2016-09-08 Meeting Notes

Date

Sep 8, 2016

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 (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

Guests: Chandrasekhar Radhakrishnan, Zuofu Cheng

Discussion Items

Minutes

• Called to order at 2:03pm.
• Minutes from Sep 1, 2016 were approved.
• Radhakrishnan and Cheng joined the meeting to discuss proposed changes to ECE 205: Introduction to Electric and Electronic Circuits.
  • Currently ECE 205 is lecture only and associated labs are offered through ECE 206. Course staff felt that having exposure to working with the circuits was a necessary part of understanding them.  The revisions to ECE 205 bring 6 of the labs into the new ECE 205. The remaining labs from the old ECE 206 will be augmented with several labs, developed with input from Mechanical Engineering into a new ECE 206 (to be proposed at a later time).  The stakeholders in ECE 205 outside of ECE are on board with the proposed changes to ECE 205.
  • Lumetta brought up a concern about adding 6 labs to an already existing 3-credit course and still offering it as a 3-credit course. Kudeki pointed out that the labs were only bi-weekly and that adding a credit would not allow the course to fit easily into the 128 credits of engineering degrees.
  • A discussion was had about the name (in banner: "Electrical and Electronic Ckt") and whether both "electrical" and "electronic" needed to be in there in lieu of spelling out "circuit." Eventually, it was decided to keep the name as is.
  • Makela asked about staffing of the new ECE 205, specifically the lab components. Cheng stated that the labs would have to be staggered over the two weeks (for the 6 bi-weekly labs) to accommodate the enrollment (~300).
• The committee approved the proposed revisions to ECE 205.
• Bayram described the proposed ECE498CB course.
  • This is the second time it is being offered.  Changes from the original offering include adding an experimental laboratory portion (in the ECEB nanofab lab) instead of the software-only experiments from the prior offering.  The inclusion of the experimental labs is one reason for limiting the enrollment to 30 students. This also justifies increasing the credit offered to 4 hours.
  • Kudeki pointed out that the lab topics should be itemized in the syllabus before the proposal moves to the College.
  • Prerequisites were also added to help guide properly-prepared undergraduates to the course.  Dallesasse stressed the need for ECE 340 as a prerequisite, which the committee agreed to. 
• The committee approved the proposed ECE 498CB with the understanding that Bayram would change the prerequisite to ECE 340, provide the justifications for the course on the ECE 498 form, and itemize the lab topics on the syllabus.
• Raginsky described the proposed ECE498MR course.
  • This is the second time it is being offered. Changes from the original offering include adding more Python examples and exercises.  ECE 310 was also removed as a prerequisite as Raginsky did not see the benefit of having this prerequisite in the original offering.
• The committee approved the proposed ECE 498MR.
• The meeting adjourned at 2:56pm.

Action Items