Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Department contributes to the First Handbook for its Domain

Emerging disciplines often have a serious identity problem: What exactly belongs to the discipline? What is the core knowledge? Who are the go-to-guys in case of problems? In order to answer these questions, the academic answer is the creation of a Body of Knowledge. The academic community understands this body as a comprehensive and concise representation of concepts, terms, and activities that make up a professional domain. For established domains, journals collect and archive this knowledge. Again, emerging disciplines have the challenge to identify and/or set up the infrastructure. That is why handbooks that summarize the main core components of the body of knowledge are so important.

Engineering Management is such an emerging discipline. The American Society for Engineering Management established a body of knowledge index with the help of several ODU experts. It was therefore only natural to ask faculty members of the only recently awarded department to support writing the first Engineering Management Handbook as well. The editors for the handbook asked four ENMA faculty members - supported by two NCSOSE researchers - to write three of the chapters that capture the core topics of Engineering Management education:

• Andreas Tolk contributed the chapter on "Simulation."
• C. Ariel Pinto contributed the chapter on "Risk Management."
• Charles Keating, Behnido Calida, Andres Sousa-Poza and Samuel Kovavic contributed the chapter on "Systems Thinking."

With this contribution, Old Dominon University continued to establish ENMA as a leading department for Engineering Management in the nation.