Improving educational objectives of the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering programme at Kuwait University

Abstract

This paper describes the process of developing programme educational objectives (PEOs) for the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering programme at Kuwait University, and the process of deployment of these PEOs. Input of the four constituents of the programme, faculty, students, alumni, and employers, is incorporated in the development and update of the PEOs. For each PEO an assessment process is employed where performance measures are defined along with target attainment levels. Results from assessment tools are compared with the target attainment levels to measure performance with regard to the PEOs. The assessment indicates that the results meet or exceed the target attainment levels of the PEOs' performance measures.

Keywords:

• programme educational objectives
• ABET
• industrial engineering programme
• performance measures

About the authors

Tariq Aldowaisan received his B.S., M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Arizona State University, USA. He is currently an associate professor at the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering Department at Kuwait University, and an Associate Dean for Planning and Career Development at the College of Engineering and Petroleum. His area of interest is quality, organisational excellence, and accreditation. He has published in reputable journals where his publications received significant number of citations. Dr Aldowaisan also has professional designations from the American Society for Quality; they are CQA, CQE, and CQM/OE. He performs consulting and training to both private and public institutions.

Ali Allahverdi received his B.S. from Istanbul Technical University, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA. He has been a faculty member at the IMSE of KU since 1995. He received the Distinguished Researcher Award and Research Performance Award from KU in 2003 and 2004, respectively, and Dissertation Prize from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1993. He has published about 100 papers in well-known international journals, and presented more than 70 papers at international conferences. He has been the editor of European Journal of Industrial Engineering since 2007, and served as guest editor for European Journal of Operations Research and International Journal of Operations Research. He is currently serving as associate editor of several journals and is on the editorial board of several other journals. He has been an ABET evaluator since 2011.