EC2000: Lessons learned during review of a biomedical engineering undergraduate program

The Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Program at Northwestern University experienced its first review under EC2000 in this academic year. The campus visit by the evaluation team took place in October 1999. Preparations for the accreditation review had been underway obviously for a number of years and were stepped into high gear for the final twenty-four months preceding the visit. This is my eleventh year as chairman of the undergraduate program in biomedical engineering at Northwestern University, and I have experience of shepherding my department through accreditation reviews of our undergraduate program under both the old ABET criteria and now under EC2000. In this report I provide an account of how we at Northwestern University prepared for the accreditation review, what we learnt through the process and how we plan to use these lessons to improve our program. Recognizing that there will be much interest among our sister programs in how we navigated the uncharted sea of EC2000, I hope that our experience will prove useful to them as they equip their ships for this exciting new voyage.