August 27, 2013, Charge to the Curriculum Committee

To: ECE Curriculum Committee Members – AY 2013-14

Tangul Basar Mohamed Ali Belabbas

Deming Chen John Dallesasse

Alejandro Dominguez-Garcia Bruce Hajek, Chair

Pavan Kumar Hanumolu Erhan Kudeki, Ex-officio

Rakesh Kumar Stephen Levinson

Daniel Liberzon Yi Lu

Steven Lumetta Jonathan Makela

Sayan Mitra Michael Oelze

Maxim Raginsky Elyse Rosenbaum

William Sanders, Ex-officio Paris Smaragdis

Venugopal Veeravalli Daniel Wasserman

August 27, 2013

Dear Colleagues,

The purpose of this letter is to identify a set of key items pertinent to our undergraduate curriculum that I

would like you to prioritize in your committee's activities and bring them to closure by the end of this

academic year.

The ECE Curriculum Committee is the steward of the largest pair of undergraduate engineering programs

in the College, and (in my humble opinion) the best pair of EE and CompE programs and the nation. The

main mission of the ECE Curriculum Committee is to debate and establish the vision and content for our

undergraduate curricula in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering that will ensure our national

and international reputation as a leader in ECE education. This objective requires a broad perspective and

visionary thinking, but also attention to programmatic and process details. Strong curricula depend on the

plurality of well-designed courses and their careful coordination and integration into an effective program

that serves our vision for the education of future generations of electrical and computer engineers. Our

ECE Curriculum Committee has been the steward of all it takes to maintain and evolve our curricula and

maintain our leadership as one of the best undergraduate ECE programs in the world. Your contributions

this year will help us continue this tradition, as we learn to deal with not only the fast pace of the changes

in our discipline but also challenges associated with increased student enrollments and changes in the demographics

of our student body.

For AY 2013-14 I would like to request that you include and prioritize the following as part of your

committee's activities.

Obtain Campus Approval for and Complete Implementation of new Computer Engineering Curriculum.

As you know, the Department approved the new Computer Engineering Curriculum last spring

term. It's now critical that the Curriculum committee turn its attention to obtaining the campus approval

of that curriculum during this academic year, with the goal that we be able to welcome incoming students

into the new program by Fall 2014. The schedule is tight to do this, and consists of the following steps:

1) completion of the formal proposal to the COE Executive Committee; 2) review and approval by the

COE Executive Committee (typical minimum 6 weeks for subcommittee review); 3) review and approval

by the Senate Educational Policy Committee (EPC; meets every 2 weeks); 4) Review and approval by

Senate as a consent item (meets every month); and 5) Report to Board of Trustees (meets every 2

months). These times are optimistic and do not include time that is necessary to respond if there are questions

before approval at a particular stage. Achieving this goal will require careful stewardship of the proposal

through the various stages.

Complete Transition from ECE 190/290 to ECE 120/220. In order to be able to offer 198JL and

198KL in Spring 2014 (which will be the 3rd offering of these courses), permanent course proposal submissions

must be made early in the semester. The curriculum committee should discuss the issue of

"credit neutrality" of curricular revisions introduced by these new courses and come to a decision about

the credit loads of each of ECE 120 and 220. If the decision is to keep the credit load of the new courses

the same as in our existing curriculum, a total of 7 hours would be available for ECE 120 and 220, given

that ECE 110 is reducing its load from 4 hours to 3 hours to support the transition of ECE 385 from 2

hours to 3 hours under the ECE 298DC project. The committee should discuss and recommend the credit

hours (and accompanying content load) to be assigned to ECE 120 and 220 by considering various options

such as 4+3 and 3+4 partitions (assuming credit neutrality is achieved).

Consider creating new course on electronic and photonic device fundamentals. During the past year

the curriculum committee discussed the idea of a new ECE developed course on modern and thermal

physics with semiconductor device applications as a replacement of currently required PHYS 213 (2

hours) and 214 (2 hours) courses. This idea should be explored further and if the idea finds support the

committee should work with ECE faculty showing interest in the development of such a course. It would

be ideal to have this course to serve the needs of both EE and CE students and prepare them for more advanced

courses in the same area starting with ECE 340.

Support ABET Fall Visit and Learn From and React to ABET 2013 Report. The next ABET visit to

our Department and the College is scheduled for October 6-8, 2013. Substantial work has gone into preparing

for this visit, and thanks go to a core team consisting of Associate Heads, Area Chairs, and present

and past Curriculum Committee chairs. As a member of the ABET Core Team, the Curriculum Committee

Chair will coordinate the interactions with the Curriculum committee and help orchestrate the role of

committee in the ABET visit. Once the review is complete, I would like the Curriculum Committee to

analyze the resulting reports, and recommend any actions to the Department Head and Associate Department

Heads.

Coordination with ECE Graduate Committee on combined B.S./M.Eng. proposal. Our proposals for

a revenue-generating, Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) degree and for a combined B.S./M.Eng. (4+1

years) degree are currently on hold, pending approval of the COE M.Eng. umbrella degree program

IBHE. This approval will likely come in October. The Graduate Committee will be charged with investigating,

in the context of this pending umbrella degree, how to provide a meaningful professional development

experience to our graduate students. On our side, further work is needed on how the B.S./M.Eng.

program will be defined and managed. Therefore, I ask your Committee to work closely with the ECE

Graduate Committee and with Associate Heads Erhan Kudeki and Steve Franke on the development and

implementation of an effective plan for the smooth offering of a high-quality B.S./M.Eng. degree option

to our students.

Planning for the Transition to the New Building. We anticipate that Fall 2014 classes will be held in

the new building. I ask the Curriculum committee make recommendations on how to best make use of the

classrooms in the building to support undergraduate ECE courses.

Imagine New ways of teaching ECE courses in support of "Wider" Award. Congratulations go to

ECE faculty and lecturers Steve Lumetta, Christopher Schmitz, Volodymyr Kindratenko, Geoffrey L.

Herman, Michael Loui, Erhan Kudeki, and Andreas Cangellaris for winning approval from NSF for the

"Wider" proposal, as part of a larger COE proposal. The goal of the project is to: 1) Reform gateway

STEM courses to (a) enhance student engagement, (b) improve student learning, (c) improve recruitment

and retention in the first two years of undergraduate study in STEM majors, particularly for underrepresented

women and minorities; 2) Develop a new teaching culture for gateway STEM courses by creating

CoPs among instructional faculty to sustain institutional-level reform at a large, research-intensive landgrant

institution; 3) Create a transferable model of institutional change for other institutions. Work in

ECE will be focused on ECE 110 and 120. The department has promised to "develop context-rich cooperative

problem solving activities akin to those developed in Physics, create flipped-classroom resources

and active learning activities for the lecture environment, and develop and adopt open-ended laboratory

assignments that scaffold student's knowledge and skills." As the steward of our undergraduate programs,

the curriculum committee should contribute to and oversee this activity.

I fully appreciate the amount of effort and time on your part required for effectively attending to this

charge. Our undergraduate program is one of the best in the world and its excellence depends on the attentive

and creative leadership provided by our Curriculum Committee through the engaged participation

of all its members in its weekly deliberations. On behalf of the entire ECE faculty and our students, I am

grateful to all of you for your service to the department through your participation and contributions to

one of its most important committees.

Thank you!

Bill