October 2023
Letter from the Guest Editors
Student Lab Safety - an Important ABET Criterion
By: Badri Roysam, University of Houston and Mark Budnik, Carnegie Mellon University
ABET Criterion 7 concerns Facilities, and it states that “Classrooms, offices, laboratories, and associated equipment must be adequate to support attainment of the student outcomes and to provide an atmosphere conducive to learning. Modern tools, equipment, computing resources, and laboratories appropriate to the program must be available, accessible, and systematically maintained and upgraded to enable students to attain the student outcomes and to support program needs. Students must be provided appropriate guidance regarding the use of the tools, equipment, computing resources, and laboratories available to the program. The library services and the computing and information infrastructure must be adequate to support the scholarly and professional activities of the students and faculty.”
Although the word Safety does not appear explicitly in the Criterion text, Student Laboratory Safety is a crucial aspect that ABET evaluators are examining closely. This issue not only applies within ECE departments but also in parts of campus outside of our departments (e.g., Physics, Chemistry, and Biology Labs). Laboratory Safety is specifically called out and described in the overarching Accreditation Policy and Procedure Manual (APPM). This is the higher-level policy manual that the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC), the Applied and Natural Sciences Accreditation Commission (ANSAC), the Computing Accreditation Commission (CAC), and the Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission (ETAC) all use:
APPM (abet.org)
Specifically, section I.E.5 calls out:
I.E.5. Comprehensive Review – The review team will examine all program aspects
to judge compliance with criteria and policies. ABET will assist each program in
recognizing its strong and weak points. To accomplish this, the team will:
I.E.5.a. Interview faculty, students, administrators, and staff to obtain an
understanding of program compliance with the applicable criteria, policies, and
any specific issues that arise from the examination of the Self-Study Report and
from the on-site review.
I.E.5.b. Examine the following:
I.E.5.b.(1) Facilities – to assure the instructional and learning
environments are adequate and are safe for the intended purposes. Neither
ABET nor its representatives offer opinions as to whether, or certify that,
the institution’s facilities comply with any or all applicable rules or
regulations pertaining to: fire, safety, building, and health codes, or
consensus standards and recognized best practices for safety.
Interested parties who want to know more about what their PEVs may be looking for can look at the EAC Program Evaluator Workbook.
https://www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/EAC_PEV-Workbook_2023-2024.zip
The workbook specifically includes the E331 worksheet that PEVs use during their visit to track their notes and calls out:
- APPM I.E.5.b.(1) Facilities adequate and safe for intended purposes
- Safety is also included in the PEV Training.
Again, all these materials are online on the ABET website for anyone to see, read, or learn from.
Bottom Line
A crucial aspect of ABET site visit preparations is ensuring that the safety equipment in our labs is fully up to date, ranging from easily accessible and recently inspected First Aid Kits, fire suppression equipment, emergency electrical cutoff switches, rules concerning the use of hazardous materials (especially Lithium batteries), rules concerning lab use off hours, rules concerning teamwork, rules concerning the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) especially when soldering, rules for correct grounding of equipment, protective shields for any moving parts, e.g., motors and relays, rules of handling strong magnets, and rules for using items like 3-D printers, laser cutters, and power tools. Some items need sufficient space to be used safely. Finally, students need rules concerning food and beverage items, including water in labs.
While the above list is not comprehensive, the prudent course of action for a department Chair is to constitute a safety inspection team composed of faculty, technicians, and representatives from your institution's Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) division. It is best to conduct comprehensive safety audits a month before each new semester begins and follow up immediately with the required laboratory upgrades. For example, older soldering stations lack an exhaust fan, and these must be replaced immediately.
In most universities, students complete core courses in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology in another college/division on campus, e.g., the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. ABET evaluators are required to inspect these facilities as well, and any safety deficiencies in these facilities can adversely impact your ABET evaluation. As the ECE chair, it is best to reach out to your peers at these other departments and make sure that their laboratories are fully compliant ahead of an ABET Visit.
As with everything ABET, it is important to document all safety-related activities, especially training activities and safety equipment, and include them in the self-study report.
Final Thoughts
It is helpful to study the ABET Accreditation Policy and Procedure Manual (APPM) to get a clearer idea of what evaluators are looking for.
Do you have an initiative in your department worth sharing? We would love to feature your efforts in the next ECE Source newsletter. Increasingly, our articles are in the form of the ECE Conversations video podcast. It is friendly, authentic, personal, and natural.
Do you have interesting initiatives in progress at your department? We would love to feature your efforts in the nextECE Source newsletter. Increasingly, our articles are in the form of the ECE Conversations video podcast. It is friendly, authentic, personal, and natural.
Here are some of the topics of current interest for future ECE Conversations:
- Innovative strategies for ensuring Student Success;
- The impacts of AI on ECE education and research;
- Strategies and Experiences in meeting the semiconductor re-shoring challenge;
- The growing footprint of healthcare-related research in ECE departments;
- Growing the workforce for the future electronics-intensive defense industry;
- The new ECE Chair experience, the ups, and the downs;
- Teaching engineering values; and
- Strategies and best practices for developing future ECE faculty.
As always, we welcome short articles from ECE department heads & faculty on topics of broad interest to our community.
Wishing you a colorful Fall Semester,
Badri Roysam, D.Sc., Fellow IEEE, Fellow AIMBE
Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor
Chair, Electrical & Computer Engineering Department
University of Houston
Houston, Texas 77204-4005
Phone: 713-743-1773
Email: broysam@uh.edu
Mark M. Budnik
2019 ASEE National Outstanding Teacher Award
2015 Disney's Inspiring Brilliance Award
Teaching Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Email: mbudnik@andrew.cmu.edu