CTAA January 2007 Meeting Summary | 
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COMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY ACCREDITATION ACTIVITIES (CTAA)
12-13 JANUARY 2007
DRAFT MEETING SUMMARY 1. CALL TO ORDER AND INTRODUCTIONS - HoffmanCTAA Chair Larry Hoffman, called the first CTAA Meeting of 2007 to order at 8:00pm and asked the committee members to introduce themselves, (Summary Attachment #1). 2. REVIEW AND ADOPTION OF AGENDA - HoffmanArnie Peskin, IEEE Representative Director on the ABET Board of Directors, requested that an ABET Board of Directors report be added to the agenda. A motion was made and approved to adopt the revised agenda. 3. VICE PRESIDENT’S COMMENTS - Kam Moshe Kam, Vice President of IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB), gave a presentation entitled 2007 Action Roster of the Educational Activities Board, (Summary Attachment #2). Topics he discussed included:
4. APPROVAL OF JUNE 2006 MEETING SUMMARY / ACTION REGISTER - Hoffman A motion was made and approved to accept the meeting summary and action register, (Agenda Attachment). 5. APC CHAIR’S REPORT - Baker Dave Baker, Chair of the EAB Accreditation Policy Council (APC) gave a report on IEEE U. S. Accreditation activities, (Agenda Attachment). He discussed the following topics:
The meeting was adjourned for the evening at 9:35pm. Larry Hoffman reconvened the meeting on Saturday morning, the 13th of January 2007 at 8:00am. 6. TAC OF ABET UPDATE – Baker Dave Baker gave a presentation on the composition of the IEEE Technology Accreditation Commission members, compared to other ABET societies, (Summary Attachment #3). Dave reported that IEEE takes its responsibility of balancing the ratio of Industrial vs. Academic volunteers very seriously. 7. SELECTION OF IEEE TAC PROGRAM EVALUATORS - Baker The committee went into Executive Session to discuss the IEEE TAC Program Evaluator Applications. During Executive Session the following new IEEE TAC program evaluators were approved: Name: Bova,
Richard Rezayat, Mohsen Singh, Darshan Stanton, Gregory Smith, Diane Wright, Keith Darnell The following program evaluators had their terms extended for one additional year: Name: Baker, W.
David A Motion was made and passed to approve the above list of new IEEE TAC Program Evaluators, and to extend the terms for one additional year on the list of existing program evaluators,(Action Item #1). 8. ELECTION OF CTAA APPOINTMENTS – Baker During Executive Session, an election was held to select new committee members as replacements for Adrienne Hendrickson and Marty Reed. Hendrickson and Reed have been elected as new IEEE Representatives to the Technology Accreditation Commission (TAC) of ABET. A new vice chair was also elected to replace Marty Reed in that position. Tom Hall was elected as a new vice-chair and Richard Cliver and Rama Shastri were elected as new CTAA members, (Action Item #2). Arnie Peskin advised the committee that he wished to resign from his position as CTAA member. He said he would continue to attend CTAA meetings in his position as IEEE Representative Director to the ABET Board of Directors. The committee will elect a replacement for Arnie during the June 2007 CTAA Meeting. 9. PROGRAM EVALUATOR COORINDATOR REPORT – Baker Dave Baker gave a presentation on the number of visits in the 2006-07 visit cycle, (Agenda Attachment). Penn State was up for accreditation which helped to make this a busy year. Dave advised that his goal is to have program evaluators assigned by the TAC meeting, which is in mid-July. Dave also gave a presentation with program and evaluator assignment statistics, (Summary Attachment #4). This year was the first year for a combined TAC / CAC visit. There was a program called Computer Science Engineering Technology and Carol Richardson was the Team Chair. 10. PROGRAM EVALUATOR EDUCATION – Tappert Eric Tappert, CTAA Training Coordinator, spoke about program evaluator training. Eric advised that ABET is in the process of taking over all PEV training and have completely changed the approach to the training process through P.A.V.E. The new ABET model for PEV training consists of a 1 ½ day training session, which is composed of a mock-visit, mock interviews with “faculty”, etc. This is an entirely new approach to training and ABET is picking up expenses for hotel and meals for new program evaluators. Next year they plan to pick up travel costs in addition to hotel costs and meals. Eric was told the funding to cover these costs will come from institutional fees and not the societies. ABET expects mentors to be assigned before the program evaluator attends the training session. There is a Train the Trainer session on March 10-11 for experienced team chairs and Observers. This year, societies have the option of continuing to hold their own training sessions or recommending that new program evaluators attend the ABET training sessions. Moshe Kam advised the committee that he would like CTAA and CEAA attendees at the Train the Trainer session in addition to attending the ABET training sessions as Observers. Eric recommended that this year, the CTAA should sponsor one program evaluator training in Newark, NJ – the committee agreed. Eric stated that since mentors are going to be a large component of the new ABET training system, the CTAA needs to be proactive and provide formal training for their mentors. Eric was assured by ABET, that the societies will still select program evaluators and handle accreditation visit assignments. Plans for the attendees at the ABET Train the Trainer session and Observers for the ABET program evaluator training sessions will be coordinated with the CEAA through the APC, (Action Item #3).
11. AWARDS – Peskin 12. COMMUNICATIONS – TAC UPDATE – Tappert Joe Tamashasky, Chair of the CTAA Communications Subcommittee was not at the meeting, so Eric Tappert gave a report on TAC activities. Eric advised that the harmonization of criteria was moving ahead and TAC would report on this during their June 2007 meeting. Eric also provided a status update on ABET Team Chair activities from the 2006-07 accreditation visit cycle. 13. CRITERIA - Hall Tom Hall, Chair of the CTAA Criteria Subcommittee presented a report on this topic, (Agenda Attachment). Tom requested comments from ECETDHA on the ABET criteria and received little feedback. The Communications Subcommittee needs to request that TAC put a process in place to provide feedback from PEVs directly to the societies affected, (Action Item #4). Tom will go back to the ET Community and ask for more feedback and will hopefully have something to report on at the June 2007 CTAA Meeting. Tom requested that the reviews of the program criteria be added to the Action Register, (Action Item #5). The meeting adjourned for lunch and then reconvened at 1:00pm. 14. MENTORING – Reed Marty Reed, Chair of the CTAA Mentoring Subcommittee, reviewed the mentoring reports in the agenda, (Agenda Attachment). Marty compared the PEV rankings from this year and last year. The Mentoring Subcommittee recommended providing feedback to ABET on assessing the effectiveness of mentoring, (Action Item #6). The committee discussed whether individual PEV scores should be shared with the evaluators, or if they should just receive the comments. It was decided that this was a judgment call left up to the individual mentors. During Executive Session, the committee discussed the handful of individuals who received low scores. The Mentoring Subcommittee will review these individuals and bring results back to the June 2007 CTAA Meeting, (Action Item #7). New mentoring assignments will be e-mailed out to the committee. 15. NOMINATING – Baker Dave Baker, Chair of the CTAA Nominating Subcommittee, advised the group that during the June 2007 meeting, an election would be held to replace Arnie Peskin, who resigned from the CTAA during this meeting. The committee would also vote on a new IEEE Representative to the TAC of ABET, to replace Rosida Coowar, whose term on the TAC would end in July 2008, (Action Item #8). 16. POLICY / PROCEDURES – Hendrickson Adrienne Hendrickson, Chair of the CTAA Policy and Procedures Subcommittee, informed the committee that she had made some changes to the Continuous Improvement Metrics, (CIM – Agenda Attachment). The committee reviewed the changes and suggested some updates, and requested that the status of each metric be included on the CIM report, (Action Item #9). Each time the action register is distributed, the Continuous Improvement Metrics should also be sent out. The committee discussed PEV recruitment efforts and Moshe will work with Dave Baker on an e-mail soliciting new program evaluators, (Action Item #10). 17. ABET PARTICIPATION PROJECT – Kam and Baker Dave Baker spoke about the ABET Participation Project and advised the committee that the IEEE is in a quandary until ABET distributes guidelines and an implementation schedule. Moshe advised the group that they have the right to use their own PEV application if the ABET application does not work for them. He also stated that if the ABET PEV training is not useful, then the IEEE accreditation committees should plan to continue with their own PEV training session. 18. ABET BOARD OF DIRECTORS UPDATE – Peskin Arnie Peskin, IEEE Representative Director on the ABET Board of Directors, reported on communication issues between ABET and the societies. He advised that there is an ABET committee set up to implement changes to the ABET budget and those changes would be reported on during the March 2007 ABET Board of Directors Meeting. Arnie reported that IEEE worked with CSAB in suggesting improvements to ABET processes, such as distributing meeting agendas and minutes in a timely fashion and Arnie hopes that these recommendations will be implemented. 19. ECETDHA UPDATE – Land Ron Land, Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology Department Heads Association, reported on testing for Electrical/Electronics Technology programs, (Agenda Attachment). Moshe Kam advised the committee that the EAB is a bit behind in preparing documents to allow SME and IEEE to work together. IEEE will work on a funding proposal for this project and Moshe hopes to have this portion of the project completed soon, (Action Item #11). 20. COMPARISON OF THE CURRENT (IEEE) AND NEW PEV APPLICATIONS – Reed Marty Reed compared the current IEEE program evaluator application and the new ABET program evaluator application, (which was a result from the ABET Participation Project – Agenda Attachment). One of the complaints that Marty received on the new ABET PEV application was that you cannot advance in the electronic application until you complete all the required fields. Applicants might get involved in completing the application and then quit before they are done because of the length of the task. One of the goals of Marty’s report was to decide whether to use the ABET form or the current IEEE application. The committee discussed data that they felt was missing from the ABET application. Dave Baker offered to work with a small CTAA subcommittee on updating the IEEE TAC application to cover the ABET competencies, (Action Item #12). Ece Yaprak and Stan Love will work with Dave on this project. 21. DEVELOP PROCESS TO IDENTIFY ALTERNATE TAC COMMISSIONER – Baker / Hoffman Dave Baker researched the option of having “backup” commissioners already elected by the accreditation committees and pre-approved by the APC and EAB for both TAC and EAC of ABET. He learned that Alternates to both ABET Commissions must attend the pre-commission training. Dave reported that both the CTAA and CEAA should view the Alternate Commission position as a way of “stacking the deck” to have a replacement commissioner ready to step in for a commission if the need arises. If an Alternate has to step in to replace a commission member, then a new Alternate should be selected immediately. The Alternate cannot be a former commission member. In June, the CTAA will select a new Alternate for the next visit cycle, (Action Item #13). 22. CTAA SUBCOMMITTEE ROSTER – Hoffman The committee reviewed the new CTAA subcommittee roster developed by Larry Hoffman and Marty Reed, (Summary Attachment #5). 23. THANK YOU – Hoffman Larry Hoffman thanked Marty Reed and Adrienne Hendrickson for their contributions to the committee. They will begin their terms as IEEE Representatives to the TAC, (Technology Accreditation Commission), in July 2007. Larry Hoffman adjourned the meeting at 3:50pm. |
