We have begun to outline a strategic plan—we’ve dubbed it our “roadmap”—to accomplish our ambitions and secure a more well-rounded and complete scope of education for students pursuing a Bachelors degree in Engineering.

I: Our Letter to ABET

To secure the attention of the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET), and to begin the conversation on the necessity of implementing accessible education on engineering failures, the EFE campaign intends to formulate a letter to the President of ABET that requests that ABET implement the necessary accreditation requirements necessary to meet that objective.

This letter will come from a coalition of deans of ABET-accredited engineering schools throughout the US. The letter will recommend modifying an existing student outcome.

This letter––signed by at least twenty-five (hopefully many more) deans of the nation’s 200+ ABET-accredited schools––will have three appendices. These three appendices that will accompany the letter are useful because it’s well understood that ABET generally resists making changes to accreditation criteria.

• A list of engineers and experts nationwide in support;
• A list of nationwide organizations, societies, NGOs, nonprofits, agencies, etc who have submitted letters in support; and,
• a list of citizens-at-large nationwide in support. The online petition can be seen here.

<aside> <img src="/icons/suspension-bridge_gray.svg" alt="/icons/suspension-bridge_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Student Outcome 4 currently reads:

…an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts.

The letter will suggest this be modified to:

…an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts and must demonstrate awareness of past engineering failures.

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II: Coordinating with ABET

In addition to a large showing of broad, diverse national support, we also envision coordinating the campaign with an ongoing informal initiative to address the current lack of regularly scheduled updates to ABET’s accreditation criteria.

This lack of scheduled updates has previously been observed by engineering scholars. Coordination with this initiative is necessary, because ABET also resists piecemeal changes to its accreditation criteria.

The leader of this initiative has not been identified yet. Thus, our letter to the president of ABET will request that our recommended change to Student Outcome 4 be implemented in conjunction with the next scheduled criteria update.