Minutes 11/8/2021

Date

Nov 8, 2021

Attendees

A. Aggarwal, J. Allen, U.K. Bhowmik, S. Bogdanov, Z. Cheng, P. Dragic, M. Hasegawa-Johnson, Y.-C. Hu, N. Kani, J. Kim, E. Kudeki, K. Levchenko, S. Lumetta, S. Mitra, T. Moon, C. Radhakrishnan, U. Ravaioli, J. Shuh.  Guests: Eric Chitambar, John Dallesasse, Jean-Pierre Leburton

Minutes

The committee revisited ECE 398EC "Quantum Systems I" submitted by Eric Chitambar, previously approved for Spring 2022 offering.  The review was motivated by the request from the MNTL Area committee to remove ECE 329 as a prerequisite.  Eric Chitambar, John Dallesasse (chair of the MNTL Area committee), and Jean-Pierre Leburton join the meeting to present the case for the requested change.  It was indicated by the guests that some advanced material is being removed from the syllabus, to make the course more accessible to junior students right after taking PHYS 212 and PHYS 214.  The discussion touched also on the 400-levl courses following ECE 398EC (planned to become eventually ECE 305) and the prerequisites needed in those courses.  The option of keeping ECE 329 as a co-requisite for ECE 398EC was also considered.   Erhan Kudeki expressed the view that prerequisites are selected to ensure proper intellectual development;  ECE 329 not only has material relevant to the applied physics of quantum mechanics, but it also develops in students familiarity with wave propagation.  Another issue discussed was the timing of the offering.  ECE 398EC is planned to be a Spring semester course.  For students on a regular academic progression it would be taken by juniors at the same time as ECE 340, and therefore it would be advisable for them to take ECE 329 in the prior Fall semester.  Many students, on the other hand, come with a number of AP credits and tend to accelerate the Physics sequence.  Therefore, it is also likely that a number of students could take ECE 398EC in the second semester of their second year.  At the end of the discussion, since assurances were given that the material in ECE 305 will be calibrated to be accessible to students with junior standing, the committee voted to remove the ECE 329 prerequisite.  However, it was also stipulated that the instructor should provide a report when the course is presented for a second time offering, in order to establish whether students are sufficiently prepared without ECE 329, at which time the committee will reevaluate the need for prerequisites.

The committee moved afterwards to consider the late request submitted by Raluca Ilie to revise the one credit hour course ECE 328 "Comp Soln EM Probs, I".  The idea is to revitalize the course by replacing the old syllabus with the material taught in ECE 398RI and by changing the title to "Fields and Waves VR Laboratory",  The request was also to teach again ECE 398RI again Spring 2022 as temporary offering, pending the approval of the revision of ECE 328.  The committee was pleased to hear that there is an interest by the Physics department in the virtual reality applications developed for this course.  Because of this, the proposal had indicated as course minimum prerequisites the co-enrollment in ECE 329 or the co-enrollment in PHYS 212.  However, it was noted that such prerequisites are not properly formulated since PHYS 212 is a strict prerequisite for ECE 329.  Also, a number of advanced topics in ECE 398RI are not covered in PHYS 212.  Therefore, the committee requested to remove PHYS 212 from the prerequisite list, leaving the instructor with the option to allow registration of PHYS 212 students on a case-by-case basis.  With this amendment, both requests were approved with unanimous consent.  Additionally, the committee suggested that it would be appropriate in the future to consider a spin-off course specifically calibrated to be a companion for PHYS 212, an option which is strongly encouraged by the committee.