Assessing Overall Competence Of Faculty: Ec Criterion 5

ABET self-study directions require engineering departments to discuss the competence of their faculty. This paper describes the structure, content, and measurement characteristics of a Webbased Engineering Faculty Survey that addresses ABET requirements to assess “the overall competence of faculty.” The survey can also be used as a diagnostic to assess what individual and organizational factors are associated with teaching methods such as team-based design projects or use of traditional lecture and textbook problem sets. The Engineering Faculty Survey, developed for the NSF-funded ECSEL coalition, gathers information about individual demographic characteristics, industry and academic experience, sources and applications (education or basic research) of funding, publication productivity, teaching goals, selfassessment of skills, perceptions of rewards and resources available for teaching, and teaching methods. Analyses reveal contrasting sets of variables associated with the use of team-based design projects and traditional teaching methods.