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Curriculum Committee Minutes 2020 November 10

Curriculum Committee Minutes 2020 November 10

Owned by Mark Hasegawa-Johnson
Last updated: Nov 10, 2020

Attending

Jont Allen, Arijit Banerjee, Yuliy Baryshnikov, Ujjal Bhowmik, Simeon Bogdanov, Xu Chen, Zuofu Cheng, Peter Dragic, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Volodymyr Kindratenko, Erhan Kudeki, Andrew Miller, Zhen Peng, Shaloo Rakheja, Umberto Ravaioli, Chris Schmitz

Time and Place

Monday, November 10, 2:00pm, https://illinois.zoom.us/j/96972752638?pwd=Z3hqdUxYamNJazNYRkR0V1JmM0padz09


New Business

  1. Proposal to offer a temporary course in spring 2021: ECE 498NS, Models of Biophysical Systems.  This will be the second offering of this course.  ECE498NS-Request.20.pdf, ECE498-NS-V1.6.pdf.  Status: Approved, 16-0-0
  2. Proposal to offer a temporary course in spring 2021: ECE 498ZP, Wave Physics in Wireless Communication. ECE498-ZP.pdf, ECE498-Wave_Communication_2021-ZP.pdf.  Status: Approved, 16-0-0
  3. Proposal to offer a temporary course in spring 2021: ECE 198YH, Computing Applications of Discrete Mathematics. eceX98_form.docx.  Status: Approved, 16-0-0

Old Business

Proposal to the College of Engineering for a Change to the Electrical Engineering Curriculum: 1) Replace MATH 286 by the sequence of (MATH 257 or MATH 416) and MATH 285, 2) Add ATMS 201, CPSP 265, PSYC 204 as technical electives, and 3) Revise our Junior Eligibility Rule to allow one of PHYS 213/214, ECE 210, or ECE 220 to be postponed to the student's 5th semester.  With these changes the number of required basic math and science hours is increased by 2 which will be deducted from the number of technical electives hours to decrease them from 32 to 30.

Proposal to the College of Engineering for a Change to the Computer Engineering Curriculum: 1) Replace MATH 286 by the sequence of (MATH 257 or MATH 416) and MATH 285, 2) Remove CHEM 102/103 as a required course, 3) Add CHEM 102/103, ATMS 201, CPSP 265, PSYC 204 as technical electives, and 4) Revise our Junior Eligibility Rule to allow one of ECE 210, ECE 220, or PHYS 213/214 to be postponed to the student's 5th semester.  With these changes the number of required basic math and science hours is reduced by 2 which will be added to the number of technical electives hours to increase them from 27 to 29.

Status: The Curriculum Committee solicited feedback by e-mail from the entire department.  We received three e-mail replies, with the following content:

  1. I strongly support this revision aimed at strengthening the math background of our students.
  2. I'm wondering if they deal with complex eigenvalues in Lecture 16. Complex eigenvalues are essential for taking inverse LTs of circuits with resonant circuits. If the discussion is limited to real eigenvalues, then it will not deal with any resonant systems such as LRC networks.  (Philipp  Hieronymi replied: We have some room to maneuver. So if there is a topic that is missing, but crucial to ECE, we can work on including this. Since this came up before, I want to point out that we cover complex linear algebra (albeit at the end) in class and cover linear differential equations (under dynamical systems) in the lab.)
  3. The benefit of a 3-hour linear algebra course in the first four semesters does not justify the cost of delaying any of PHYS 213/214, ECE 210, or ECE 220 to the fifth semester for EE students. PHYS 213/214 and ECE 210 teach specific skills that EE students will need in junior-level courses such as ECE 310, ECE 329, ECE 330, ECE 340, ECE 342, etc. Early exposure to some quantum mechanical concepts in PHYS 214 is now increasingly important for EE students. While it can be argued that ECE 220 can be postponed for EE students, if they put this off until semester 5, the students will be at a disadvantage for obtaining internships during their sophomore year. I believe linear algebra is important. I always advise students to take MATH 416 or 415 if possible. I know most good students take one of these courses in the first two years anyways. However, when weighing the potential benefits of linear algebra against the potential costs mentioned above, I do not feel the benefits justify the costs. It probably makes more sense to postpone CHEM 102/103 rather than any of the courses mentioned above. I do not know enough about upper-division CompE courses to comment on the tradeoff there.

Next step: the Curriculum Committee will organize a vote of the department on the proposals as stated above.