AMMAN ---- November 5, 2012----- HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman of the Arab Organization for Quality Assurance in Education (AROQA) inaugurated a workshop entitled “How to qualify engineering, computing and IT programs to be academically accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)” at the Association of Arab Universities headquarters. This exciting workshop came in response to the requests received from several universities in the wake of the recent success achieved in the previous workshop held at the headquarters of the League of Arab States in Cairo July 5-6, 2011.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh stressed in his keynote speech on the importance of having exceptional educational system and not education for all saying:"It is not enough to have normal education in our age but it is necessary to have exceptional and qualitative education from the best educational institutions."
He added:"We have an important task which is to take the education in the Arab world to another level. It is true that we have more than 270 universities but few are accredited around the world that is why we need to have our educational institutions accredited by international bodies and there are more than 30 bodies to have the accreditation from and here comes the role of AROQAE which aims at helping universities acquire the accreditation needed."
Moving into the knowledge age was a focus in Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh’s speech saying:"Knowledge makes fortune as the richest people in the world are knowledge makers that is why we need to focus and allocate most of our resources in the coming 20 years to build a knowledge-based society."
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh pointed out that Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAG-Org) launched several initiatives.
“The new Talal Abu-Ghazaleh University is here to find solutions for excellent education through teaming up with respectful universities around the world, TAGIPEDIA the first Arabic encyclopedia and TAGCloud making TAG-Org the first private sector body to build its own cloud,” Abu-Ghazaleh concluded.
The new workshop addressed the methodological steps for qualifying engineering, computing and IT programs for academic accreditation (ABET). It also clarified the accreditation process through a detailed presentation and discussion of the nine academic standards necessary to obtain ABET accreditation. Such standards include matters related to students, the program’s objectives and outcomes, evaluation, continuous improvement, curricula, faculty, facilities, organizational support and the program’s standards.
ABET is the authorized body to accredit programs in applied sciences, computing, engineering and technology in the US and the rest of the world.
The Arab Organization for Quality Assurance in Education (AROQAE) is an international non-profit independent association established in Belgium in July 2007 with the fundamental objective of raising the quality of higher education in general with a particular focus on the Arab world. AROQAE is managed through a board of directors and trustees from experts and academics in several knowledge fields. The board of directors is chaired by HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, and the honorary chairman of AROQAE is the General Secretary of the League of Arab States.
