EC2000 AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING: RETHINKING THE FACULTY AND INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT CRITERIA

摘要

This paper examines the current and potential affects of the new EC2000 engineering-accreditation criteria on the roles of faculty and administrators in engineering education. Typically, Criterion 5 (Faculty) rates the quality of an academic program's faculty by assessing the qualifications of individuals and their achievements. Criterion 7 (Institutional Support and Financial Resources) rates the adequacy of resources to help the faculty carry out their obligations. From this perspective, both criteria assume that the sum of individual faculty achievements meets the course and curricular obligations of the academic unit. This assumption is consistent with the belief that individual autonomy, a hallmark of academic work life, and its variant, academic freedom, are essential to productive scholarship, effective teaching, and many forms of professional service. The formal assessment of faculty work "whether in promotion and tenure decisions or salary allocations" reinforces this belief by focusing on the accomplishments and productivity of each individual faculty member. Our research, however, indicates that the academic unit and institution have responsibilities that transcend the sum of individual faculty achievements. We call these collective responsibilities. Further, our research indicates that leadership is as important as the adequacy of resources in ensuring that academic units meet all of their collective course and curricular obligations. This paper offers an alternative view of Criterion 5 and Criterion 7, one consistent with meeting collective obligations and with continuous improvement.