Program Outcome Assessment In An Industrially Sponsored Senior Capstone Course

ABET 2000 program criteria requires that student participate in a major design experience prior to graduation (criterion 4) and that programs demonstrate, using primarily direct measures of student performance, that all graduates have achieved the a-k program outcomes (criterion 3). The civil engineering capstone design program at Seattle University has developed, implemented and improved various assessment tools over the past several years to assess each of the a-k program outcomes. All constituents participated in the assessment process. The paper provides examples of the various assessment tools, discusses their effectiveness and how the feedback of the assessment is fed back to the students to keep them in the assessment loop. These assessments satisfied a-k program outcomes, benefited the students and provided valuable information to improve the program. The engineering program had a successful ABET visit in 2005.