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ASEE & ABET Interactions and Collaboration John A. Weese, Edwin C. Jones, and Sherra E. Kerns Texas A&M University, Iowa State University, and Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

ABSTRACT/INTRODUCTION ASEE and ABET have enjoyed cordial, cooperative interaction for seven decades. This paper describes ASEE’s historic interactions with the ABET Board of Directors, the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC), and the Technology Accreditation Commission (TAC), as well as the more recently established Applied Science Accreditation Commission (ASAC). Recent developments have brought to light new, mutually beneficial opportunities for collaboration between ASEE and ABET through more active ASEE involvement in the training and assigning of visitors to engineering and engineering technology programs that do not have traditional lead society sponsors. This paper describes the on-going developments as well as the opportunities these evolving new relationships may offer to ASEE members to provide valuable professional service to engineering and engineering technology education as program evaluators.

ASEE & ABET Interactions and Involvement ASEE was almost 40 years old when it and six other professional societies established ABET’s predecessor, the Engineers Council for Professional Development (ECPD) in 1932 [1]. ASEE has actively interacted with ABET ever since. ABET and ASEE are vitally interested in the quality of educational programs in engineering, engineering technology, computing, and applied science. The close degree of their interaction is exemplified by the fact that in the past decade two former presidents of ASEE, Win Phillips and Eleanor Baum, have also served as presidents of ABET. Training sessions for ABET evaluators are held regularly by other societies in connection with ASEE regional and national meetings, particularly since 1997 with the introduction of ABET’s EAC outcomes-assessment based Criteria EC2000. This relationship has expanded with ABET’s TAC introduction of the outcomes-assessment based Criteria 2K. ABET has been recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) since 1997 [1, 2].

There is an annual meeting of ABET and ASEE presidents and executive directors to discuss inter-society relationships and to explore new interactions beneficial to the professions served by the two organizations. These meetings have endorsed developing joint proposals to government agencies to fund in-depth faculty workshops focused on disseminating information about and practicing the application of the revised criteria.

Nature of ABET and Its Recent Developments While ABET and ASEE focus on the same educational programs, they are very different. ASEE has 12,000 individual members, 350 educational institution members, and a strong base of over 50 corporate memberships [3]. Financially, ASEE depends on member dues, and competitively won contracts to administer summer faculty programs and grants for special studies about educational programs. ASEE publishes the monthly magazine Prism, the archival Journal of Engineering Education, and the data-rich directory Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges. ASEE has an executive director and the headquarters staff in Washington, DC, numbers about fifty persons. ASEE has over 40 divisions, councils and constituent

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Kerns, S., & Jones, E., & Weese, J. (2005, June), Asee & Abet Interactions & Collaboration Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15236