Quality of engineering education is a core principle that can never be sacrificed. To ensure quality, engineering programs/schools seek national and/or international accreditation from relevant accreditation agencies. As higher education in Saudi Arabia is evolving rapidly and to ensure high education quality standards, the Ministry of Higher Education is requesting all the institutions of higher education to be accredited by the National Commission for Academic Accreditation & Assessment (NCAAA). The accreditation process is not very much liked by most of the faculty members as they have the misconception that it is an exhausting time consuming, not to say complex and unnecessary, process.Most faculty members are not enthusiastic about going through the preparation process and its requirements from data collection, documents and forms preparation, data aggregation, data analysis, collecting evidences, and developing corrective action and future plans as needed. This paper describes requirements for programs accreditation, the preparation process, and the challenges faced during the accreditation process. Few papers were published discussing different issues related to the accreditation process in Saudi Universities. Despite the importance of the accreditation related issues discussed in those papers, the authors believe that the challenges associated with the accreditation process and their causes are not fully reported and are very important to be presented. Programs, colleges, and faculty members need to realize those challenges to try to avoid them and make the accreditation process easier and smoother. Knowledge and information gained via observation, unstructured interviews with faculty members, discussions with colleagues from different Saudi universities, and extensive involvement of the authors in the accreditation process in a private university and a public university is utilized to state challenges and barriers experienced throughout different stages of the accreditation journey. The private university was preparing for NCAAA and the public university was preparing for ABET. Although the study is based more on the national accreditation experience, it was found that similar challenges were faced and same recommendations apply for both national and international accreditation. This means that type of accreditation and differences between programs/universities was not the problem and proves that the readiness of the program and the institution is the most important catalyst of the accreditation process. The main challenges faced by different programs were added workload, understaffing, inadequate training, inability to properly prepare required forms and documents, lack of faculty commitment to the accreditation process, high faculty turn over, and lack of proper support from higher administration. The paper discusses the main causes of the problems faced during the process and presents some recommendations that might help making the accreditation process easier and smoother. The study concludes with th...

As the number of automobiles increases, the task of providing parking lots to accommodate more vehicles becomes very difficult and challenging. The design of parking lots needs more attention in order to have efficient and safe design. The capacity of a parking lot depends on many factors such as the parking angle. Choosing the most efficient parking angle is not an easy task since it varies with many factors such as the geometry and the circulation inside the parking lot. In this study, Integer Linear Programming (ILP)is used to determine the optimal parking angle. Different cases are formulated considering different layouts and dimensions in order to choose the parking angle which will provide the maximum number of spaces. Furthermore, the LINDO software is utilized to find out the optimal parking angle for each given area. The results showed thatLinear Programmingresulted in an enhanced the parking design since it allows for different combinations between the parking angles within the same parking facility. For future work, the formulation can be modified to suite irregular shapes within parking areas.

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Many transportation agencies have started using unconventional intersections to reduce overall delay and improve signal efficiency. Common unconventional leftturn control types such as right-turn followed by U-turn (RTUT) and U-turn followed by right-turn (UTRT); basically eliminate direct left-turn movements at the intersection by rerouting left-turning vehicles away from the main junction. This study evaluates the impact of replacing direct left-turns with RTUT or UTRT. Traffic signal evaluation and simulation tools, such as Synchro and Vissim, were utilized to calculate the optimized signal timings and evaluate intersection performance for each leftturn control type. The results indicate that unconventional left-turn control types have less delay compared to the direct left-turn. Also, The U-turn followed by right-turn (UTRT) control type has the lowest travel time among all left-turn control types. Finally, unconventional left-turn control types have higher vehicle kilometers travelled (VKT) compared to the direct left-turn control type. 

Abstract-Engineering students are required to have, by the time of graduation, a set of professional skills related to teamwork, oral and written communications, impact of engineering solutions, life-long learning, and knowledge of contemporary issues. Teaching and assessment of these skills, as part of ABET accreditation, remains problematic. A systematic methodology to integrate these skills and their assessment in the curriculum is described. The method was recently applied in several engineering programs and proved to be efficient in generating data and evidences for evaluation and continuous improvement of these outcomes.

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Accreditation requirements for a major design experience that prepares the students for engineering practice are normally satisfied through capstone projects originating from and sponsored by the local industry. This is difficult to be satisfied in an environment of weak industry academia interaction.In this case the projects are coming from academically oriented faculty members with limited industrial experience resulting in research type projects. The present work describes a process implemented to ensure that capstone projects satisfy the requirements for a major design experience. The method also facilitates using capstone design in assessing several student outcomes by the time of graduation.

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