ECEDHA ANNUAL MEETING

1
ECEDHA ANNUAL MEETING

• What Is/Isn't Working with ABET?
• How Can ECEDHA Help?
• March 21, 2009
• Chaouki T. Abdallah

2
The Divide

• External (ABET)
• Internal (department/school specific)
• I will address the internal part only when it can
  be generalized.

3
What Works Well? Internally

• Explain, Explain, Explain (Intent of ABET)
• Assigning leaders, giving credit, and staff
  resources.
• Engagement of certain faculty and groups
• If we dont know where we are, how can we get
  where were going?
• Tools (Web Site, databases).
• Self examination is always good

4
What works well? Externally

• Comparing (and contrasting) with other programs.
• Feedback from employers (outcome k)
• The Multidisciplinary and global team aspects
  (outcomes d,h)

5
What Does Not Work Well? Internally

• Process is tedious-despite numerous suggestions,
  it remains so.
• Buy-in by Faculty-despite obvious benefits,
  faculty reluctant to change or claim that they
  are already doing it.
• The process becoming the goal!
• Lack of support by administration-ABET is not
  understood outside of engineering.

6
What does not work well? Externally

• Variation between reviewers
• Moving the goal post- I heard that ABET has
  changed x
• Criterion 2 3 interplays-confusing at best
• The process becoming the goal-We can get ABET
  accredited but are we really getting better? (see
  Penn State study-Impact after 10 years)
• Divergence between Employers, Students
  Educators

7
Differences in Learning Outcomes Employers
Views

• Do NOT agree with Graduates (who noted
  improvements throughout)
• National employers see more improvements than
  local firms
• EC2000 a-k outcomes still important

8
What Changes Would Improve The Process?

• Different classes of accreditation
  (ECEDHA-external)
• Give (real) credit to faculty (Departments-interna
  l)
• Standardize expectations (ECEDHA-external)
• Include international component (ECEDHA-external)

9
Long Term

• Compare to the rest of the world.
• Borrow from US graduate schools practice
  success.