International accreditation and CDIO optional standards achievement levels at UCSC

In this article, we describe the self-evaluation processes undergone by the UCSC School of Engineering’s undergraduate programs under the CDIO standards since 2013 and show how this continuous improvement process drives the School of Engineering in 2021 to collect information related to the CDIO optional standards proposed and approved by the CDIO council in November 2019. In 2019, the School of Engineering, considering its advances and achievements, its participation in the CDIO network and the experience obtained in previous accreditation processes, decides to seek an international accreditation. Currently, we have just finished our self-assessment process to achieve international accreditation under the Washington Accord. Thus, taking advantage of the coherence between the graduate attributes defined by the agreement and our students’ competencies developed considering the CDIO optional standards, The School of Engineering has collected data to assess itself and thus incorporate its short-term required training requirements. Among the main findings of our selfassessment, the programs with the highest achievement levels in Sustainable development are Electrical Engineering and Civil Engineering; in the first case, it can be explained by this competence being part of the graduate attribute profile; in the other case, by the nature of the discipline. All programs develop the Simulation-based mathematics optional standard to at least level 2, while the Geological and Electrical Engineering programs achieve level 4. Entrepreneurship and internationalization (optional standards 3 and 4) are being addressed at the institutional level by the CreoeInnovo UCSC program and through a slightly more recent UCSC Internationalization initiative launched in 2020. This work also presents an improvement plan for those programs needing improvement such as Computer Science. Implementation starts March 2022, to achieve at least level 3 in 5 years’ time. We think that the optional standards should become mandatory in the short term to meet future engineers training requirements.