September 8, Minutes of Curriculum Committee Meeting

ECE Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes for Sep 8, 2014

Members AY 2014-15:  Jont Allen, Michael Bailey, Can Bayram, Mohamed Ali Belabbas, Deming Chen, Weng Cho Chew, Peter Dragic, John Dallesasse. Alejandro Dominguez-Garcia, Gary Eden, Bruce Hajek , Kiruba Haran, Pavan Kumar Hanumolu, Erhan Kudeki (Ex-Officio), Rakesh Kumar, Stephen Levinson, Yi Lu, Steven Lumetta, Olgica Milenkovic, Sayan Mitra, Michael Oelze, Maxim Raginsky, William Sanders (Ex-Officio), Chris Schmitz, Paris Smaragdis, Lav Varshney, Venu Veeravalli (chair), Lara Waldrop, Hao Zhu, Wenjuan Zhu

Present: Jont Allen, Michael  Bailey, Can Bayram, Deming Chen, Weng Cho Chew, Peter Dragic, John Dallesasse. Alejandro Dominguez-Garcia, Bruce Hajek , Kiruba Haran, Pavan Kumar Hanumolu, Stephen Levinson,  Steven Lumetta, Olgica Milenkovic, Sayan Mitra, Michael Oelze, Chris Schmitz, Lav Varshney, Venu Veeravalli (chair), Hao Zhu, Wenjuan Zhu

The meeting was called to order at 3 pm.

The minutes of the May 6, 2014  meeting were discussed and the items remaining to be addressed by the committee were used to create an initial charge for the committee for the new academic year. In particular (a) – (h) of the  following items were discussed (with discussion summarized below):

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.  ABET recommends inclusion of the following elements: (1) Real-life realistic constraints being considered in design decisions; (2) Assuring that team work is really exercised in all stages of design projects including concept development, design decisions, implementation, and presentation; (3) Project report refers to element (1) as well as societal and/or ethical issues that may be relevant; (4) An assessment procedure to ensure that above objectives are fulfilled.

There was some discussion about  making ECE 411 more design oriented. There was also a discussion of CS 374 being a new required course in the CE curriculum, and the fact that ECE has volunteered up to 7 TAs to help with the course.

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.

Lumetta and Schmitz reported that student experience with ECE 110 and 120 seemed to be  good so far based on informal feedback from students. There was some discussion about ECE 210 needing to be simplified in terms of exams and better aligned to ECE 310.

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.

The committee concurred that this needs to be done this year.

d. [Enrollment caps]  The Curriculum committee should examine the undergraduate enrollment numbers with an eye towards recommending possible adjustment of the enrollment cap.

It was decided that we should invite Prof. Umberto Ravioli to address the committee to discuss this issue.

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.

It was decided that this should be one of first items to be addressed by committee this year.

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.

There some discussion about whether the ECE 210 honors section that teaches Matlab/Python should be made required.

g. [Calc II & III for ECE/Engineering students] (See minutes of April 29 meeting.)

It was decided that this discussion needs to be continued.

h. [Plans for continuation of course on Big Data; more generally, changes to the lineup of elective courses]

The committee will request a proposal for a permanent course from the course director.

i. Report back from committee of Erhan Kudeki et al following up on  this committees report on improvement of PHYS213-214.

j. [Outgoing surveys] Examine employment/graduate school survey of outgoing students,

k. [Improve instructional methods]

These minutes drafted by V. Veeravalli, Sep 10, 2014.