At the Annual Meeting held in San Diego, CA, March 22 - 26, 1996, the NEEDHA membership expressed an opinion that NEEDHA should help its members deal with the new ABET Engineering Criteria 2000. These criteria, to be introduced into the accreditation process between 1996 and 2001, are designed to foster educational innovations by universities. However, the criteria are radically different from current ABET criteria and as a result many NEEDHA members felt themselves in need of guidance.
These criteria are supplemented by program criteria developed by the member societies. The Program Criteria for Electrical, Computer, and Similarly Named Engineering Programs (revised March 8, 1997) are being developed by the IEEE EAB Committee on Engineering Accreditation Activities (CEAA). IEEE is also responsible for the Program Criteria for Bioengineering and Similarly Named Engineering Programs (revised February 3, 1997).
Criteria 2000 call for programs to be evaluated according to assessments of their effectiveness. Universities must demonstrate that their graduates have certain skills. It is no longer adequate to document the courses in a program.
In August 1996, the NEEDHA Board decided to appoint a committee to study the criteria and report back during the March 1997 Annual Meeting. In September 1996, the following ad hoc committee was appointed:
The members of NEEDHA desire to assist in the implementation of "ABET Criteria 2000" for Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and similar programs. These new criteria represent a bold step away from detailed, prescriptive standards to a system involving performance objectives, outcomes assessment, and a mechanism which modifies and improves the curriculum based on data from the outcomes assessment. Given our involvement in, and responsibility for, undergraduate EE and CompE programs, department heads are in a unique position to assist in developing methods for outcomes assesment and in implementing the data collection, report writing, and visit process. All of these will require extensive modification from the present format of ABET program evaluation.
The NEEDHA Criteria 2000 Committee is charged to:
- Propose specific data to be collected and the methods for data collection and evaluation which enable assessment of all of the outcomes stated in Criteria 2000. This will include schedules with respect to student progress through the program (i.e., years 1-4, at graduation, post-graduation).
- Propose data to be collected and formatted appropriately for ABET evaluation visits under the new criteria. This will no doubt represent much of the same raw data as in item 1, with perhaps different aggregation and reportiang formats.
- Propose a new version of the "ABET Volume II" self-study report which reflects both the content and the spirit of Criteria 2000. It may also be appropriate to recommend a new Institution-wide "Volume I" reflecting the changes in general education criteria and the fact that many of the new engineering criteria involve aspects outside the technical discipline.
- Propose guidelines to ABET visitors and, if appropriate, forms and other aids for their use in conducting the visit with respect to the new criteria.
The committee reported at the NEEDHA Annual Meeting held in Orlando, FL, March 14 - 18, 1997. The presentation material that was used in this report is available.
An extra session was held at which NEEDHA members were invited to comment on the new criteria. It soon became evident that the criteria were seen by at least some members in a threatening way. The NEEDHA Board decided to expand the membership of the committee by adding four of its own members to the committee:
Also, the program for the morning of the last day, March 18, was altered by the addition of a special brainstorming session, in which NEEDHA members listed several techniques that might be considered to document the effectiveness of their programs. The results of this brainstorming were placed on the NEEDHA Web site by the end of the day.
The committee held a workshop April 13-14, 1997 in Nashville, TN. John Orr reported to the NEEDHA membership the results of that meeting, in the form of a list of proposed activities of the committee.
In response to a request from Paul Penfield for surveys or other instruments used by any NEEDHA members to document outcomes, the following have been received in electronic form:
Other suggestions have been received by members:
In December, 1997, the ECEDHA Committee on Accreditation Issues established the Web-based Accreditation Resource Sharing Site for materials related to accreditation under the new ABET Engineering Criteria 2000. This resource is being maintained by Gregg Vaughn, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and is a joint project of ECEDHA and the Southeast Association of Electrical Engineering Department Heads (SAEEDH). ECEDHA members are encouraged to send to Prof. Vaughn, <gvaughn@uab.edu>, in electronic form, their goals and objectives, and their survey instruments.