Accreditation Board Of Engineering And Technology Research Articles

Maintaining Petroleum Engineering Education To Support the Energy Mix of the Future

Once petroleum engineering was formally established as a degree program, the scope and content of curricula has been evolving to match technological advancements and soft skills requirements to meet the needs of the oil and gas industry. The cyclical nature of the industry has always presented a challenge to the enrollment and the viability of the degree. However, while having to tackle challenges relating to record-low enrollment over the past few years that is the direct result of the recent industry downturn, academic programs are also experiencing mounting pressure that is transforming the core identity of these programs. Much of that pressure can be directly linked to the heightened awareness around the impact of emissions on climate and the environment. While technological advancements in clean energy is contributing to an accelerated transition in the energy sector that is reducing the share of the energy market need fulfilled by fossil fuels, all of the projections point to oil and gas continuing to be a critical part of the energy market until at least 2050. When considering development and utilization of capture technology, the share of oil and gas in the energy market could continue to remain significant well beyond 2050. Meeting this demand requires maintaining high-quality petroleum engineering educational programs, hosted in thriving academic departments, educating a steady supply of a trained workforce with both undergraduate and advanced degrees. In addition, it requires diversifying the curriculum to continue to meet the ever-changing skillset needs of the energy industry and the requirements set by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). At the same time, the curriculum should continue to support the needs for a general education that targets a well-rounded graduate that is ready to be a critical thinker and an active participant in society, while also attempting to appeal to the new generations of college students and instilling in them the principles needed to secure the safe, sustainable, just, and responsible energy industry of the future. Petroleum engineering faculty are at the forefront of these challenges, trying to balance multiple competing demands while keeping up research and educational programs that continue to be relevant. In this article, we bring to light the perspective of the experts, across the globe, that over the past 5 decades educated and prepared the workforce that supported the oil and gas industry. These perspectives were collected using a survey probing what faculty members are experiencing regarding the impact of the energy transition on recruiting students and on strategic directions in academic programs, the impact on their ability to fund their research and train graduate students, and what the faculty need to maintain a curriculum that is relevant to the future careers of their students.

Soft Skills for Entry-Level Engineers: What Employers Want

Among the requirements for engineering programs, the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) criteria for student outcomes require students to have the ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences, recognize ethical and professional responsibilities, function effectively on a team, and apply new knowledge. A review of literature for skills comprised within these ABET criteria determined 26 topics necessary for the entry-level and continued success of engineers. Nearly 500 companies and organizations rated the importance and proficiency of their recent entry-level engineers for these 26 identified soft (professional) skills. The findings suggest that although entry-level engineers have proficiency in all of these ABET required skills, the entry-level engineers were not meeting the level of importance expressed by the organization for 24 of these 26 skills. A specific ABET required skill, the ability to communicate effectively with diverse groups of people, has the greatest difference between the level of proficiency and the level of importance. Analysis of variance was conducted using each of the demographic variables to determine the effect sizes in the ratings of importance, proficiency, and the differences between importance and proficiency. These results were shared with industry members to confirm the relevance of the survey findings during the pandemic. This survey research has implications for any university engineering department where students are seeking entry-level engineering positions after graduation.

The Academy, the Association, and the Society Advancing Environmental Engineering Training and Credentialing

As the lead society for environmental engineering and similarly named programs accredited by ABET (formerly the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology, Inc.), the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientist (the Academy) welcomes a conversation on the training and credentialing of environmental engineers. Faculty of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (the Association) and the Environmental Engineering Division of the American Society for Engineering Education (the Society) have a vested interest in this conversation. We encourage you to engage in this conversation and contribute your views as we refresh our shared definition of the environmental engineering body of knowledge and explore how our self-regulating process of licensure and credentialing may best protect the safety, health, and welfare of the public.

As Industry Changes, So Does Petroleum Engineering Education

As the oil and gas industry becomes increasingly complex, the requirements for petroleum engineers—and petroleum engineering education—are changing. “Petroleum engineering jobs in the future are likely to be smaller in number and radically different from those of today,” wrote Nathan Meehan, president of Gaffney, Cline and Associates and 2016 SPE President, in paper SPE•194746, The End of Petroleum Engineering As We Know It. “The next generation of petroleum engineers will have to address demands for sustainability, lower carbon intensity, and needs for radical productivity improvements, which only artificial intelligence (AI) and digital can drive. This suggests that we will need to revisit university education for petroleum engineers and all aspects of career development and•training.” Petroleum engineering education reflects the E&P industry it serves. Training of competent graduates with both the domain and digital knowledge to immediately contribute when they join the industry has become more complicated as expectations change. What are petroleum engineering schools doing to adapt to these changes, and how are they helping their students navigate a future career in the oil and gas industry? Balancing Theory and Practical Application A survey by Ryder Scott Petroleum Consultants identified the need to modify the skills and knowledge currently taught in academic institutions during undergraduate study. Ryder Scott surveyed clients who were industry managers or supervisors with direct experience with newly minted petroleum engineering graduates (fewer than 5 years of experience). The survey asked participants—engineering managers in the oil and gas reserves sector—their opinions regarding the preparedness of recent graduates entering the workforce (Fig. 1). Generally, the respondents were satisfied with the amount of theory being taught, but not with the amount of practical application of petroleum engineering principles. The consensus was that curricula should be kept the same in terms of courses, but modernized to include the practical application of new technologies. This presents a significant challenge for engineering education programs whose already-full curricula to meet requirements of the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) leave little room for additional coursework, labs, or field work. The current requirement for a BS degree in petroleum engineering at most schools is 130-plus credit hours. Yet, in addition to fundamentals, today’s graduates are expected to be fluent in data analytics, machine learning, and data sciences and to understand concepts such as cyber security and physical security. In addition, many are expected to use their subsurface engineering skills to plan and design carbon sequestration solutions. “We teach students the fundamentals of petroleum engineering,” said Jeff Spath, SPE 2014 President and head of the Texas A&M University Petroleum Engineering Department. “But more importantly, we teach them to solve petroleum engineering problems.”

An Integrated Academic Accreditation Program (IAAP)

In this paper, an integrated academic accreditation program (named IAAP) is developed. The main focus of this study was engineering education, and a case study of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at Taiz University (TU), Yemen was considered. The IAAP is developed by integrating two academic accreditation programs, the national program (Council of Accreditation and Quality Assurance: CAQA) and the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). A clause-by-clause comparison of the criteria of the two programs (CAQA and ABET) was applied to construct the IAAP. The developed program is applicable to any other engineering faculty in Yemen. An investigation of the capability of implementing the IAAP was conducted. The investigation process involved the six academic departments of the faculty under study. A weighing and scoring scheme was obtained for each element of the IAAP using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP).

An Analysis of Engineering Educational Standards and Outcomes Achieved by a Robotics Summer Camp Experience

Summer camps can be an effect method of encouraging children and teenagers to learn about career options and grow interest in careers for which there is a national shortage of young professionals, such as engineering. These camps can offer opportunities beyond what a normal school can offer, and achieve specific educational goals that would be difficult to realize in a traditional classroom setting. A robotics summer camp curriculum was developed in accordance with the age specific standards from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and the National Science Education Standards (NSES). To link this to the engineering skills that are developed in college, the resultant student experience was evaluated in the context of the engineering outcomes for a four year engineering degree defined by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). The robotics summer camp was evaluated for its effectiveness building a foundation and supporting the skills that a student should develop in a college engineering program. Pre and post tests were given and scored with a standard rubric. The questions were mapped to the specific ABET outcomes which best align with the goals of the summer camp. The test scores will show the degree of improvement in various areas of engineering and problem solving. The resulting data shows the strengths of the summer camp and identify areas that can be targeted for improvement, to make a larger impact on the attendees.

Aligning Engineering Design Education with Accreditation Requirements

This paper focuses on aligning engineering design with accreditation requirements in engineering education. To be an accredited curriculum, education programs must incorporate graduate attributes required by program accrediting professional bodies. Graduate attributes are the required benchmarks for students to attain their specific qualities and abilities within a higher education institute. Most higher education institutions identify a list of expected graduate attributes or outcomes that are incorporated in their educational programs to be accredited by an accrediting professional body such as Engineers Australia (EA), Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) in the United States, and the European Accreditation of Engineering Programs (EUR-ACE) in Europe. This paper evaluates the program educational objectives, student outcomes, assessment methods and evaluation of different undergraduate engineering programs. It assesses how engineering design is practiced and incorporated as an important element of the graduate attributes through project oriented design based learning curriculum aligned with professional accreditation requirements.

Quality Accreditation System for Indian Engineering Education Using Knowledge Management and System Dynamics

The engineering education system of India is becoming increasingly complex due to reasons like unmanageable numbers of colleges affiliated to universities, wide spectrum of student quality, multi-boss system in management and conflicting interests of stakeholders. Since the Accreditation board of engineering and technology (ABET) of U.S., Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) of U.S. and European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) of UK have been established; many other countries have developed their own version of national quality award (NQA) and accreditation systems. These NQAs and accreditation systems tend to follow the same general framework with different emphases on criterion. Since MBNQA has a prominent knowledge management (KM) component in it and EFQM has a strong mechanism of measuring outcomes/results, it’s attempted to develop a robust framework for Knowledge Quality Management (KQM) by integrating KM and outcome components into it using systems theory. The system dynamics (SD) approach is proposed for the visualization and analysis of quality assessment of undergraduate engineering education in India. Towards this, all possible attributes and indicators to study the interaction and interrelationship of various enablers and results have been identified. Causal loop diagrams (CLDs) and the integrated CLD for the entire proposed model enabling development of a system dynamics (SD) model is presented.

The Impact of EC2000 on Mechanical Engineering Curricula: A Follow-up Study

The Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) is recognized by the US Department of Education as the sole agency responsible for accreditation of educational programs leading to degrees in engineering, engineering technology, and related engineering areas. A new set of criteria for accreditation was established by ABET in the late 1990s, Engineering Criteria 2000 (EC2000). By 2001, all engineering programs were required to be accredited under the new criteria. The philosophy of EC2000 is to allow institutions and programs to define their mission and objectives to meet the needs of their constituents and enable program differentiation. Emphasis is placed on continuous improvement of programs based on the input of constituents and a process that links outcomes and assessment to program objectives. A preliminary study was conducted by the author in 2000 that looked at the initial effects of EC2000. It examined selected mechanical engineering programs to discern the impact of EC2000 on curriculum development during the initial implementation of the new criteria. Data on the mechanical engineering curricula at nine schools with PhD programs and nine schools without PhD programs were presented. This paper looks at changes since the original study. Current results are also compared with those from a study by Robert E. Mates from the State University of New York at Buffalo entitled a ‘Survey of Undergraduate ME Programs’, conducted in 1987.

Investigation of mechatronic education in South Korea

This paper presents diverse aspects of South Korean mechatronic education in an effort to provide the basis of constructing a more desirable educational system on mechatronics. For this purpose, an analysis of the curriculum of 15 universities with departments of mechatronics are presented. It can be said that, in South Korea, characteristics of mechatronic education is that independent organizations for Mechatronics are operated over 15 universities and their curriculum is evolved to adapt local industrial environments. Almost all of them are trying to meet the requirements of Accreditation Board of Engineering Education of Korea (ABEEK), which is very similar to Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) in the United States. Another distinguishing feature is that the National Qualification Test for Mechatronics is offered in South Korea. The problem to be solved in near future is that there are some conflicts between ABEEK requirements and National Qualification Test. The ratio of students from vocational high schools entering 4-year universities is increasing in South Korea. The same tendency can be found in Japan, and some universities are trying to offer preparation courses to provide basic knowledge on physics, mathematics and chemistry to them.

Electric Power Engineering Education Resources 2005–2006 IEEE Power Engineering Society Committee Report. The Power Engineering Education Committee (PEEC) Task Force on Educational Resources

This report is based on a survey of power engineering education resources in the U.S. and Canada similar to 12 earlier such efforts. This survey is conducted to determine the electric power engineering education resources available in Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET)-accredited engineering programs in the U.S. and Canada for the 2005-2006 academic year. The report is limited to colleges and universities that replied to a questionnaire on a voluntary basis. For the 125 colleges and universities (115 U.S., 10 Canadian) that submitted data on their power programs, the report contains a list of faculty active during the 2005-2006 academic year with academic participation and professional experience, each school's research area and funding levels, Ph.D. and M.S. student enrollment by type of support and by domestic versus international, and each school's power course offerings with enrollments and other data.

Integrating ethics in design through the value-sensitive design approach

The Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) has declared that to achieve accredited status, 'engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility.' Many engineering professors struggle to integrate this required ethics instruction in technical classes and projects because of the lack of a formalized ethics-in-design approach. However, one methodology developed in human-computer interaction research, the Value-Sensitive Design approach, can serve as an engineering education tool which bridges the gap between design and ethics for many engineering disciplines. The three major components of Value-Sensitive Design, conceptual, technical, and empirical, exemplified through a case study which focuses on the development of a command and control supervisory interface for a military cruise missile.

Multiple Case Studies to Enhance Project-Based Learning in a Computer Architecture Course

The IEEE/Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computing Curricula and the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) Evaluation Criteria 2000 emphasize the use of recurrent concepts and system design/evaluation through projects and case studies in the curriculum of Computer and Electrical Engineering. In addition, efficient teamwork, autonomy, and initiative are commonly required qualifications for a professional in this field. Project-based learning approaches that require the students to handle realistic case studies are adequate to pursue these objectives. However, these pedagogical approaches tend to be rejected because they promote deep learning but focus on a restricted set of concepts, whereas many engineering curricula require a broad range of concepts to be covered in each course. The introduction of multiple case studies carried out simultaneously in the same course by different teams of students can broaden the set of concepts studied, but collaboration at different levels must be strongly enforced to achieve effective learning. This paper describes a multiple-case-study project design that has been applied to a computer architecture course for four years. After systematically evaluating the experience, the authors conclude that students achieve a deep learning of the concepts required in their own case study, while they are able to generalize their knowledge to case studies of different characteristics from those considered during the course. Furthermore, a number of collaborative skills and attitudes are developed as a consequence of the proposed environment based on multiple levels of collaboration.

Electric Power Engineering Education Resources 2001–02 IEEE Power Engineering Society Committee Report

This report is based on a survey of power engineering education resources in the U.S. and Canada similar to 12 earlier such efforts. This survey is conducted to determine the electric power engineering education resources available in Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) accredited engi- neering programs in the U.S. and Canada for the 2001-02 aca- demic year. The report is limited to colleges and universities that replied to a questionnaire on a voluntary basis. For the 115 col- leges and universities (107 U.S., 8 Canadian) that submitted data on their power programs, the report contains a list of faculty active during the 2001-02 academic year with academic participation and professional experience, each school's research area and funding levels, Ph.D. and MS student enrollment by type of support and by domestic versus international, and each school's power course of- ferings with enrollments and other data.

An effective strategy for integrating ethics across the curriculum in engineering: an ABET 2000 challenge.

This paper describes a one-day workshop format for introducing ethics into the engineering curriculum prepared at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM). It responds to the ethics criteria newly integrated into the accreditation process by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). It also employs an ethics across the curriculum (EAC) approach; engineers identify the ethical issues, write cases that dramatize these issues, and then develop exercises making use of these cases that are specially tailored to mainstream engineering classes. The different activities and strategies employed in this workshop are set forth. Specific references are made to the cases and exercises developed as a result of these workshops. The paper ends by summarizing the different assessments made of the workshop by addressing the following questions: how did it contribute to the overall ABET effort at UPRM; could other universities benefit from a similar activity; and how did the participants evaluate the workshop?

Professional Registration of Geological Engineers in Canada

The registration and licensing of professional engineers, including geological engineers in Canada, is under the jurisdiction of the provincial and territorial governments, through self-regulating professional associations. Each association (Ordre in Quebec) through boards and committees, examines and admits qualified engineers to the association. Membership in an association permits practice of a professional engineer in the given province or territory. An applicant for membership in a professional engineering association/Ordre, is considered academically qualified if the applicant has graduated from an accredited Canadian engineering program. Accreditation of the programs is undertaken on a regular basis by the Canadian Accreditation Board (CAB) of the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE), a national federation of the 12 provincial and territorial associations. Applicants are also considered to be academically qualified if they are graduates of programs subject to an accreditation process equivalent to that of the CAB, and approved by the CAB. This includes through bilateral agreement, U.S. programs accredited by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). Those applicants who are not graduates of accredited programs, are generally assigned confirmatory or qualifying examinations. The CCPE provides a Uniform Syllabus of Examinations used by all the constitutent associations for these examinations. Registration requirements also include a specified two year period of North American and/or Canadian experience. Special provisions permit limited practice by non-residents. The accreditation process facilitates the mobility of professional engineers in Canada.