February 18, 2014, Minutes of the Curriculum Committee Meeting

ECE Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes for February 18, 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), Paris Smaragdis, Venu Veeravalli, Daniel Wasserman, Hao Zhu

Attendees: Basar, Dallesasse, Dominguez-Garcia, Hajek, Kudeki, Kumar, Levison, Lumetta, Makela, Mitra, Raginsky, Sanders, Schmitz, Veeravalli

1. The minutes of February 11 were approved.

2. Information/discussion item.  Bill and Erhan reported that the College of Engineering has approved the Department's proposed revision of the Computer Engineering Curriculum.  The proposal has moved to the Campus level.

3. The name "Basics of scientific computing" or "Scientific computing basics" was approved for the requirement for EE students to learn scientific computing by the end of the sophomore year (also see here.) 

4. The committee approved the request and syllabus for ECE 398BH, Probability in Engineering Lab, for Fall 2014.

5. Staffing from the computer engineering area for ECE 445 was discussed.  Enrollment in ECE 445 by Computer Engineering majors is expected to jump markedly in Fall 2015, because students with 96 hours or fewer at the end of Spring 2014 will be eligible for the new CE curriculum.  Rakesh Kumar volunteered to be engaged in the offering of ECE 445 in Fall 2014, and by the end of the Fall semester, draft proposed guidelines for acceptable ECE 445 projects undertaken by CompE majors.

6. Information item.  Bill Sanders noted that ECE 411 needs to be revised to incorporate additional elements of project development, such as more written reports, according to ABET recommendations.   Essentially the course should take a step in the direction of ECE 445 to be more suitable as one of the capstone design course options for Comp E majors. Wen-mei Hwu and others will be addresses this issue.

7. The question of what we know about the jobs and studies of our BS graduates was brought up.   Erhan and Bill will be meeting with the College survey unit.  Unfortunately recent survey data has been spotty, due to a low participation rate.   There was consensus on the committee to require graduating students to participate in the survey.

8. Information item.  Bill and Erhan noted that the proposal for a joint BS/MS degree in ECE is making its way in the College. A charge  to the curriculum committee was to monitor the impact on the BS program.   Bill suggested we invite Steve Franke to a future meeting to discuss the program and its possible impact on the undergraduate curricula.

9.  The meeting was adjourned at 3:50 p.m.

These minutes drafted by B. Hajek, February 25, 2014.