UM-Flint computing programs earn ABET accreditation, reaching gold standard for STEM

This article was originally published in December 2025 on the UM-Flint news site.

The University of Michigan-Flint's computer science and computer information systems programs have earned accreditation from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, the worldwide standard for engineering and computing program quality. This marks the first time the university's computing programs have received the recognition.

The accreditation came with a completely clean report; no deficiencies, weaknesses or concerns were detected by the visiting evaluation team.

ABET accreditation represents a significant milestone for UM-Flint's College of Innovation & Technology, providing students with verified assurance that their education meets rigorous international standards. The accreditation is expected to strengthen student recruitment and reinforce program quality for current students.

The review process examines curriculum, facilities, institutional support, continuous improvement practices, program educational objectives and student learning outcomes. Suleyman Uludag, a UM-Flint professor of computer science who serves as one of roughly 65 volunteer ABET computing commissioners worldwide, said achieving accreditation requires years of consistent effort.

"It takes a lot of time—years of work—to achieve this level of external validation," he said. "You can't simply wake up in the middle of the night, write the report, and get the accreditation the next day. It takes years of consistency."

As part of the accreditation process, Uludag and his team developed an in-house assessment system called the Michigan System of Automated Assessment for Accreditation. The system integrates with Canvas, the university's learning management system, to collect student assessment data and centralize it in a portal for faculty evaluation and analysis for the continuous improvement process.

"A faculty member can sit down and map their internal grading or assessment processes into this program in about 15 minutes," Uludag said. "It's a very simple, fast, automated process with no paperwork, and it's embedded into their Canvas modules."

Tyler Judd, a senior computer science major from Flint, has worked with Uludag as a research assistant for two and a half years and was instrumental in developing the system. The project has yielded peer-reviewed academic publications indexed by IEEE Xplore, with additional research ongoing for potential journal publication and National Science Foundation funding. An invention report has also been filed with the University of Michigan's Innovation Partnership office.

"It's a collective effort, not only one faculty, one person, one staff or dean," Uludag said. "It is a collective effort by all the computing faculty, the staff and the administration."

Uludag credited Christopher Pearson, CIT dean, for initiating and strongly supporting the accreditation effort.

"Just like ISO quality approval, ABET accreditation is an external quality control validation," Uludag said. "The computer science and computer information systems programs we offer have been acknowledged by a third party that is specialized in these kinds of accreditation efforts across the world."

Accreditation efforts for CIT's other computing programs, including cybersecurity, data science and others, will be sought once those programs produce their first graduates.

For more information about UM-Flint's newly accredited programs, visit CIT's computer science page or computer information systems page.