Minutes October 9, 2024

Attendees: U. Bhowmik, V. Chandrasekaran, Z. Cheng, S. Gupta, Y-C Hu, J. Huang, R. Iyer, E. Kudeki, O. Mironenko, U. Ravaioli, C. Schmitz, C. Shultz, C. Snyder, A. Umrawal, Y-L Wei.

The committee discussed the course ECE 498 JD “Semiconductor Innovations: Leap Ahead Technologies” submitted by John Dallesasse for first time offering in Spring 2025. This course is intended to be an introduction to integrated photonics, as a bridge between the introductory semiconductor offerings and the existing ECE 536, which is more advanced and only opened to graduate students. The course was approved by unanimous consent. There was also a discussion on the offerings in the photonics devices area. This course is in many ways complementary to ECE 443 “LEDs and Solar Cells” taught bay Can Bayram, also Spring semester course. Erhan Kudeki observed that enrollment may not be very high and it could be useful to alternate the two courses in different semester for better synergy. The chair indicated that he will discuss with the two instructor to explore possible options. One hope is that as the interest in the semiconductor minor grows, enrollment from students in ECE and in other department may increase in the near future.

ECE 398 MA “Introduction to Modern Communication with Python and SDR“ submitted by Thomas Moon and Juan Alvarez for first time offering in Spring 2025, was discussed next. There was general agreement that it is a good time to refresh the portfolio of courses in the communications area and that it is opportune to have a new course to introduce this topic earlier in the curriculum. In particular, Chris Schmitz provided his assessment of the proposed course, as expert in the field. It is likely that this would open up the opportunity to restructure high level communications courses, in particular ECE 459. There was also a brief discussion on the possibility to create direct synergy with existing laboratory courses. One further comment was that it would be nice to have a more detailed syllabus with more definition of topics covered in individual lectures. It will be expected to have this in a future request and the chair will relay the feedback to the instructors. The course was approved for offering in Spring 2025 with unanimous content.

The last course discussed was ECE 398 GG “Electric Vehicles (EVs)” submitted by Olga Mironenko for third time offering in Spring 2025. This course was approved for Spring 2024 but if was cancelled because the instructor had to take on other assignments. Therefore, it was agreed that the earlier approval could simply be deferred to Spring 2025 since there were already robust discussions at prior meetings. The chair indicated that preparation of a proposal for permanent number is in progress, as required in the case of a third time offering. It is expected that it will be ready in a couple of weeks.

In the last few minutes remaining, there was a discussion on the request to consider CEE 409 “Railroad Track Engineering” as an approved non-ECE Technical Elective. There are several courses in the railroad engineering sequence and there was some discussion on whether it would be better in alternative to classify these as free electives or to simply grant a curriculum modification on an individual basis, as suggested by Erhan Kudeki. Chris Schmitz thought that the course is solid and has sufficiently deep technical content. The chair was of the opinion that CEE 409 is the most suitable in the rail road engineering sequence to have in the official list of tech elective since is more foundational. It is not expected demand will be high but from time to time it would encourage students with focused interest in transportation to pursue this topic. In the end the course was approved for inclusion in the tech elective list, with unanimous consent.