The Program Continuous Quality Improvement Process (CQIP) is depicted below.

It identifies basic components of the program, ranging from a specific course offering to the complete program curriculum. The CQIP requires periodic review and improvement of each item. For each review and improvement activity, a periodicity and a responsible individual are identified. Completion of each activity includes generating a written Review and Improvement report documenting the assessment input used, the improvements resulting from it, proactive improvements, and the results of the improvements made, when known.

One of the review and improvement activities is to review and improve the CQIP itself. The CQIP also requires the performance of assessment activities that are asynchronous with review and improvement activities. These assessment activities produce assessment information that is used as input to the review and improvement activities. Assessment activities include surveys of students, faculty, industry and alumni, student course evaluations, course file assessment, and student grades, in a way that ensures that they are assessment tools. Assessment activities also have a periodicity, responsible individual, and reporting requirements.

Another assessment tool is the feedback from industry through the Industrial Advisory Board during its biannual meetings.

One more assessment tool used by the MCE program is the student feedback through the Student-Staff Liaison Committee meetings that take place once every semester. Feedback from the students is studied by the department and actions are taken when necessary and whenever possible.

Finally, since its establishment in 1986, every year the College of Engineering has an assessment and evaluation system based on external examiners who visit the College at the end of the spring semester. During his visit, which lasts for almost one week, the external examiner meets with departmental staff and students from each cohort, reviews the final examination sheets of graduating students, and attends most of the students’ final year presentations. After the visit, the external examiner sends directly to the SQU Administration a comprehensive report evaluating the entire program and activities. The Administration forwards the report to the College for study, action and feedback. Most of the external examiner’s recommendations are implemented and fed into the CQIP.