Curriculum development: an integrated approach

Considerable attention is currently being paid to the development of innovative curricula that are responsive to today's demands on students, faculty, and resources, and are attentive to the needs of graduates. In engineering, these curricula are under several external constraints such as ABET standards, industrial advisory board recommendations, number of faculty, diversity of faculty effort, number of students, available resources, etc. The development of a modern curriculum requires the optimization of course offerings (and other elements of the curriculum) within the imposed constraints. A method, based on a scheme for innovation and continuous improvement, for the development of an engineering curriculum and an example case of its application (medical engineering) are described.