Content Comparison

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Attendees

AY 2016-2017 Members: Michael Bailey, Can Bayram, Mohamed Ali Belabbas, Subhonmesh Bose, Weng Chew, John Dallesasse, Peter Dragic, James Eden, Liang Gao, Bruce Hajek, Pavan Kumar Hanumolu, Kiruba Haran, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Yih-Chun Hu, Seth Hutchinson, Ravishankar Iyer, Erhan Kudeki Kudeki (Ex-Officio), Minjoo Lee, Stephen Levinson, Steven Lumetta, Jonathan Makela (Chair), Sanjay Patel, Maxim Raginsky, William Sanders (Ex-Officio), Christopher Schmitz, Jose Schutt-Aine, David Varodayan, Lara Waldrop, Zhizhen Zhao, Hao Zhu, Wenjuan Zhu

Discussion Items

Minutes

• Called to order at 2:06pm.
• Minutes from Oct 6, 2016 were approved.
• The committee discussed the proposed ECE398BD course.
  • This course has been offered multiple times in the past, and needs to be transitioned to a permanent course number if it is to be offered after Spring 2017.
• The committee approved ECE398BD with the caveat that it would not be considered as an ECE398 course again. That is, a proposal to have it included in the permanent course roster must be submitted and approved if this course is to be offered after the Spring 2017 semester.
• The committee discussed inclusion of the three THEA courses in the list of approved technical electives.
  • Levinson pointed out that there is a long history of EE contributions to sound technology in the arts.
  • According to the Theatre department (Tony Reimer, who originated the request), THEA591/399 was in the process of being moved to a single 400-level course number.
  • After evaluating the provided syllabus, the consensus was that the only course that satisfied the requirement of being technical in nature was THEA 399/591. THEA 453 was deemed to not have enough technical content. THEA 459 represents a rotating topics course.  While one of the two provided syllabi represented a course meeting our technical threshold, the other one did not. As a general rule, the committee does not consider rotating topics courses for inclusion on the elective list for this reason.
• The committee approved the inclusion of THEA 399/591 on the list of approved technical electives. Makela will request from the Theatre department that we be notified when the course gets its new 400-level number.
• The committee discussed whether participation in the PURE program should result in ECE technical elective credit.
  • It was proposed that the current method of providing ECE technical elective credit should remain the same.  That is, if an ECE student undertakes a PURE project with an ECE graduate student mentor and ECE faculty advisor, that they should enroll in the ECE 297 course for that ECE faculty advisor.  They would then receive ECE technical elective credit.  However, if an ECE student undertakes a PURE project with a non-ECE graduate student and faculty advisor, they would sign up for ENG199 PUR and not receive technical credit (neither ECE nor non-ECE).
  • It was suggested that an ECE student that undertook PURE with a non-ECE advisor could find an ECE faculty advisor to sign off on ECE 297, if that ECE faculty advisor deemed the project to have ECE technical content.
  • It was also suggested that a student only be able to receive a maximum of 2 credits for ENG199 PUR (i.e., two 1-credit semester long projects in PURE).
• The committee approved continuing to allow ECE students to receive ECE 297 and ECE technical elective credit for PURE if undertaking a project with an ECE graduate student and faculty advisor.  Otherwise, they would receive ENG199 PUR credit and no technical elective credit. A student could obtain a maximum of 2 credits for ENG199 PUR.
• Makela suggested that the committee discuss the Faculty Retreat topic of "What is the right balance that our curricula should strike between traditional and emerging areas" ahead of time to help guide the discussion at the retreat.
  • Kudeki pointed out that the tradition of the x98 courses, with some transitioning to the permanent course roster, achieves this goal. Within an already established course, evolution is left up to the course directors and instructors.
  • Makela suggested that re-examining the "focus areas" in the curriculum might be warranted. Kudeki countered that this was recently performed by the area committees.
• The meeting adjourned at 2:56pm.

Action Items