|
04.09
Engineering
Accreditation and Industry/Government Engineers
By Ken Cooper
Engineering program
accreditation in the United States is done by
ABET. The
process is to evaluate each program seeking
accreditation against a published set of
criteria. The programs document a self
evaluation and a team identified by ABET uses
the self evaluation as a basis to perform an
independent evaluation. The evaluation teams are
made up of volunteers from the engineering
societies which are members of ABET.
At the present time, IEEE is
responsible for evaluating more programs than
any other ABET member society. Therefore, IEEE
needs more volunteers than any other society to
support the accreditation activity. The
selection, training, evaluation, and management
of the program evaluators is the responsibility
of the IEEE Educational Activities Board.
The accreditation evaluation
teams are made up of a team chair and a program
evaluator for each program seeking
accreditation. The IEEE is responsible for
providing a program evaluator for each program
for which it is designated the lead society. The
IEEE is also responsible for providing a number
of team chairs to support the accreditation
evaluation visits.
The IEEE classifies program
evaluators as either academic or
industry/government. The committee responsible
for selecting program evaluators has attempted,
with a reasonable degree of success, to maintain
a 50/50 split between academic and
industrial/government program evaluators.
The participation of academia in
program accreditation is obvious. The
participation of industry/government is not, and
as a result, recruiting industry/government
engineers to be program evaluators has been
difficult. IEEE is seeking industry/government
engineers with an interest in program
accreditation to serve as program evaluators.
The basis for the decision to
involve industry/government engineers as program
evaluators is that industry/government is, by a
wide margin, the primary customer for all
programs. A strong representation of the
customer base among the evaluators is an
essential component for continued vitality in
engineering accreditation.
IEEE members with a strong
interest in engineering education should
consider volunteering to be a program evaluator.
Program evaluators get a broad view of
engineering education, with opportunities to see
different approaches to meeting the
accreditation criteria. Evaluators will gain
familiarity with a wide range of program types
and locations, as well as cross-disciplinary
interactions. Evaluators meet and network with
people with a keen understanding and
appreciation of engineering education.
And through your participation,
your company will have a better understanding of
the accreditation criteria for engineering
education and the implications of the criteria
reflected in individual programs. Your
familiarity with the wide range of program types
offered, as well as the cross-disciplinary
interactions involved in programs, will help in
targeting hiring to address specific needs. You
and your company will have a better
understanding of what to expect from new
graduates and thus be better able to identify
the additional training required for new hires
to be successful.
Your involvement as a program
evaluator will require a time commitment on your
part. The normal campus visit is from noon on
Sunday until late afternoon on Tuesday. You will
normally be asked to arrive on Saturday so that
the team will be ready to go on Sunday. There
may be a kickoff meeting on Sunday morning. Once
the visit starts, you will be busy until the
exit meeting on Tuesday afternoon.
There is preparation before the
visit. In fact, the effort put in on preparing
for the visit really determines the success of
the visit. The preparation time takes between 20
and 40 hours over a two- to three-month period.
The time required after the
visit is minimal. The maximum would be five
hours over a four-month period.
You will be well prepared before
you go on a visit and well supported before,
during and after the visit. ABET has a formal
training program which consists of pre-work and
a one and one-half day training session. For
this training session, IEEE will provide a
mentor to assist you through the process. In
addition, IEEE provides experienced program
evaluators to assist you in preparing for a
visit and during the visit if necessary. Each
visit team has a team chair assigned by ABET and
they are also available to assist you with the
visit. The evaluation process emphasizes team
decisions, so you will also have the support of
your evaluation team.
If you are interested, and we
certainly hope many of you are, contact
IEEE Educational Activities and they will
get you started.
Ken Cooper is an IEEE Life
Senior member, and a member and past chair of
the IEEE Committee on Engineering Accreditation
(CEAA), which coordinates the IEEE's
participation in ABET's accreditation program.
Comments on this article may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
|
E-mail
this page to a friend
