Consider the following:
Fresno State is conducting a class in engineering at the Lancaster University Center. This group of students meets after school and is learning by doing: they are building robots. The instructor deftly engaged the systems engineering process by asking, “what do you want these robots to do?” Her posing this question to the students as a team shifted their thinking from their individual goals to the first step of the process: constructing a vision of what they, as a group, wanted their system of robots to accomplish.

From this, an observation:
Systems engineering is something everyone does – it is a native process. Instinctively and immediately the students started doing “systems engineering” as a part of their projects. They floundered a bit, but their floundering, not dissimilar from the floundering that can bedevil projects in the “real” world, gave rise to a further observation: All successful projects follow the Systems Engineering process. Some of them follow it well. The others follow it eventually.

If you can, check out your local high school and is if there might be an opportunity to mentor and encourage the engineers of tomorrow.

A passing observation, courtesy of an old gray beard and a few of our engineers-to-be.