Abstract:

The Universidad Veracruzana (UV) is one of the largest public universities in México and is recognized by its leadership regarding the quality and innovation in the academic programs it offers. In a globalized environment, economic agreements and treaties between countries trascend to the field of higher education, raising the need to establish mechanisms to homologate quality standards for evaluating educational programs. In Mexico, the instances that directly relate to the evaluation of engineering programs are the Comités Interinstitucionales para la Evaluación de la Educación Superior, A.C. (CIEES) and the Consejo de Acreditación de la Enseñanza de la Ingeniería, A.C. (CACEI).
Accreditation of engineering programs is granted only by CACEI; it is valid for 5 years and is awarded to the academic program, not the institution, which means that if a given institution offers the same program in different campuses, the program may be accredited for one campus, but not necessarily for other campuses of the same institution. This accreditation status is recognized by the member countries of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The academic program of Electronics and Communications Engineering (IEC by its name in Spanish) has been offered in the Faculty of Engineering campus Veracruz, of the Universidad Veracruzana, since september 1994 and has an average enrollment of 250 students. Today, the IEC program is one of three programs accredited by CACEI in this academic entity of the UV.
This document presents information that may be considered relevant in terms of the processes that were conducted in order to bring the program to an operating state in which it was evaluated and accredited. The authors participated actively in the process and wish to contribute to the dissemination of information that could lead to colleagues from other academic institutions to achieve similar goals.

Keywords:

Evaluation of academic programs, Accreditation.