Information systems accreditation: revisited

This column briefly reviews the history of information systems (IS) accreditation and presents a set of criteria, that are in the development stages, for accrediting IS programs. The purpose of the draft IS criteria is to generate discussion within the professional community that will lead to support and improvements in the criteria and endorsement of the IS accreditation process.Educators expressed interest in IS accreditation soon after CSAB was formed in 1985. An IS accreditation workshop was held in November 1986 at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in Dallas. Representatives from ACM, IEEE-CS, and DPMA (now AITP) discussed the merits of and mechanisms for accreditation. There was sufficient interest to form a working group with one representative from each society to develop draft criteria.The group circulated the draft criteria and presented it to ACM's Accreditation Committee at the 1987 Computer Science Conference. Public presentations were made at the DPMA Educational Foundation's Information Systems Education Conference (ISECON) in 1987 and at the 19th ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium in 1988. Each society published the criteria encourage discussion within the professional community. At the time, however, many IS programs were housed in an accredited AACSB school of business and these schools were not interested in program accreditation. DPMA was not interested in joining the ACM or the IEEE-CS in funding an IS accreditation process, so the idea was put on hold.Today, approximately 50% of IS programs are located outside schools of business and interest in accreditation is being revisited. NSF has provided a three-year grant to examine the feasibility of accreditation of programs in computer information science/systems/technology. The principal investigators (PI) of the study are project director Doris Lidtke of Towson University, and Co-PIs John T. Gorgone of Bentley College, John Henderson of Boston University, and Willis King of the University of Houston. The study includes the development of a set of criteria and procedures which may be used for accreditation of IS related programs. Check the IS accreditation web site [1] for ongoing information. This NSF-sponsored project brings together representation from all identified stakeholders:1. Leading information-computing societies: Association for Information Systems (AIS), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), IEEE-Computer Society (IEEE/CS), and Association for Information Technology Processing (AITP);2. Major recent curriculum efforts, IS'97, ICC'99 and Curriculum '91;3. NSF funded curriculum development efforts;4 The Computing Sciences Accreditation Board; and representatives from industry and academic institutions.