A Workshop on ABET-EAC Accreditation Evaluation

The Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of ABET periodically make changes to its accreditation process 1,2,3,4 .A major change occurred in late 1990s when the general accreditation criteria containing seven (7) criterion and a program criteria, specific to a given engineering degree program, were developed and implemented in 2000 1 .The major elements of these criteria were Criterion 2-Program Educational Objectives and Criterion 3-Program Outcomes (a-k) and Assessment.In 2008-09 evaluation cycle, the title of Program Outcomes (PO) and Professional Components were changed to Student Outcomes (SO) and Curriculum, respectively.Also, the requirements for evaluation of PEOs and POs were removed from criteria 2 and 3 and became a part of requirements for an added Criterion 4-Contineous Improvement.During 2012-13 evaluation cycle, ABET-EAC, removed the requirement of evaluation of PEOs from Criterion 4-Continuous Improvement 1 .Also, since 2012-13 accreditation cycle, programs have not been required to demonstrate the attainment of the elements included in the specific Program Criteria 1 .After an extensive review process, from 2009 through 2017, the EAC of ABET modified criterion 3 (SOs) and Criterion 5 (Curriculum).The major changes included the replacement of SOs (a-k) by the new SOs (1-7) in Criterion 3, changes to criterion 5, and expanding the definitions of the terminologies used in the accreditation criteria 1,2,3 .The implementation of the new changes began in 2019-2020 ABET evaluation cycle 4 .Since 2019, there has been minor changes on the focus of evaluation for accreditation of engineering programs by program evaluators.