First-time accreditation: Lessons learned from the ABET accreditation process

Abstract

As the faculty from the new Industrial Engineering Program at Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMUC) prepared for its first-ever program accreditation assessment from the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), the self-study team was able to create a thorough and effective plan to assess the processes used in the new IE Program. The internal assessment team, comprised of three tenure-track faculty members and assisted by various internal and external stakeholders, was able to create a well-structured self-study document which helped us better understand the need for continuous improvement processes across the educational system and to identify sources of data needed to verify the progress being made toward our stated goals and objectives. Another element of the self-study and site visit preparation process was to document results from various program constituents to help insure that Program Educational Objectives (PEOs) were being satisfied, as required by the accrediting body. Several tools were used throughout the selfstudy to identify course-level competencies (IECCs) that were then mapped to IE program-level outcomes (IEPOs) and finally to the stated program PEOs. Throughout the self-assessment process, feedback was collected and information was solicited from four basic sources, specifically: 1) Internal Informal sources, 2) Internal Formal sources, 3) External Formal sources, and 4) External Informal sources. This paper describes the processes used and corresponding results of the ABET Site Visit completed in October. A sample of the graphical tools used to identify, track, collect, analyze, and report various outcomes as they relate to recent graduates of our new IE Program will also be provided. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2006.