Faculty development for Iranian engineering education programs

Quality is a prerequisite for the survival of modern educational institutions and to enable the globalization of higher education. The internationally recognized and valid approach on measuring the quality of higher education institutions’ is through the process of accreditation. Leading engineering education programs adapt their curriculum and learning objectives to successfully meet the ongoing requirements of accreditation process and to equip graduates with competencies and skills that are expected of them in the workforce. Such adaptation usually becomes one of the major tasks of faculty members. Moreover a culture is established such that centers that fail to improve the quality of their education will suffer by its drawbacks. In this paper, a mechanism and program is proposed to facilitate the quality control of engineering education programs by training and strengthening the educational skills of faculty members. The outcomes of implementing this program in several Iranian universities are also presented. The comprehensive faculty and teaching assistants development program consists of a) design and implementation of 15 workshops, b) one-week training course, c) design of a graduate level “Engineering Education" degree course and d) writing and publishing its textbook.