Assessment Process: A View From The Trenches

This paper presents some of the hurdles that the engineering technology programs at Youngstown State University struggled with during the reaccreditation process and are still refining. With less formal direction from TAC-ABET as to what they are focusing on or require for accreditation, it took several iterations along with networking with other institutions to gather insight and suggestions just to begin to understand the depth and breadth of the assessment process and its impact on department resources. Starting at the beginning of the process and continuing through the revisions and the ongoing refinement. The topics discussed include; what to assess and how to assess the criteria identified; development of the assessment rubrics; decisions on how to collect the data; restructuring courses to cover topics that need to be assessed; revising the rubrics and data collection to gather meaningful data; and development of a sustainable internal assessment process. Issues generated from the managing of the ongoing assessment efforts on workload and strategies for developing a sustainable assessment and evaluation process for a multi-program engineering technology department are considered.