MEETING OF ABET COORDINATORS

March 1, 2000

9:00 AM, 355 Loew Hall

Attendees

Cindy Atman (IE); Janice Henderson (Dean's Office); and more.

Discussion 

1. Setting up a team of presenters (or a presenter) for ABET presentation at the CoE Spring Faculty meeting (scheduled for May 18, 3:30 - 5:00 PM). The team should talk about what the CoE is doing together for ABET. This will also be an opportunity to say what ABET is. The group felt that people already know what's happening in their dept, thus the discussion should focus on college level activities. Suggested presenters were: Writing (Carolyn Plumb), Evaluation (Christie), and Co-op & roundtable alumni team (Lorena). It was suggested that Mani present or he could select one of the ABET coordinators to present. The theme should be "College Role in ABET" with Mani and Frank Ashby as presenters.
2. ABET ethical and social impact assessment: how do we approach it? (Continuing from last meeting). Molly Johnson gave the group a written outline of the ideas that were presented at the last meeting. The discussion raised numerous diverse issues and topics (given below). The two major summarizing points at the conclusion of the discussion were:
   1. We need to Define the problem, or better understand the situation: * Does a problem exist? If so, what is it?
   2. It was generally agreed that ethics and social responsibility should show up at multiple places in the undergraduate experience.

Action Items

• Teach ethics in a lecture.
• Create a college-wide ethics policy.
• Focused/integrated in department curriculum. Tom Stoebe teaches a 1 credit required seminar. Seminar could cover a variety of topics.
• Get course coordinator actively involved.
• Collect samples and look for evidence that outcomes are being covered.
• Incorporate ethics in a capstone design course, or present ethics at several points in the student's undergraduate study.
• Should teaching ethics be only the department's responsibility? Should there be a required ethics course? Perhaps CoE should require a 1 credit ethics course early in the major. Every department would offer a course. Maybe a 3 credit course for upper-class students. Teaching this course could be unpleasant because most students may feel it is a waste of time and attend only for the credit.
• Rose Hulman uses a portfolio for students to show evidence of what they have learned and experienced. If this isn't linked to a course, the responsibility would be on the advisers.
• Students may already be doing ethics in some of the VLPI courses. Access to the courses could be a problem.
• ENGR333 classes that are linked to a capstone course could be used with a writing component to analyze the effectiveness of the ethics courses.
• Students already have a fundamental understanding of ethics. There needs to be a cross connection with other departments.
• Assessment of ethics could be incorporated in the Co-op survey of students that have graduated and who are now in industry.

Meeting Adjourned.

Minutes prepared by Janice Henderson