/
Curriculum Committee Minutes 2020 April 20

Curriculum Committee Minutes 2020 April 20

Owned by Mark Hasegawa-Johnson
Last updated: Apr 22, 2020

Attending

Jont Allen, Yuliy Baryshnikov, Can Bayram, Ujjal Bhowmik, Zuofu Cheng, Peter Dragic, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Ravi Iyer, Erhan Kudeki, Christopher Schmitz

Time and Place

Monday, April 20, 2020, 3:00-4:00pm, https://illinois.zoom.us/j/112267137

Old Business

  1. Chemistry 103.  The College of Engineering is considering several options for the college-wide Chem 103 requirement.  One possibility: "All departments review their program of study and make changes as necessary (due with Academic Catalog review changes in late fall). Those who want their students to take the lab(s) will keep the requirement as is. Those who don’t mind if their students do/don’t take the lab(s) will remove the CHEM 103/105 requirement.  The extra 1 – 2 credit hours could be free elective credit or tech elective." CHEM 10x Lab Waiver.docx. 

Draft motions (converted to  two motions, by friendly amendment):

(1) Moved that the Computer Engineering major remove the CHEM 103 requirement, effective with the Academic Catalog review changes in late fall  2020, and allocate the extra 1 credit hour to tech elective.

Discussion: CompE group has expressed unanimous support for this motion.

(2) Moved that the Electrical Engineering major remove the CHEM 103 requirement, effective with the Academic Catalog review changes in late fall  2020, and allocate the extra 1 credit hour to tech elective.

Discussion:

(a)  ABET requirements are listed here: https://www.abet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/E001-20-21-EAC-Criteria-Mark-Up-11-24-19-Updated.pdf.   Criterion 5 requires that a program have a minimum of 30 semester credit hours of a combination of college-level mathematics and basic sciences with experimental evidence appropriate to the program.   Eliminating the Chem 103 requirement would leave us with 12 credit hours of Physics, 16 credit hours of Math, and 3 credit hours of Chemistry.

(b) Discussions in Micro, Nano, EM/Optics, and Power groups were held.  Responses are here:

MICRO: 8 wish to keep Chem 103, 3 wish to delete Chem 103, 2 maybe.

NANO: 1 wishes to keep Chem 103, 2 wish to delete Chem 103, with the following caveat: "I think Chem 103 is beneficial to some of our ECE students but not all of them. The students who should take Chem 103 are the ones who are interested in going to medical school, or getting involved in nanotechnology, bioengineering, or semiconductor related research eventually. So I think it is OK to make it an optional course."

POWER: "everyone unanimously voted to keep the lab in our area meeting" – unanimous support for keeping Chem 103 as a requirement.

Proposed Compromise Measure (as an attempt to keep the first two years of EE and CE majors synchronized): Instead of requiring Chem 102/103 of all students, we should require that all students, in either Electrical or Computer Engineering majors, must take EITHER Chem 102+103 OR Math 257 (linear algebra).

Conclusion: Committee Chair will write up a summary of the compromise measure, and of the background knowledge necessary to understand it.  He will send this information to the Curriculum Committee for comment, and once CC comments have been processed, will send it to the rest of the department for comment.