September 17, 2013, Minutes of the Curriculum Committee Meeting
- Bruce Hajek (Deactivated)
ECE Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes for September 17, 2013
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, Venu Veeravalli, Daniel Wasserman
Attendees: Basar, Ali Belabbas, Chen, Dellasasse, Dominguez-Garcia, Hajek, Hanumolu, Kudeki, Levinson, Lumetta, Makela, Mitra, Oelze, Raginsky, Smaragdis, Schmitz, Veeravalli
1. Approval of the minutes of the meeting of September 10 was deferred to the next meeting.
2. Two of the four action items identified in connection with the proposed major CE curriculum revision were briefly discussed. Here is a summary:
Item 1: Algorithms course following ECE 225 for CE majors. Sayan Mitra reported some more details on the new course ECE 374 being planned by faculty in CS. They are thinking it will be a four hour theory course on algorithms, at a somewhat lower level than the current ECE 473. The prerequisite would be CS 225. The CS department is also holding preliminary discussions about revising CS 225. It seems like CS 225 followed by CS 374, with ECE faculty input, could shape up to be the algorithms portion of the new CE curriculum. Further talks between ECE (Sayan and Steve) and CS about the future CS 225 are planned soon, and are needed for ECE 120/ECE 220/CS 225/CS 374 to be a good package. The CS 374 class size would be around 300 students per semester, half ECE and half CS. ECE would need to provide some graduate students to serve as TAs, paid by the CS department, to help staff the course. The ECE Department may also need to provide classroom space.
Item 2: How would ECE 445 need to be changed? (See minutes of September 10 for the latest on that.)
Item 3: Removal of the ECE 329 pre-requisite/co-requisite for ECE 340 and placement of ECE 340 on the 1 of n list. Overall, faculty members in the physical electronics area believe that ECE 329 should at least be a co-requisite for ECE 340. Erhan mentioned some agreement among a group of instructors on the following proposal: continue to have ECE 329 be a co-requisite for ECE 340, but still have both ECE 329 and ECE 340 appear on the one out of n list for the CE curriculum. On the positive side, this proposal would advertise the availability of ECE 340 to CE students. On the negative side, this could mislead some students into thinking that the one in n requirement could be satisfied by taking ECE 340 without taking any other course on the list, because that is how x out of y lists usually work. (An analogy is having two choices for pizza toppings: onions or green peppers, with an asterisk next to green peppers saying if you get green peppers you have to get onions too.) The CC did not weigh in on this issue.
Item 4: Review ECE 120/220. Deferred to next meeting.
3. Chris Schmitz provided more details about his request for input and draft outline for a 3 credit hour version of ECE 110 as a possible replacement for the current four hour version of ECE 110. The three hour version would have two hours of lecture and three hours of lab per week. This led to general discussion about ECE 110 in particular and also, in general, the merits of a freshman year course in which students get exposure to equipment, problems, and solutions, before getting more in depth background on specific areas. The CC did not come to any conclusion following the discussion.
4. The meeting adjourned at 1:50 p.m.
These minutes drafted by B. Hajek, September 17, 2013.