Date
Oct 25, 2021
Attendees
A. Aggarwal, J. Allen, A. Banerjee, S. Bogdanov, Z. Cheng, K. Driggs-Campbell, M. Hasegawa-Johnson, , N. Kani, J. Kim, E. Kudeki, K. Levchenko, S. Lumetta, T. Moon, C. Radhakrishnan, U. Ravaioli, J. Schuh. Guest: George Gross
Minutes
The committee reviewed the proposal for temporary offering (second time) of ECE 498CR "Digitally Assisted Circuit Design" submitted by Chandrasekhar Radhakrishnan, who gave a summary of the course objective and a brief report on the how the course the first time offered. Because of time constraints, he reported that some planned topics could not be covered and that he plans to make adjustments to extend the coverage of the syllabus. Jont Allen commented on the importance of the missing topics, because of the growing important in industrial application and supported the planned changes. After some additional general discussion, the committee approved the course by unanimous consent for Spring 2022.
The following item was discussion of the proposal for new offering ECE 398GG "Electric Vehicles (EVs)" - submitted by George Gross. Arijit Banerjee started the conversation indicating that the Power group strongly supports the development of this course, which includes the collaboration of a number of faculty, including himself. George Gross joined the meeting at 3:30pm and introduced the goals and structure of the course, providing the context as very important and useful information at a time of impending developments planned to combat the effects of climate change. There were various questions from committee members on the depth of the course and on the appeal to students from other curricula. George clarified that the course is not intended to go into minute technical details, but that it is meant to provide a global perspective of needs, challenges and opportunities related to a large scale scale switch to electric vehicles, including policies and economics involved. The hope is for this course to be a prelude to orient students toward more specialized offerings as a follow up. He expects that students from various other engineering curricula will be interested, especially Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering as well as others. The chair inquired as to whether this course could set the stage for further future development of a course aimed at the general student population, as a way to inform and educate individuals who do not necessarily have a technical background. The answer was that such a possibility would be considered after this course has been established. The committee was supportive and enthusiastic about adding this course to our offerings and approved it for Spring 2022 offering by unanimous consent.