Chapter XIII Software Engineering Accreditation in the United States

This chapter provides a brief history of the accreditation of software engineering programs in the United States and describes some of the experiences encountered by programs in achieving their accreditation and by program evaluators in reviewing those programs. It also describes how the accredited programs have addressed the most difficult issues that they have faced during the accreditation process. The au thors have served as leaders of the accreditation efforts at their own institutions and as ABET program evaluators at several other academic institutions that have achieved accreditation. The objective of this chapter is to provide those software engineering programs that will be seeking accreditation in the future with some of the experiences of those who are familiar with the process from both the programs’ and the evaluators’ points of view. Leaders of programs that are planning to request an accreditation review will be well prepared for that review if they combine the information contained in this chapter with the recommendations contained in Chapter XIX of this text.