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Session 1639

Impact of ABET 2000 on Teaching Engineering Economics: What Subjects Define Economic Literacy for Engineers?

Donald N. Merino, Ph.D., P.E. Stevens Institute of Technology

Abstract

This paper addresses a major assessment issue for those who teach engineering economics and related courses. That is, what subjects do we teach, how important are they and do they impact the ABET EC 2000 criteria. To determine these subjects, a list was developed that utilized previous ASEE/EE papers and a review of engineering economics texts. A survey was conducted of engineering graduates who work for companies that hire engineers, who started their careers as engineers and who have supervised engineers. The survey asked the respondents to rank the selected economics topics using a 1 - strongly disagree to 5 - strongly agree Likert scale.

Even though a broad set of subjects was chosen, all subjects had above average scores of more than 3.0/5.0, indicating that none of the major subjects were clearly eliminated. This result indicates that engineers need to know a broad set of subjects to achieve economic literacy.

Risk Analysis Fundamentals and Simulation Models were rated high, 4.0 and 3.7 respectively, although they are usually taught in more advanced engineering economics courses. The survey averages for more traditional topics such as Cost Estimation and Cost Accounting Fundamentals, 4.0 and 3.8, and Engineering Economics - Basic and Advanced - 3.9 and 3.5 were high, as expected. So, too, were the rankings for Fundamentals of Basic and Financial Accounting, 3.6 and 3.5.

I. Introduction

Meeting ABET EC 2000 requires a system of outcome assessments that meet a program and school’s educational goals and overall objectives and can be used to continuously improve the outcomes. One element of this interrelated system is the need to develop outcome assessments for all courses in the engineering curriculum. As a number of recent papers given at the ASEE/Engineering Economy Division have shown, Engineering Economics is taught with varying credits and with differing course subjects (Needy, 1999). Implementing outcome assessments requires identifying subjects in engineering economics as well as measures to ensure that all students have achieved competency in these subject areas.

It is hoped that this research will start a process that will result in a consensus of what constitutes economic literacy for engineers. A major thrust of this paper is to better define the body of knowledge for engineering economics and related topics. The survey topics and subtopics are included in Appendix A with the hope that other schools will add to the survey results.

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Merino, D. N. (2000, June), Impact Of Abet 2000 On Teaching Engineering Economics: What Subjects Define Economic Literacy For Engineers? Paper presented at 2000 Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. 10.18260/1-2--8433