Track: Engineering Education

Abstract

Many academic institutions outside the United States have become an ABET accredited programs over the past decade, and many more are expressing interest in becoming one. Alike their counterparts in the United States, ABET-accredited engineering programs must maintain and adapt curricula, student outcomes and educational objectives that reflect and respond to the needs of industry and the engineering discipline seeking accreditation. For engineering programs with little prior knowledge about ABET and its requirements, including defining the program constituencies, collecting data and acquiring systematic feedback, and interpreting outcomes are often challenging.  Although a large number of engineering programs outside of the United States established an advisory board for their respective programs, there are not many reports published to show how the programs have capitalized on and benefited from the wealth of knowledge and experience collectively exist in this group. 

The Petroleum Engineering Program at Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) recently conducted a survey and collected information for its Advisory Board.  The Petroleum Engineering Advisory Board comprises of nineteen members with high visibility and prominent leadership positions in their respective organizations.  This papers reports on the data collected through this survey and key suggestions made by this distinguished group of leaders to further improve the program’s impacts.