On April 28, 2016, the IE Department organized a faculty meeting and formally announced the start of the preparation process for ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accreditation.

Founded in 1932, ABET aimed at the undergraduate programs in colleges and universities and accredited them by assessing of the following eight standards: students, program educational objectives, student outcomes, continuous improvement, curriculum, faculty, facilities and institutional support. ABET had accredited over 3,600 programs at more than 700 colleges and universities in 29 countries.

At the meeting, Prof. Kaibo Wang firstly introduced the significance of ABET accreditation and his expectation of IE Department’s accreditation work. He noted that centering on Educational Plan of the undergraduate program, ABET accreditation was helpful for professors to constantly make assessment, feedback and improvement of the student outcomes. The essence of ABET accreditation is continuous improvement, an effective method to improve the teaching effectiveness. Taking the opportunity of ABET accreditation, IE Department would standardized management and form positive mechanism so as to promote the further improvement of the undergraduate’ s educational level.

Faculty Meeting

Prof. Zheng Liu, Head of Teaching Committee of Chemical Engineering Department at Tsinghua University, was invited to share their experience on ABET preparation. As one of the first departments that passed ABET accreditation, the Chemical Engineering Department had accomplished a great deal of conscientious and rigorous work related to the accreditation. Prof. Liu specifically introduced their accreditation process and recognized that it had truly improved the teaching quality of the department.

Prof. Zheng Liu, Chemical Engineering Department

Then Prof. Liang Ma analyzed the current situation of IE Department and introduced the specific plan and schedule of the ABET accreditation work.

Prof. Liang Ma of IE Department

Prior to the conference, IE Department had set up the Student Education Consulting Committee and had made general discussions with alumni representatives and domain experts, from which the Department had received suggestions related to the Industrial Engineering undergraduate program curriculum, educational objective and student outcomes. The Conference marked that ABET accreditation of IE Department had been formally launched. In the following two years, all the faculty and staff of the Department would work together to re-construct the educational plan, improve the educational methods and standardize the procedure, striving to enable the undergraduate education to have a great-leap-forward development. 

Seminar of alumni and undergraduate focus group