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Ticketed event: $40.00
Proficiency in engineering professional skills (Table 1) is critical for success in the multidisciplinary, intercultural team interactions that characterize 21st century engineering careers. Yet, engineering programs around the world have struggled to define, teach and measure professional skills since their introduction as ABET criteria for engineering programs in 2000. The Engineering Professional Skills Assessment (EPSA) is an innovative, direct method to teach and measure the ABET professional skills simultaneously for both course and program level assessment purposes.
The method is flexible, easy to implement, and can be used at the course level for teaching and measuring engineering professional skills and the program level at the end of a curricular sequence for evaluating a program’s efficacy. The technical paper describing the first college-wide program-level implementation of EPSA won the 2008 American Society for Engineering Education’s Best Overall Conference Paper Award (out of more than 2000 papers). It is currently being used by programs and colleges around the world to ensure that their students develop necessary workplace competencies.

Table 1. ABET Criterion 3 Professional Skills Student Learning Outcomes
3f Understanding of Professional and Ethical Responsibility
3g Ability to Communicate Effectively
3h Understanding of the Impact of Engineering Solutions in
Global, Economic, Environmental, and Cultural/Societal
Contexts
3i Recognition of and Ability to Engage in Life-Long Learning
3j Knowledge of Contemporary Issues

The EPSA is comprised of two components
1) A discussion-based performance task designed to elicit students’ knowledge and application of the ABET professional skills. Small groups of students are presented with a complex, real-world scenario that includes multi-faceted, multidisciplinary engineering problems. They are then asked to determine the most important problem/s and to discuss stakeholders, impacts, unknowns, and possible solutions. This can be implemented in face-to-face or on-line environments.
2) The Engineering Professional Skills Rubric, an analytic rubric, developed to measure the extent to which student performance in response to a given scenario achieved the six learning outcomes associated with the ABET professional skills (ABET criterion 3 f-j). Faculty rate the student performance using the rubric. Students can self and peer assess using the rubric.

Speakers

1. Dr. Ashley Ater Kranov

   Washington State University

   Adjunct Associate Professor, School of EECS. Vice President, Global Professional Skills Assessment, LLC. Former Managing Director, Professional Services, ABET

2. Prof. Jay Patrick McCormack

   Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

   Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering

3. Dr. Steven W. Beyerlein

   University of Idaho

   Professor, Mechanical Engineering

4. Dr. Edwin R. Schmeckpeper P.E.

   Norwich University

   Professor and Chair, Civil Engineering

5. Dr. Patrick D. Pedrow P.E.

   Washington State University

   Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering