David Kent, Milwaukee School of Engineering
Blank Line
In their 2008 book entitled Designing Better Engineering Education Through Assessment, Joni Spurlin, Sarah Rajala and Jerome Lavelle have a chapter on the Future of Assessment. Authored by Mary Besterfield-Sacre and Larry Shuman, the chapter argues that engineering education assessment will be “entering into a new period focused on student learning that is analogous to industry’s current period of ‘Building Quality into Products and Processes.'” Besterfield-Sacre and Shuman further maintain that “We also see ABET expanding the current minimum set of outcomes. For example, it is clear to us, and an increasing number of national experts and engineering ethicists, that engineers must consider the wider, long-term ramifications of their professional decisions…Thus we see Criterion 3.f, ‘an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility,’ being expanded to consider the impact of engineering solutions on the society at risk. ” Besterfield-Sacre and Shuman further predict: “We also see innovation and sustainability being added as outcome criteria. The growing recognition of the earth’s limited resources and the consequent need to create sustainable alternatives will require engineers to take new approaches to the design of products and systems…As interest grows, we anticipate a point at which sustainability will be a routine design constraint. Another change will be the inclusion of innovation…To retain our competitive edge and standard of living, we will need to produce engineers who are more creative and who routinely think outside the box.” My presentation will expand the argument that sustainability and innovation should indeed be added as ABET outcome criteria. Using examples such as the work of the Kern Entrepreneurial Education Network (KEEN), I will argue that sustainability and innovation belong in any expansion of the ABET outcome criteria.