"Tuning" Engineering Programs in the Context of ABET Accreditation

As part of a four-year grant project sponsored by Lumina Foundation for Education, the State of Texas has embarked upon integrating the Tuning process into lower-division course-level alignment work that was piloted in 2009 through the efforts of the Voluntary Mechanical Engineering Transfer Compact Committee, a voluntary advisory committee comprised of engineering deans and their designees from across Texas. Over the grant period, with the help of voluntary higher education faculty advisory committees, the Tuning process, and the process of vertically and horizontally aligning lower-division courses, will be applied to 12 academic discipline areas. The process began in 2010 with four engineering disciplines. Presented in this paper are the basis and methodology used by the. Tuning Oversight Council for Engineering,. which is comprised of engineering faculty members from across Texas, to tune the civil, industrial, electrical, and mechanical engineering disciplines, and to align lower-division courses among two- and four-year institutions to more fully and efficiently use the community college pathway to baccalaureate degrees in engineering.