Reflecting the Evolving Landscape of Computing in ABET Program Accreditation Criteria

A growing number of institutions choose to apply for and maintain ABET accreditation to distinguish their computing programs in terms of curriculum, academic rigor, and overall quality. Such programs need to track ABET accreditation criteria changes to ensure their programs remain continually compliant.

ABET evolves its accreditation criteria to reflect recent disciplinary changes and ensure that program graduates are ready for immediate and long-term careers in the computing industry. Several questions arise to ensure accreditation criteria are refreshed. How should the criteria reflect the computing curricula transition from the knowledge-based to the competency-based models? Should the criteria be prescriptive in requiring programs to include topics, such as artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and sustainable computing, or should such choices be left to individual programs? Should the criteria require professional dispositions and preparedness for the profession? Should the criteria require diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility topics in the program curriculum? How should computing Bodies of Knowledge inform criteria?

This BoF seeks to gather input from the computing education community to help inform the next revision of ABET computing accreditation general and program criteria. We will seed the conversation with the proposed criteria changes, and ask for feedback to discuss the above questions. We welcome computing educators and administrators with different levels of experience, including those who may already have an opinion about the changes they would like to see in the next criteria revision and those who want to learn more about ABET criteria and their revision.