Attending

Jont Allen, Arijit Banerjee, Can Bayram, Zuofu Cheng, Kiruba Haran, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Erhan Kudeki, Minjoo Lee, Stephen Levinson, Christopher Schmitz, Naresh Shanbhag

Date, Time, and Location

Tuesday, February 5, 2018, 15:00-16:00, ECEB 5070

New Business

1. ECE 498 NS. ECE398-NS-V1.2.pdf, 398NS.19.pdf; Status: Approved as a 498NS

Open Discussion

Should Chemistry be a requirement for students in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering degrees?  Summary of opinions:

• Reasons to drop it:
  • If college chemistry was not required, there would be room in the curriculum for another course, e.g., biology.
  • Computer engineers ask: why should we take chemistry?  Why should we take quantum?
• Reasons to keep it:
  
  • It would be shortsighted to disconnect electrical and computer engineering from foundations in the physical sciences.  Many groundbreaking innovations come from our foundation in the physical sciences.
  • Without chemistry, students could not take many of the currently listed technical electives.
  • Any proposal to reduce the expertise of our students is a non-starter.  If there were a specific proposal to replace the chemistry requirement with something else, then we could consider that.
• Background facts:
  
  • Currently, about 2/3 of students take chemistry at UIUC, about 1/3 AP out of it.