Previously in this series, I’ve summarized the why and what (content & outcomes) for engineering program accreditation. Let’s finish up with how it all works; what does an engineering program have to do to be accredited according the the criteria discussed previously?

First of all, the frequency. Engineering programs are accredited for at most 6 years (sometimes less if there are some concerns raised by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board, CEAB). So every 6 years the cycle described below is repeated for every engineering program in Canada (although not all in the same year!). For new engineering programs the cycle doesn’t start until the first students are graduating.

1. The institution requests CEAB to assess or re-assess their engineering programs. Often, they try to do all the programs at the same time to save on time and effort.
2. A visiting team is put together for each program, consisting of professional engineers familiar with that discipline. Typically there is a mix of faculty from other universities and people from industry.
3. The institution puts together a tremendous pile of documentation for each program, which is sent to the visiting teams. This documentation provides evidence in support of each program’s content and outcomes described in the previous posts. The materials often include:
   • Overall descriptions of each program, the structure, required and elective courses
   • Descriptions of how admissions to the programs are handled (I had to deal with this in the past)
   • Descriptions of facilities, student supports, etc. at the program level and higher.
   • Financials for the programs, including investments in facilities and student support.
   • Details on faculty, who teaches what courses, and whether they are licensed engineers.
   • Details on each course in the program, its content, who teaches it, the course learning outcomes, how the outcomes are evaluated, typical class averages, and typical failure rates.
   • Evidence for how the program meets the content criteria
   • Evidence for how the program meets the expected accreditation outcomes
   • Evidence and results for how the program continuously gathers feedback from graduates and industry to help implement continuous improvement of the program.
4. The visiting teams review the documentation in advance, and then spend about 3 days at the institution to review the programs, facilities, personnel, in person. This will typically include:
   • Interviews with students in each program
   • Interviews with faculty teaching each program
   • Interviews with the Dean and various other administrators for programs and the university
   • Tours of the teaching facilities, labs, student workspaces, etc.
   • Examination of teaching materials, such as course syllabi, textbooks, course notes, examples of student work such as assignments, reports and exams (both good and bad, but anonymous), projects completed by students, student transcripts (anonymous).
5. After the visit, the teams compile reports which are sent to the CEAB for final decisions about whether accreditation will be granted, and/or for how long (i.e. 6 years, or less). The institution gets a copy of the reports and can respond to any inaccuracies in the report, or any weaknesses highlighted by the teams. These responses are also considered by CEAB before their final decision.

Ideally, the program gets a 6 year accreditation if there are no major concerns raised by CEAB. Then, after 6 (or whatever) years, the whole cycle starts again. At Waterloo, it’s an ongoing process during the 6 year period to continuously gather information that will be needed for the next accreditation cycle, so it never really ends. For example, when I teach a course I have to map the course content to the expected accreditation outcomes.

So, accreditation is a huge undertaking requiring a lot of documentation, information-gathering, planning, and visitor scheduling. This involves a lot of faculty and staff hours, and there are staff positions in Engineering that are largely dedicated to this process. I’ve never seen an estimate for how much this costs the Engineering programs, but I imagine it’s not cheap! Another factor that leads to engineering being a more expensive program to deliver, and so having higher tuition rates for students.

In this series I’ve covered why accreditation of engineering programs is important, and what the programs should contain. However, it’s not enough to just have the right program content. The programs have to also achieve a long list of “outcomes”, meaning that students graduating from the programs should have the following attributes:

• Engineering knowledge base: competence in math, sciences, engineering fundamentals, and discipline-specific knowledge.
• Problem analysis: ability to use the knowledge to solve engineering problems and make substantiated conclusions.
• Investigation: ability to approach complex problems using experiments, data analysis, and synthesis of information.
• Design: ability to meet goals and make decisions for complex, iterative and open-ended problems using all the tools available, including health & safety, sustainability, economic and other constraints.
• Use of engineering tools: ability to create, select or extend techniques and methods to solve problems, while understanding the limitations of these tools. This is often software & calculational tools, but can include other stuff.
• Individual and team work: ability to work as a member and leader in teams, preferably multi-disciplinary.
• Communication skills: ability to communicate complex engineering concepts to other engineers and the broader society. Includes reading, writing, speaking, listening, comprehending and writing effective reports & design documentation.
• Professionalism: understanding the roles & responsibilities of professional engineers, especially in protecting the public.
• Impact of engineering on society and the environment: understanding the interactions between engineering and societal effects such as economics, health & safety, legal, cultural, sustainability, environmental.
• Ethics and equity: ability to apply professional ethics, accountability and equity.
• Economics and project management: incorporating economics and business practices, including project, risk and change management, and knowing the limitations.
• Life-long learning: ability to identify and address personal educational needs to maintain competence in the field.

So everyone graduating from an engineering program should have achieved these attributes at some reasonable level, recognizing that they are just beginning a career and will continue to develop skills. In the next post, we’ll look at the actual accreditation process and how programs have to demonstrate that they have the right content and that their graduates have all the required attributes.