 5-year) and major.

COOP 101 registration is determined by the co-op cycle assigned and may be scheduled in a different term. Select students may be eligible to take COOP 001 in place of COOP 101.

Program Electives

Independent study courses and special topics courses must be approved by the department prior to enrollment to satisfy a program elective requirement.

• Science electives: any CHEM (except CHEM 111, CHEM 112, CHEM 113, CHEM 114, CHEM 151), BIO (except BIO 161, BIO 162, BIO 163; can take only one of BIO 100, BIO 107; can take only one of BIO 101, BIO 109), PHYS (except PHYS 050, PHYS 100, PHYS 105, PHYS 151, PHYS 160, PHYS 305, PHYS 324, PHYS 405; cannot take both PHYS 131 and PHYS 181), ENVS, ENSS, PHEV.  
• Business electives: any ACCT, BLAW, BUSN, ECON, ENTP, FIN, HRMT, INTB, MGMT, MIS, MKTG, OPM, OPR, ORGB, SMT, STAT, TAX
• Social Studies electives: any AFAS, ANTH, HIST, GST, JWST, PSCI, PSY, SOC, WGST
• Arts & Humanities electives: any ARCH, ARTH, CMGT, CJS, COM, CULA, DANC, EDEX, EDUC, ENGL (except ENGL 101,ENGL 102, ENGL 103, ENGL 105), ESTM, FASH, FMST, FMVD, GST, INTR, LING, MUSC, PHIL, PHTO, THTR, VSCM, VSST, WRIT, LAW, GMAP 260, ANIM 140, ANIM 141, ANIM 211, ANIM 212, and Foreign Language Courses from: ARBC, CHIN, FREN, GER, HBRW, ITAL, JAPN, KOR, SPAN

Writing-Intensive Course Requirements

In order to graduate, all students must pass three writing-intensive courses after their freshman year. Two writing-intensive courses must be in a student's major. The third can be in any discipline. Students are advised to take one writing-intensive class each year, beginning with the sophomore year, and to avoid “clustering” these courses near the end of their matriculation. Transfer students need to meet with an academic advisor to review the number of writing-intensive courses required to graduate.

A "WI" next to a course in this catalog may indicate that this course can fulfill a writing-intensive requirement. For the most up-to-date list of writing-intensive courses being offered, students should check the Writing Intensive Course List at the University Writing Program. Students scheduling their courses can also conduct a search for courses with the attribute "WI" to bring up a list of all writing-intensive courses available that term.

Sample Plan of Study

5 year, 3 coop (Spring/Summer Cycle)

*

Co-op cycles may vary. Students are assigned a co-op cycle (fall/winter, spring/summer, summer-only) based on their co-op program (4-year, 5-year) and major.

COOP 101 registration is determined by the co-op cycle assigned and may be scheduled in a different term. Select students may be eligible to take COOP 001 in place of COOP 101.

4 year, 1 coop (Spring/Summer Cycle)

*

Co-op cycles may vary. Students are assigned a co-op cycle (fall/winter, spring/summer, summer-only) based on their co-op program (4-year, 5-year) and major.

COOP 101 registration is determined by the co-op cycle assigned and may be scheduled in a different term. Select students may be eligible to take COOP 001 in place of COOP 101.

Co-op/Career Opportunities

Co-Op Options

Two co-op options are available for this program:

• five-year/three co-op
• four-year/one co-op

Career Opportunities

The demand for software engineering professionals is quite strong. Graduates can expect career opportunities in software design and development in a variety of application areas. Software engineering graduates are particularly well suited to work as members or leaders of software project teams; they have knowledge and skills to help them develop quality software within schedule and cost constraints.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook, software developer is among the fastest growing U.S. careers requiring at least a bachelor's degree, with an estimated 409,500 new jobs by 2030. Although they have jobs in most industries, many software developers work in computer systems design and related services firms or software publishers. The field's rapid growth is mainly due to the increase in demand for computer software, especially in healthcare.

Most software engineering students enter the professional world right after graduation, but some continue their studies in advanced software engineering programs.

Job titles of recent software engineering graduates include:

• Software Engineer
• Software Architect
• Software System Project Manager
• Software Project Team Leader

Visit the Drexel Steinbright Career Development Center page for more detailed information on co-op and post-graduate opportunities.

3675 Market Street

The School of Computer and Information Sciences (SCIS) is located at 3675 Market. Occupying three floors in the modern uCity Square building, SCIS's home offers state-of-the-art technology in our classrooms, research labs, offices, meeting areas, and collaboration spaces. 3675 Market offers Class A laboratory, office, coworking, and convening spaces. Located at the intersection of 37th and Market Streets, 3675 Market acts as a physical nexus for our school, bridging academic campuses and medical centers to the east and south, the commercial corridors along Market Street and nearby Chestnut Street, and the residential communities to the north and west.

The uCity Square building offers:

• Speculative lab/office space
• World-class facilities operated by CIC
• Café/restaurant on-site
• Quorum, a two-story, 15K SF convening space and conference center
• Adjacency to future public square
• Access to Science Center’s nationally renowned business acceleration and technology commercialization programs

Drexel University Libraries

The Drexel University Libraries is a one-stop resource for all members of the Drexel community, providing access to millions of print and online books, journals, databases and other media, as well as hundreds of online course and research guides, workshops, and tutorials. Expert librarians offer a variety of consultation services virtually or in person, including help with course-related projects, strategies for finding and evaluating authoritative information, and approaches to utilizing, organizing, and presenting scholarship.

Students in SCIS also have access to the W. W. Hagerty Library where they can take advantage of the Libraries’ various learning environments, including group study rooms, collaborative and silent study areas, and 24/7 study space in the Dragons’ Learning Den. The Libraries also offers a wellness room, printing and scanning services, and laptops, portable power chargers, and other equipment you can borrow for use in the Library.

SCIS Commons

Located on the 10th floor of 3675 Market Street, the SCIS Commons is an open lab and collaborative work environment for students. It features desktop computers, a wireless/laptop area, free black-and-white printing, and more collaborative space for our students. Community members have access to 3675 Market's fully equipped conference room with 42” displays and videoconferencing capabilities. The SCIS Commons provides technical support to students, faculty, and professional staff. In addition, the staff provides audio-visual support for all presentation classrooms within 3675 Market. Use of the SCIS Commons is reserved for all students taking SCIS courses.

The computers for general use are Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS machines with appropriate applications which include the Microsoft Office suite, various database management systems, modeling tools, and statistical analysis software. Library-related resources may be accessed at the SCIS Commons and through the W.W. Hagerty Library. SCIS is a member of the "Azure Dev Tools for Teaching” platform that allows students free access to a wide array of Microsoft software titles and operating systems.

The SCIS Commons, student labs, and classrooms have access to networked databases, print and file resources, and the Internet via the University’s network. Email accounts, Internet and BannerWeb access are available through Drexel's Office of Information Resources and Technology.

Computer Support for Teaching

The SCIS server room houses a multitude of servers to support faculty research, staff operations, and student learning. Services provided include a Linux compute cluster which is open to all faculty, staff, and students, multiple virtualization environments to meet different needs of faculty, staff, and students, and other single-purpose servers to support various operations throughout the school. The compute cluster provides a common environment for students to develop software, which makes testing easier for the TAs and faculty. Our virtualization environments allow community members the flexibility of a cloud environment with local support and direct cost recovery options. For those who need dedicated hardware, we also support dedicated research systems.

Classrooms are outfitted with laser projectors, 4K displays, class capture hardware, and the Wolfvision Cynap. The Cynap controls the AV distribution throughout the room and can display up to 4 streams simultaneously. These include the local PC, a laptop connected directly to the podium, or up to 4 streaming devices. Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android devices can all connect wirelessly to the presentation system, allowing collaboration and freedom to roam the classroom for better interactivity. Wireless networking and outlets are also available for students throughout the classrooms. Laptops are available for checkout from the SCIS Commons desk.

Additionally, SCIS hosts and supports multiple Virtual Computing Lab environments for students to use that mimics our physical computer labs. This technology allows both online and face to face students to have the same experience when using computing facilities.

SCIS Virtual Environments

SCIS hosts a variety of virtual environments, which support all levels of research, academics, and administration. These include OpenStack, Proxmox VE, VMWare, and Xen architectures, backed by storage in CEPH. Multiple environments allow SCIS IT to provide researchers with the level of control appropriate for the project at hand and make efficient use of project funding. External cloud vendors such as AWS and Google Cloud Platform are also used when appropriate.

SCIS continues to invest in these virtual environments, and explores emerging environments, to continue to best support research and teaching. CPU cores, storage, and memory are added at every opportunity to these flexible, scalable environments. The current capacity of the system includes:

• 1760 CPU Cores
• 6 TB of Memory
• Over 556 TB of HDD-backed storage
• 122 TB of high-performance SSD-backed storage
• 12 GPUs with room for expansion through funded research for high-performance computing needs

Cyber Learning Center

The Cyber Learning Center (CLC), located in 3675 Market Street's SCIS Commons student computer lab, provides consulting and other learning resources for students taking courses offered by the Computer Science Department. The CLC is staffed by graduate and undergraduate computer science students from across SCIS.

The CLC and SCIS Commons serve as a central hub for small group work, student meetings, and TA assistance. 

Research Laboratories

SCIS houses multiple research labs, led by SCIS faculty, in 3675 Market Street including: the Metadata Research Center (MRC), Interactive Systems for Healthcare (IS4H) Research, Economics and Computation (EconCS), The TeX-Base Lab, SPiking And Recurrent SoftwarE (SPARSE) Coding, Human-System Evaluation and Analysis Lab (H-SEAL), Applied Symbolic Computation Laboratory (ASYM), Security and Privacy Analytics Lab (SePAL), Software Engineering and Analytics Research (SOAR), Software Engineering Research Group (SERG), Social Computing Research Group, Vision and Cognition Laboratory (VisCog). For more information on these laboratories, please visit the our research web page.

Program Level Outcomes

The College of Computing & Informatics works continually to improve its degree programs. As part of this effort, the software engineering degree is evaluated relative to the following Objectives and Outcomes.

Program Educational Objectives

Within three to five years of graduating, alumni of the program are expected to achieve one or more of the following milestones:

• Graduates of the program obtain employment as software developers where their software and communication skills eventually propel them toward technical and administrative leadership positions in industry and government.
• Graduates of the program demonstrate an ability to continue to learn throughout their career and to keep pace with changing technology as appropriate to their positions.
• Graduates of the program specialize and enhance their software engineering knowledge by enrolling and completing technical graduate courses and other technical education to position them to advance software engineering practice as senior technical staff members or managers.
• Graduates of the program specialize and enhance their software engineering knowledge by enrolling and graduating from MSc and PhD degree programs to position them to contribute to the intellectual foundations of the discipline of software engineering as researchers in industrial and government laboratories as well as in academia.
• Graduates of the program advance toward becoming leaders in disciplines other than software engineering by enrolling and graduating from graduate-level degree programs in complimentary disciplines such as law and business where the BSSE serves as an educational foundation.
• Graduates of the program will demonstrate an awareness of their professional and social responsibility as software engineers by participation in professional activities and application of their knowledge for the good of society.

Software Engineering Student Outcomes

The program enables students to attain by the time of graduation:

• An ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering
• An ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data
• An ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability
• An ability to function on multidisciplinary teams
• An ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems
• An understanding of professional and ethical responsibility
• An ability to communicate effectively
• The broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context
• A recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning
• A knowledge of contemporary issues
• An ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice