Standards For New Educators: Guide To Abet Outcomes And Standards Availability In Libraries

Engineering educators worked with standards in industrial and research careers. Many faculty members use standards in their research and teaching. Awareness of standards may develop in a variety of ways including reading and writing dissertations, journal articles, conference papers, and handbooks. References to standards are also prevalent in bibliographic databases, and campus websites. Faculty members often expose students to standards in laboratory exercises throughout their college careers. These subtle opportunities are documented in the paper. ABET criterion and outcomes used to evaluate engineering and engineering technology programs now emphasize the use of standards, especially in the design process. This is a new challenge for the engineering educator. Given that new engineering educators teach their students about standards, it is necessary to become familiar with available information that may help students as well as typical best practices for academic libraries. Acquiring access to standards is the first step in using standards. The next step is to acquire skill and learn how to critically read and apply them. The literature review includes definitions and two book recommendations as well as best practices papers outlining the library’s role in standards collections. The literature survey describes these papers including practices related to building collections, survey results, and local database creation.. Two surveys of “top engineering schools” and 35 university libraries that are members of the Association for Research Libraries (ARL) are discussed. The paper also includes standards education materials that may be helpful as engineering educators teach students the basics. A historic case study on hose couplings is a good starting place. Case studies are a solid way to introduce standards. Accuracy is very important in case studies. It is more work to research a historical example but it unravels the truth. Typical descriptions of historical standards are incomplete. Casual references that feed inaccuracy to the next generation of engineers do no one any favors. Brief modern day examples are also presented and standards are used by faculty, staff, and students. There is a strong need for more educational materials. Standards organizations have prepared some materials but the materials vary in quality. Materials from several standards educational organizations and major standards development organizations are included. [This departs from previous incomplete versions of the abstract.].