.pdf Andrew P. Sage, Life Fellow, IEEEAbstract—We discuss some basic principles underlying systemsengineering, and the translation of these principles to practicessuch as to enable the engineering of trustworthy systems of all typesthat meet client needs. This special issue is concerned with systemsengineering education. Thus, it is inherently also concerned withsystems engineering, as this provides a major component of thematerial that is important for systems engineering education. Aftersetting forth some of the necessary ingredients for success in systemsengineering, we devote some comments to objectives for andneeds in systems engineering education.Index Terms—Engineering education, knowledge engineering,systems engineering.I. WHAT IS SYSTEMS ENGINEERING?THE PAPER is concerned with the engineering of systems,or systems engineering. It is also concerned with the processesneeded to bring about trustworthy systems in an effectiveand efficient manner.We are also and especially concerned withstrategic level systems engineering, or systems management,that is needed to select an appropriate process and ways to providetechnical direction over this process. We begin our effortby first discussing the need for systems engineering, and thenproviding several definitions of systems engineering. We nextpresent a structure describing the systems-engineering process.The result of this is a lifecycle model for systems engineeringprocesses. This is used to motivate discussion of the functionallevels, or considerations, involved in systems engineering efforts:• systems engineering methods and tools, or technologies• a systems methodology, or process, as a set of phased activitiesthat support efforts to engineer the system, and• systems management.Fig. 1 illustrates the natural hierarchical relationship amongthese levels. Systems engineers are very concerned with each ofthese three functional levels. Products (and services) are engineeredthrough the use of an appropriate process, or processes.The tailoring of a process for use on a specific instance is accomplishedthrough systems management.