In just a month, our campus will play host to a group of evaluators who will make decisions vital to the future of our campus and our graduates. October 21-24, visitors from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, or ABET, will interview faculty, students, and staff to determine whether or not Rose-Hulman’s engineering programs will continue to be accredited. A faculty forum was held Tuesday to prepare professors for the visit.

Art Western, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of the Faculty, and Professor of Physics and Optical Engineering, hosted the meeting. “To our graduates,” he said, “graduating from an accredited program is very important indeed.” If graduates don’t come from an accredited program, they need years of work experience before getting engineering licenses, if it is possible at all. Additionally, many graduate school programs require applicants to come from accredited programs.

Patricia Brackin, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and ABET evaluator, helped explain the accreditation process. Rose-Hulman’s academic departments have already submitted “self-study questionnaires”, and the next step is a campus visit. One evaluator will visit campus to evaluate each department, interviewing every faculty member and groups of students.

Fred Berry, Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and ABET evaluator, explained what sorts of questions will be asked in the interviews. Faculty members will at least be asked about the information on their programs’ self-study questionnaires, while students will be asked more general questions. Still, Berry said, one thing students can do to help is to ask their professors about their departments’ Objectives and Outcomes so that they know the basics about their educational goals.

Kevin Sutterer, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, had advice for professors reviewing their departments’ self-study questionnaires. Telling professors to read the documents, he explained, is like telling students to read the text. Perfect memorization isn’t expected, but faculty members should at least know the basic outline of the content.

The final decision, Berry explained, is made by a large assembly of evaluators in June and early July. Kay Dee, Associate Professor of Applied Biology and Biomedical Engineering, gave more detail. The candidate schools are sorted according to evaluators’ judgments of quality, and then cutoff points are chosen to separate institutions into categories of quality. The best schools will have their accreditation renewed for six years, while departments which have minor issues may only receive a three-year renewal. Some departments may only be given a one-year period before the next assessment, and some may lose their accreditation. Regardless of the renewal period, all accredited colleges are afterward considered on equal footing; indeed, schools are not allowed to mention their renewal period in any official publications.

“Rose-Hulman has always been about assessment,” Dee said. Some Rose-Hulman programs have been accredited by ABET since 1936.

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