Quality Improvement in a College of Engineering Instructional Program

Abstract This paper summarizes one institution's efforts to develop an ongoing strategy for gathering and analyzing data from constituents for use in appraisal and improvement efforts in its instructional programs. Although a large number of different constituents were identified, for logistical reasons it was decided to focus on five groups: undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, alumni and industry. The primary emphasis of this paper is on the results from the alumni and industry surveys. Demographics of these two groups are given and the influence of these characteristics on responses to survey questions is noted. Comparisons drawn among the two groups show that alumni and industry responses are virtually identical on the importance of specific attributes associated with newly graduated engineers. A short discussion is also given which compares the responses of all five constituent groups on certain instructional program attributes.