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12.09

By Steven F. Barrett, Ph.D., P.E.

To become a registered professional engineer, one must successfully complete the fundamentals of engineering (FE) examination, the professional engineering (PE) examination, and typically have four years of professional engineering practice (some minor variations exist from state to state, so check with your state licensing board for specific details).

The PE examination consists of 80 independent multiple choice questions and each has to be written by a licensed professional engineer. If you are a registered professional engineer, you can write a question for future exams. This article describes the vital role you can fill as a volunteer PE exam item writer.

Each question in the PE examination consists of a question stem, supporting information (e.g., diagrams, equations), and four answer choices. Of the answer choices, only one is correct. The remaining alternatives, called distracters, are incorrect responses that must be sensical. Distracters are alternatives representing common mistakes or misconceptions about exam question concepts. Furthermore, the exam items must be fair and straightforward. “Tricky” questions are not allowed and will be removed from consideration during the item review process.

Before a potential exam item enters the question bank for use on a practice examination or the actual PE exam, it goes through a gauntlet of reviews. Each potential examination item is independently reviewed and approved by three registered professional engineers on the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) examination writing committee.

I have served on the committee that writes and edits the PE examination for seven years. I consider it a great honor, and I hope to work on this committee for many years to come. The committee consists of approximately 20 registered professional engineers from industry and academia. We represent the different technical specialties within electrical and computer engineering. What we all have in common is a deep commitment and respect for our discipline and the registration process. We consider it our responsibility to construct fair and effective PE examinations that our fellow engineers will take. We write some of the exam item questions, and also edit those that are provided by other volunteers.

During the review process, each item is reviewed for clarity, grammar, technical correctness and perceived difficulty. Rejected potential examination items are returned to the author for possible rewrite. Once an examination item becomes a question on the exam, an external audit agency conducts a post-exam statistical analysis to ensure each examination question measures up under the scrutiny of impartial analysis.

Recently, the NCEES changed the format of the electrical engineering examination. For any examinations administered after April 2009, an examinee may choose to take an entire eight-hour, 80-question multiple-choice examination within the discipline specialties of power; computers; or electrical/electronics. The majority of the material covered in the existing morning breadth exam has been retained, but better partitioned into the appropriate sub-discipline specialties. This change was initiated in response to survey results from across the United States, and developed to better serve the professional engineering candidate. However, these exam changes require the development of additional exam items for the question bank.

NCEES needs you — licensed professional engineers — to write exam questions. From personal experience, I find it very rewarding to contribute to the development of the next generation of professional engineers. The NCEES also provides a $15 stipend for each volunteer submitted exam item that is approved and enters the question bank. If you are a PE and think you would like to participate in this very worthwhile activity, please indicate your willingness by completing the online NCEES volunteer form available at www.ncees.org/Exams/Volunteer_interest_form.php.

To learn more about licensure and registration, see:

• IEEE-USA’s Licensure and Registration Committee [www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/lrc/]

• The National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) [www.nspe.org]

• The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) [www.ncees.org]

Steven F. Barrett, Ph.D., P.E., is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming, and a member of IEEE-USA’s Licensure and Registration Committee.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.