PAVE and Governance for ABET Arnie Peskin Report to EAB 11/15/08 New Brunswick, NJ

Two Abiding Problems within ABET l Quality of the visiting teams l Ineffective governance of the organization

Partnership to Advance Volunteer Excellence (PAVE) l Successor to Participation Project l More effective in several ways l No outside contractors l More reliance on society talent l More effective ABET staff liaison

PAVE Structure l Led by Larry Kaye, ABET liaison Gloria Rogers l A Project Steering Team l Four working groups l Recruitment and Selection l Training l Evaluation l Communication

PAVE Output l ABET-supported Program Evaluator Training l ABET-wide On-line PEV Application l Guide to evaluating PEV Candidates l Recruitment material for industrial candidates

Final PAVE questions l Are these products mandatory? l How to sustain this work?

Governance Subcommitte of Strategic Planning Committee l Chaired by Dick Seagrave l ABET Liaison, Kate Aberle l Eight regular members drawn from BOD

Problems with current governance model l Non-responsive l Inefficient l Proximate issue – ongoing financial crisis

Work of the subcommittee l Considered and rejected a proposal from the ABET staff and excom l Considered and ultimately rejected a plan put forth by Eisenstein of IEEE

Attributes of this Proposal l Defines four governing councils l Constituencies – interaction w industry & academe l Quality Assurance - operations l Globalization – replace INTAC l Management – financial issues, etc. l Each Director belongs to one council l Each Council elects an ExCom member

Pros and Cons l Engages Directors and fights passivity l ‘Shuffles the deck’ to bring forth new talent l Relatively clear transition path l But….

But…. l The Board remains big and unwieldy l No explicit representation of academe and industry l Functional councils are not yet well defined

Disposition of these committee reports l PAVE was adopted pending resolution of PEV evaluation issue l Governance plan to begin informal implementation l Re-evaluate at Spring Board meeting l Assess financial impact