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Session 2255

Cal Poly Engineering Assessment Center - How It Works

Kena Burke, Paul E. Rainey College of Engineering, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Abstract The eleven engineering programs at Cal Poly had their accreditation visit during the fall of 2002, using the EC 2000 Criteria. The assessment efforts are reviewed, including the formation and working of the Cal Poly Engineering Assessment Committee and the initiation of the Cal Poly Engineering Assessment Center. The Engineering Assessment Center (EAC), consisting of a full-time coordinator and student employees, works with faculty program representatives to coordinate and support their assessment efforts. The EAC is committed to excellence in all aspects of assessment practices and processes, paying particular attention to accuracy and timeliness. The EAC initiates and records quarterly forms for faculty and chairs and thus minimizes the impact upon program faculty and the staff in eight departmental offices. A primary purpose of the Engineering Assessment Office is to provide sustainability to the assessment process. The formation, funding, and daily activities of the Cal Poly Engineering Assessment Office are discussed.

Introduction In 1996, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) adopted an accreditation method that emphasizes individual engineering program outcomes assessment. The most significant change of the new engineering criteria, EC 2000,1 is the accountability and responsibility placed upon faculty for measuring the success of their own program. Initially, EC 2000 impressed the already taxed engineering program faculty as a burdensome process. Knowing that being accredited was directly related to faculty involvement in this self-assessing, continuous improvement process added even more stress to a process that had not yet been fully established. This unknown process was facilitated at the local level with minimum disruption and reached its culmination during the fall 2002 ABET visit.

Beginning in the spring of 1998, orientation workshops and organizational meetings were held to present the new process to faculties and department chairs. To help establish the new process, in the fall of 1998 the Engineering Assessment Committee was formed, which consisted of faculty representatives from Computer Science, each of the nine accredited engineering programs in the College of Engineering, and BioResource and Agricultural Engineering from the College of Agriculture. The Architectural Engineering program in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design decided not to participate in this committee.

Because of the iterative nature of the assessment process it was imperative that the process begin, even though some of the parameters were not fully defined. Therefore, the Associate Dean of Engineering established the Engineering Assessment and Accreditation Center in November

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

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Burke, K., & Rainey, P. (2003, June), Cal Poly Engineering Assessment Office How It Works Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--11490