I was in charge of the B.Eng.(ISE) program from Jul 2022 to Dec 2024.
In 2023, the program was successfully accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Board (EAB) of The Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES) with zero weakness or deficiencies raised.
In 2024, the program received very positive feedback from the visiting committee made up of highly distinguished professors from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Cambridge. Below are selected comments from their report:
- The design, delivery and impact of the undergraduate programs seems very strong.
- We identified no major concerns, and those we did find seem to be in the process of being addressed.
- The three new areas of specialization, linked to both emerging national needs as well as educational and research frontiers, seem to have been particularly effectively implemented.
- From a learning delivery perspective, we were impressed by the smart response to the emergence of AI in education and learning.
In my opinion, the secret to successful accreditation is very similar to conducting a successful student recruitment campaign.
First, you need to ensure that your program is good, recognizing that the quality of our academic program has a significant impact on the lives of our students. Here, I think it is helpful to acknowledge that it is impossible for the program to be perfect. However, it is important that we are aware of the issues and ensure that the key problems are being addressed. To express it more succinctly: You don’t have to be perfect, but you cannot be ignorant nor negligent.
Second, the strengths of the program should be clearly articulated. It is not the job of the customer to understand why a product is good. Rather, it is the responsibility of the salesperson to help the customer appreciate the product’s appeal.
Finally, we need to understand the rationale behind our practices and policies. Our practices and policies should be driven by meaningful purpose or sound reasoning. We should not be doing things for the sake of doing them, which could be due to action bias, fear of criticism, habit, inertia and/or bureaucracy.