ECE Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes for April 1, 2014
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), Chris Schmitz, Paris Smaragdis, Venu Veeravalli, Daniel Wasserman, Hao Zhu
Attendees: Basar, Dallesasse, Dominguez-Garcia, Hajek, Kudeki, Kumar, Levinson, Liberzon, Makela, Mitra, Sanders, Smaragdis, Veeravalli, Zhu
1. The minutes of March 4 were approved as corrected.
2. The cross listing of ECE 408 with CSE was approved.
3. The bulk of the meeting was spent coming up with the following suggestions for charges to the curriculum committee:
a. [Design experience for undergraduates] As the new Computer Engineering curriculum is phased in, the curriculum committee should help ensure that an appropriate capstone design experience is provided for all students. This entails in part an adjustment of ECE 445 to accommodate an expected increase in enrollment by Computer Engineers (Rakesh Kumar, in cooperation with existing instructors, is taking the lead in this direction.) Another aspect is to examine the experience students receive in the other ways they can satisfy the design elective: currently ECE 411 OR ECE 496+499.
b. [Modality of entry level ECE courses] As the new undergraduate curricula roll out, the student experience in the entry level courses, ECE 110, 120, 210, 220, should be closely scrutinized. What is the ideal modality for each course (e.g. multiple smaller sections or one large lecture per week and multiple discussion sections)? The Department stands committed to providing whatever resources are needed to support these courses.
c. [Grade distribution in ECE courses] The curriculum committee should examine the distribution of grades assigned in undergraduate courses, to determine if they are roughly uniform and reasonable. If a problem is perceived the committee should propose how to address it. It may prove helpful to distribute some statistics to course instructors about the norms in the department.
d. [Enrollment caps] The Curriculum committee should examine the undergraduate enrollment numbers with an eye towards recommending possible adjustment of the enrollment cap.
e. [Unofficial focus areas] The ECE advising website includes pages for unofficial focus areas. The links are the orange boxes to the right of the x of y portion of the curriculum diagram. These pages include suggested choices of x of y courses and technical electives for students with different focuses. These links are due for examination and update, including possible changes in the titles.
f. [Scientific computing basics] Adequacy/appropriateness/specifics of the requirement for scientific computing basics, represented by a freestanding box in the curriculum diagram, should be evaluated.
4. The meeting was adjourned at 3:50 p.m.
These minutes drafted by B. Hajek, April 1, 2014.