One of the basic purposes of the ERC program is to improve the education of engineering undergraduate and graduate students. Because of the improved educational environment and opportunities offered by the ERC, its graduates should be better engineering problem solvers and well versed in the systems aspect of engineering practice. The proposed research would lay the foundation for evaluating the success of the ERCs in training engineers. The project would define outcome criteria and establish statistically valid sampling procedures. The focus would be on Industry's satisfaction with ERC graduates as employees. This preliminary study would include a pilot survey to test the methods developed and to lay a baseline for continuing evaluation of the educational effectiveness of the ERC concept. The subject population of this pilot study would be 90 industry supervisors of ERC graduates and 90 supervisors of similar graduates from a non-ERC university that is comparable to the ERC school. A conference/workshop, including selected ERC and industry representatives, would reach a consensus regarding the definition(s) of educational success as related to ERC graduates and to refine the outcome statements. The pilot study would focus on the graduates of two of the ERCs that were established prior to 1987. The report would be distributed to NSF staff, ERC Directors, and the ECD Advisory Committee. The results will be useful to NSF in monitoring the ERCs and to the ERCs themselves to improve their educational programs.
