Congratulations on almost graduating with an MSSE degree!
In addition to the regular coursework, the graduate School requires a final exam that covers breadth and integration of material in the field. The culminating experience is how the Department determines whether a student has sufficient mastery of the material to earn an MSSE. This page describes what you need to know about it.
The culminating experience is intended to assess the student's capability to integrate topics from multiple courses into a cohesive solution. Students should prepare a 20-30-minute presentation of a real-world problem where they can apply the knowledge gained from their courses. The presentation should describe the problem, why it is important to be solved, and the avenues that the student would pursue to solve it. A successful presentation integrates knowledge from at least three courses on the student's Program of Study. At least one of these three courses must include systems modeling (ME EN 6166 Model-Based Systems Engineering or ME EN 6183 Discrete Event Systems Simulation). This presentation should demonstrate the student's mastery of the individual course material, as well as the synergistic integration of this knowledge to the real-world.
The culminating experience must occur in the semester you plan to earn the MSSE degree. The approximate dates are after the last day of finals from the semester before and the last day of classes in the graduating semester. This exam is scheduled by emailing both Todd Easton and Pedro Huebner to schedule the experience. An examiner and time will then be assigned.
A week before the culminating experience, the student should email the examiner their slides (click here for a sample). The examiner then provides some initial feedback to guarantee that the student is reasonably prepared. The examiner will provide a Zoom link or schedule a physical room for the exam to take place,.
The day before the examination, the student should email the examiner with a final copy of the slides.
If the examiner determines that the person has passed, then the Supervisory Committee agrees, and the person has completed this requirement for the MSSE.
If the examiner decides that the student did not pass, then two additional examiners will listen to the students culminating experience presentation again, still in the same semester. If both examiners vote to pass, then the student has passed with a vote of 2 to 1. If either of these people vote not to pass, then the student failed the culminating experience with at least two negative votes. Rules for the number of retakes and time between retakes is established by the Graduate School and those will be strictly followed. This could potentially lead someone to not graduating with their MSSE, but the hope is that situation will never occur.
Examples
Example 1
Example 2