The Role of Standards in Engineering Education

The role of standards is increasing, and as a result the role of education about standards should also increase. At the same time, there are a set of requirements-accreditation criteria-toward engineering programs. The close relationships between the accreditation criteria and standards education is not fully recognized, even by accreditation bodies and educators. The goal of this article is to uncover these relationships. Furthermore, the article establishes connections between other components of engineering education such as ethics, engineering design, labs, and integrated courses, on one hand and standards education on another. The conclusion from these relationships is that standards education is more important than previously realized. The article also discusses how standards education can be incorporated in engineering and technical curricula.