Curriculum & Accreditation Committee

Mission

The broad purpose of this committee is to serve the IEEE-CS community in matters related to curricula and accreditation across all levels, from undergraduate to doctoral levels. The committee reports to the IEEE-CS Professional & Educational Activities Board (PEAB), providing guidance and recommendations and conducting studies to support PEAB and the broader IEEE-CS community. 

PEAB-CAC Curriculum Activities

Curricular initiatives of PEAB-CAC focus on:

• Development and maintenance of curricular volumes in existing and emerging computing disciplines.

Here are recent curricular reports in computing that PEAB-CAC has collaborated on:

• Information Technology Curriculum Guidelines (IT2017)
• Cybersecurity Curriculum Guidelines (CSEC2017)
• Computing Curricula 2020 (CC2020)
• Computer Science Curriculum Guidelines 2023 (CS2023)

Beyond PEAB-CAC, other PEAB committees are involved in additional curricular activities:

• PEAB’s Engineering Disciplines Committee is involved in several software and systems engineering projects, including SWEBOK 4.0.
• PEAB is collaborating with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP), and the IEEE Digital Privacy Initiative to create the first graduate-level Curricular Guidelines for Digital Privacy.

PEAB-CAC is currently involved in the following activities:

• • CS-2023 dissemination:
    • Disseminate and promote the ACM/AAAI/IEEE 2023 Curricular Guidelines for undergraduate CS programs. Planned activities include conference panels and presentations, as well as implementation guidelines.
  • CS-education synergy across organizations:
    • Liaison with ACM Education Board, ABET, CSAB, and CRA regarding CS educational activities.
  • Student Preparedness for Undergraduate Computer Science Programs:
    • See the Student preparedness page for details here.

PEAB-CAC members involved in the above efforts include:

• Rajendra K Raj (PEAB-CAC Chair), Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
• Sherif G. Aly, American University in Cairo, EGYPT
• Amruth N. Kumar, Ramapo College of New Jersey, USA
• Michael Oudshoorn, High Point University, USA
• Christian Servin, El Paso Community College, USA

The following are additional collaborating members:

• Michael Goldweber, Denison University, USA
• Susan Reiser, University of North Carolina at Asheville, USA
• Rahul Simha, George Washington University, USA

PEAB-CAC Accreditation Activities

CSAB serves as the lead ABET member society for accreditation of degree programs at the associate, baccalaureate, and master’s levels in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Data Science, Information Systems, Information Technology, and Software Engineering. It provides operational support for computing accreditation by appointing and training program evaluators in these disciplines and general computing. It also appoints commissioners to each of ABET’s four accreditation commissions, including all of the commissioners of ABET’s Computing Accreditation Commission.

The following represent the Computer Society in CSAB: 

• Mary Jane Willshire-Fairley – Software and System Engineering Associates (ret), CSAB Past President and CSAB Representative Director – IEEE-CS
• Shari Plantz-Masters, Regis University – CSAB Representative Director – IEEE-CS
• Rajendra K. Raj, Rochester Institute of Technology – CSAB Representative Director – IEEE-CS
• Massood Towhidnejad, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – CSAB Representative Director – IEEE-CS
• Sanaa Sharafeddine (IEEE-CS) – American University of Beirut – CSAB Alternate Representative Director – IEEE-CS
• Patrick Widener (IEEE-CS) – Oak Ridge National Laboratory – CSAB Alternate Representative Director – IEEE-CS