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SESSION 1566

A Useful Intersection: The Balanced Scorecard and EC2000

John I. Hochstein1, Teong E. Tan1, William S. Janna1, Jeffrey G. Marchetta1 Tommy Jamison2, Bruce Shrader3, Michael Bilderbeck4 1 2 3 4 U. of Memphis Mueller Industries Temple-Inland Pickering Firm Memphis, TN Memphis, TN West Memphis, TN Memphis, TN

Abstract

The new requirements of ABET’s EC2000 have caused the authors’ academic department to undertake a significant restructuring of its internal functions. This restructuring was guided in part by the ideas of object-oriented software development and in part by the ideas of the Balanced Scorecard. The object-oriented ideas led to creation of Process Teams and the Balanced Scorecard has been adopted as the management structure that guides department operations. In the present paper, a brief introduction to the ideas of the Balanced Scorecard is followed by a detailed description of how the Process Teams were formed and how the Balanced Scorecard was adapted to meet the needs of an academic department.

Introduction

ABET’s introduction of Engineering Criteria 20001 (EC2000) was, to use an overused phrase, a paradigm shift, in which many aspects of the accreditation criteria and the program evaluation process underwent significant change. In engineering terms, one aspect of the shift can be described as a shift of focus from “input” to “output.” Although examples of student work were, and are, an important component of an accreditation review, program faculty are now asked to do a much more extensive job of assessing and documenting the “abilities” that have been imparted to graduates by the program. Annual national meetings have come into existence with the express purpose of bringing together engineering educators to share best practices for outcomes assessment (i.e. Best Assessment Processes IV Symposium2). Another example of change is that the new criteria require program faculty to define and publish Program Educational Objectives (PEOs) and Program Outcomes (POs), or their equivalents. ABET’s stated purpose in giving almost unlimited latitude to programs in defining their PEOs has been to encourage creativity and uniqueness within the engineering education community. Although there is room for originality in definition of the POs, it is the authors’ experience that programs either adopt the “a-k” abilities defined in the EC2000 document or view these as a minimal set to be supplemented with additional abilities appropriate to the particular program. In the new criteria, and in the instructions to program evaluators, there is a clear insistence that a program must develop and deploy processes to create an environment in which there is continuous Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education

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Hochstein, J. (2004, June), A Useful Intersection: The Balanced Scorecard And Ec2000 Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13489