More than Advice: Increasing Industry Advisory Board Member Involvement

Many engineering programs only involve their advisory board members in scheduled meetings, with a result that their participation and impact on these programs are limited. The objective of this paper is to examine one program’s approach to increasing and leveraging members’ impact beyond these meetings and into other areas of the curriculum and beyond. A basic premise underlying this program’s approach was that offering more ways for industry advisory board members to become involved would in fact lead to increased involvement. Specific practices reviewed in this paper include advisory board member participation in courses and laboratories, capstone courses, accreditation, student organizations, student competitive teams, and faculty development. Through this examination of the program’s efforts, other engineering educators will be able to build upon their successes and avoid some of their difficulties while involving their industry advisory board members in other ways.