Contestant Three

Academic institutions are expected to provide fundamental technical standards education; however, they are not positioned or incentivized to do so. As a result, we are faced with: (1) an underperforming workforce, (2) unnecessary exposure to risks and hazards, (3) institutions struggling to comply with ABET criteria, and (4) engineers who lack knowledge of a critical component of their profession. Over the past few decades, a piecemeal resolution increased technical standards of education for individual groups, programs, and academic departments increasing the disparity of education. To address this issue, we’ve developed the Technical Standards in Engineering (TSE) Program, an open-source curriculum comprising nine free open-source fully customizable modules. The curriculum answers questions such as “What is a technical standard? Why are they important? How do I get access to them?” Educators are drawn to the ease with which the modules can be inserted into any course and adapted for any discipline. Experts from 50+ organizations, technical societies, and academic institutions united to refine the content and disseminate the final product which utilizes the Canvas learning management platform and is accessible to anyone with an email address. The TSE Program is a holistic approach to a global issue impacting the engineering profession.