Don't shy away

The uproar from the Engineering school was hard to miss. Last Friday, this newspaper published a story reporting that five Engineering programs will be deemed "deficient" by a national accreditation organization.

Instead of addressing the issue in a straightforward manner, Engineering administrators have tried to downplay the news.

School of Engineering and Applied Science Dean Eduardo Glandt called the marks a "slap on the wrist."

The evaluation results will not be fatal to the Engineering program, but when a top school is told by an outside observer that it lacks proper feedback processes, it's an issue that should be taken seriously.

It isn't something to brush off. If the accreditation board thinks the problems are serious enough to warrant labeling an entire program "deficient," the school should take them seriously as well.

While the faculty and students at the Engineering school are top notch, the problems found by the accreditation board should serve as a wake-up call to its Engineering administrators.

The board faulted the school for its feedback-collection methods. The responsibility for ensuring that its methods are up to par lies solely on school administrators' shoulders -- and particularly on Dean Glandt's.

Often, complaints about bureaucracies can have difficulty surfacing because administrators are the ones hearing the complaints. An outside review provides a rare opportunity to reveal concerns that may otherwise have gone unnoticed.

This University and all of its programs and departments should seek out such criticism and work to fix the problems discovered -- not shy away from them.

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