CIS Undergraduate Studies Committee
meeting minutes
2003-'04
Committee Members:
Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, David Mathias, Neelam Soundarajan (Chair), Han-wei Shen, Bruce Weide, Dong Xuan, Paolo Bucci, Peg Steele,
Brad Moore (CIS student rep), Matt Schwaberow (CSE student rep), David Wannemacher (CIS student rep).
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, David Mathias, Brad Moore, Rajiv Ramnath, Matt Schwaberow, Han-wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Peg Steele, David Wannemacher, Bruce Weide, Dong Xuan.
- CIS 758 and Capstone Criteria:
Rajiv made a detailed presentation of the contents of CIS 758, how the
course is organized, and how it meets our new criteria for capstone courses.
The course is very much project driven. Students are organized into
teams of typically five students each. Many of the projects are drawn
from industry and the results of the students' work is often used by
the industries, typically as a prototype to build their final systems
on. For the last year or so, Rajiv and Mike (Stovsky) have taught all
sections of the course. While their respective sections are similar in
many ways, there are also some differences between Rajiv's sections
and Mike's sections. The main difference is that there is a slightly
greater stress on process when Mike teaches the course, the stress
tends to be a bit more on the product when Rajiv teaches the course.
But in both cases, providing students with a real-world software
development experience is the central goal, with teamworking, oral and
written communications, etc. all being essential components.
The course focuses on teaching, and having the students engage in,
good, industry-standard, software engineering practices; in
particular, questions of configuration management, project management
(team roles, schedules, etc.), software development methodologies,
etc. During the course of the quarter, students are required to
produce project plans, requirements descriptions, design documents,
test plans, user guides, etc. Considerable attention is paid to
non-functional requirements such as scalability, security,
and performance, as well as on evaluating design alternatives. Oral
presentations, both to peers and, where appropriate, to industry
sponsors, are required of all teams throughout the quarter. Some
recent project sponsors include Ford, Northwestern Ohio Security
Systems, and OSU. Regular guest lectures by local or visiting software
professionals are part of the course. Each student team makes a final
group presentation and demo of the project; individual students in
each team are required to submit a final written report that include
self-evaluation as well as peer-evaluation components.
In summary, the course is an excellent and popular capstone design
course, and meets all the capstone course criteria: The course is at
the senior level, and builds on such courses as CIS 560, 601, and
757. Design is the major activity in the course with students
considering various design alternatives. Students are required to
account for such constraints as performance, robustness (the specific
issues addressed depend on the particular project). Standards such as
XML, SRS, SDS, play an important role in the design considerations
since many of the projects are web-services related. The interaction
with industry professionals both via industry-sponsored projects as
well the guest lectures, ensures that professional issues are very
much in the picture. Ethical issues are not directly addressed but
questions such as security that many of the projects are concerned
with involve these issues. Teamworking and oral and written
communications are strong components of the course.
Students seem to enjoy the course, and it certainly helps prepare them
for professional practice. The committee felt that the course
definitely meets our criteria for capstone courses and indeed is an
excellent capstone design course. (The slides Rajiv used in his presentation
and other information about the course are
available on-line).
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: Fall quarter.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu, Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, David Mathias, Brad Moore, Rajiv Ramnath, Neelam Soundarajan, Peg Steele.
- CIS 772 and Capstone Criteria:
Hakan made a detailed presentation of the contents of CIS 772, how the
course is organized, and how it meets our criteria for capstone courses.
The course is very much project driven. Students are organized into teams
of typically five students each. The instructor presents a few (typically
three) possible projects; students may also come up with their own ideas
for projects, and usually there are two or three such ideas. Each team is
required to write up a project proposal early in the quarter so that
(especially for the projects that are based on students' own ideas) the
instructor can evaluate the reasonableness of the proposed project, its
scope, approach, etc.
For the first three to four weeks, class time is devoted to the instructor
lecturing on various technical topics, especially the ones underlying the
projects suggested by the instructor. For the next two weeks, there are
presentations by student teams reporting on initial progress in their
respective projects, as well as, in the case of teams working on
student-proposed projects, on technical ideas underlying those projects.
Each student in each team is required to make presentations.
Student teams are also required to submit weekly reports on their
projects. And they submit a final report as well. In addition, individual
students are required to, at the end of the quarter, submit an
individual report on their contributions to the project, a
self-evaluation of what they learned from the project, as well as a peer
evaluation.
During the seventh week of the quarter, each team is required to make
a "midterm-demo" of their project. The final demo is during the finals
week. All students attend all presentations. They also do a peer
evaluation based on these presentations.
The projects themselves pay considerable attention to important
practical issues such as response time, usability of the web interface,
etc. Some in class time is also spent on discussing on important
standards such as XML; and students use tools and technologies such as
SOAP, that are important in practice.
Overall, the committee felt that the course was a very good capstone
design course and
definitely meets all our criteria. Students seem to enjoy the course and
seem to benefit quite a bit from the course. (One minor point that came
up during the discussion was that thecourse lists "CIS 516 or 757" as one
of the prerequisites. This should be replaced by "CIS 616 or 757". Hakan
will work with the Curriculum Committee to take care of this.)
- Evaluation of advising services provided by the Advising Office:
Peg presented some ideas for establishing a mechanism for students to
evaluate the services provided by the Undergraduate Advising Office.
She has prepared a survey that asks the respondent to evaluate such
items as the quality of information provided about GEC courses, the
quality of responses to e-mail questions, etc. The idea is to have the
survey available on-line, perhaps from the undergrad web pages. The
system staff have agreed to work with Peg to get the survey on-line.
We will probably continue to discuss and fine tune the survey questions.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: June 1.
In attendance:
Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, David Mathias, Brad Moore, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Peg Steele, David Wannemacher, Bruce Weide, Dong Xuan.
- Assessment of BS CSE program:
We continued discussion of possible changes in how we survey the BS
CSE program. No conclusions were reached but we will investigate how easy
it would be to make changes such as moving to an on-line survey for
alumni, etc. We also briefly discussed possible specific changes in the
questions such as splitting the questions with respect to faculty advising
versus advising by the Advising Office.
- Possible changes to the program:
One general observation was that the ultimate goal of all these
assessments is supposed to be to allow us to identify and implement
needed changes and improvements to the program. So the rest of the
time was spent on discussing possible changes:
- We recently allowed CSE majors to use one of the courses in the
Business Minor to count against the seven "additional hours" of GEC
that they are required to take. It seems reasonable to make this a
requirement for all CSE majors. We have had discussions with
the people in the Business College most directly involved with the
courses and they seemed quite interested in and supportive of this.
So early next year, we will propose this to the faculty.
- One area in which our surveys have indicated need for improvement
is communication skills, especially oral communication. There is a new
course, JCom 321 (5 credits) focused on oral communications that is
offered regularly that would seem to be well suited for our students.
If we could treat this course also as a GEC course, then we could
require it of all CSE majors. And we may be able to do just this if
the current COE proposal of reducing the GEC requirements for students
in the college from the current 38 hours to 33 hours is accepted by
the university. In such a case, we would require our students to have,
in addition to the college-required 33 hours, twelve (rather than
seven) additional hours of GEC since our accreditation requirements
mandate 45 hours. We could then count JCom 321 as part of these twelve
hours. We will consider this if and when the college GEC proposal goes
through.
- Another area that we have heard concerns about (for example at
the annual Undergraduate Forums) is that students may not be getting
sufficient experience in developing software from scratch. A way to
address this problem that has been proposed is the introduction of a
course that students would take between CIS 321 and 560. One important
point of the course would be to require students to work on a series
of three or four non-trivial labs (each lab could possibly, but not
necessarily, build on the previous one), and this would be the main
activity in the course. Students would work by themselves, not in
teams. Early next year, we will try to identify people who might
be able and willing to develop such a course. The recent C#
might serve as a possible model although the proposed course will be
at least 2 credits, whereas the C# course was 1 credit. One key aspect
of the C# course that might be worth emulating in the proposed course
is the very active and central role of one or two key undergraduate
students in developing the course. There are also questions about
resources for developing and teaching the course which will have to be
addressed.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: May 18.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, Brad Moore, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Peg Steele, Bruce Weide.
- Results of surveys of BS CSE program:
We discussed the results of this year's exit survey, alumni survey, and
supervisor survey of the BS CSE program. The results are available by following the links in the page related to the
objectives, outcomes, assessments, and feedback for the program; scroll down to the section on
"Assessments and Feedback Mechanisms" and follow the links under items (1), (2), and (3). The "combined" results provide the results of the last several
years' surveys.
A number of observations were made:
- The survey results seem to have remained fairly constant over the last
few years.
- The number of respondents for the alumni survey and the supervisor survey
are (and have been) very low: Perhaps we could address this by offering
some incentives such as a raffle for a couple of Amazon coupons or something.
- Consider changing how the survey is done. Maybe do it over the web?
Currently, the paper surveys are sent out by the Engineering College.
A problem with doing it over the web is that we don't have the contact
addresses for alumni (and we don't want to take on the responsibility of
maintaining the addresses).
One possibility might be to have the college still send out
the surveys but in the cover letter, provide a url where the survey could
be completed on-line.
- The alumni survey may be too long since it asks questions about such
things as the effectiveness of the TAs in areas such as Math and Physics.
But changing this might be a bit involved since
these portions of the alumni survey are college-wide. So
any changes will have to be accepted by all the programs. (Neelam will talk
to the college's "Outcomes committee" -which is the committee responsible
for these activities- about this.)
- It may be useful to split the question in (part 3 -- this is the part
that is program specific) of the alumni survey concerning employment and preparation for graduate study into two separate
questions.
- It may similarly be useful to split the question concerning team-working
and multidisciplinary interactions into two separate questions.
- The difference between the rating for the importance of communication
skills and the rating for our graduates' abilities/preparation in
this area, was as pronounced as ever. In the past, we had tried to see
if there might be a course in in the Communication department (or rather,
Journalism and Communication) that our students might be required or allowed
to take. Although there seemed to be such courses, budget questions related
to offering enough sections of the course so our students could take them
could not be resolved. Maybe with the new budget model, these problems can
be resolved. We will take another look at this.
The meeting adjourned at 3:25 pm.
Next meeting: May 11.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, David Mathias, Brad Moore, Rajiv Ramnath, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Peg Steele, Bruce Weide, Dong Xuan, David Wannemacher.
- Including a Business course in the GEC portion of the BS CSE curriculum:
One important feedback that we have consistently received from alumni
and recruiters is that our students need to have some knowledge and
understanding of essential business ideas and practices. Currently,
Engineering students are required (by the College) to take a minimum
of 38 credit hours of GEC courses. BS CSE majors are required to take
an additional 7 credit hours of GEC (to meet the minimum 45 hours
required by accreditation criteria of the Computing Accreditation
Commission (CAC)). The proposal was to require BS CSE students to take
one of the five courses that constitutes the
Business Minor
and count the course toward the 7 additional GEC hours. (Although these courses are not in OSU's lists
of GEC courses, CAC guidelines allow such courses to be used toward
its 45 hour requirement.)
Several points were noted during the discussion:
- Each of these courses has Econ 200 as a prerequisite. This means
that students would have to take that course in addition to the
Business course. Econ 200 is currently approved as a GEC course in the
Social Sciences category, so this would not result in any increase in
the number of hours in the program. However, it would reduce the
flexibility of the program somewhat.
- BS CSE students, as are all Engineering majors, are currently
required to take ISE 504, Engineering Economics. It would seem
reasonable that ISE 504 could serve as an alternate prerequisite in
place of Econ 200; if that were the case, the problem in (a) would be
solved. However, preliminary discussions with the Business faculty
suggest that ISE 504 may not be a satisfactory substitute. This issue
may be worth exploring further.(Rajiv, Matt, and Neelam will talk to
the Business faculty about this.)
- BS CSE students in the Information Systems option are already
required to take AMIS 310 (or the equivalent AMIS 211) which is one of
the courses in the Business Minor. They are also required to take
BusMgt 630; this course is not in the Business Minor but students who
take this course are not allowed to take BusMgt 430 which IS in the
Minor. These students would be required to take one of the remaining
three courses in the Minor. This seems reasonable, given the likely
career paths for these students following graduation.
The consensus in the committee was that this would be a very useful
addition to the BS CSE curriculum. But given the uncertainty with
respect to the possibility of using ISE 504 as an alternate
prerequisite in place of Econ 200, it was felt that it might be
appropriate, for now, to allow BS CSE students use one of
these courses toward the 7 additional hours of GEC rather than
require them to do so, and the proposal was modified to that
effect. The modified proposal was passed unanimously (and will be
presented to the faculty at an early date).
The meeting adjourned at 3:25 pm.
Next meeting: TBA.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Brad Moore, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Peg Steele, Bruce Weide, Dong Xua, David Wannemacher.
- Agenda items for Spring quarter and beyond:
We listed a number of items that we hope to pursue in the coming
months and briefly discussed priorities.
- Changing the name of the CIS degree to "Computer Science": With
the department name
changed to Computer Science and Engineering, there is no good reason
for the name of our ASC degree to be "Computer and Information
Science". Moreover, the word "Information" in the name of the degree
apparently confuses some potential employers who mistake for an
MIS-type degree. Hence it seems appropriate to change the name of the
degree to "Computer Science". But such a change would have to go
through several levels of approvals (including the Board of Trustees)
so it will take a while. (After the meeting, Stu suggested it might
also be a good idea to consult with the new chair about this change.)
- Changes in the CIS curriculum: The changes in the CIS curriculum
(mainly consisting of replacing Math 254 by Math 566 plus two hours of
technical electives) that were recently approved by the faculty will
shortly be sent to the MPS committee for its approval. We hope to have
MPS approval by the end of the quarter, with the changes being
effective Au '04.
There was also a brief discussion of the
possibility again of adding CIS 601 to the curriculum as part of this
set of changes; this was considered especially worthwhile since many
CIS students take one of the courses designated as a capstone course
for the CSE program, and CIS 601 is an important prereq for the
capstone courses. But after further discussion with Stu after the
meeting, it looks like additional sections of 601 will not be offered
next year so we will have to wait until Au '05 to make this change.
So there is no agenda item for the committee on this topic.
- Capstone courses: We will continue evaluating each of the CSE
capstone courses against the (proposed) new capstone course criteria
and work with course coordinators to make any needed changes,
especially with respect to the teamworking and communication (oral and
written) components of the courses. (Neelam will talk to the
coordinators of the capstone courses to arrange for them to tell the
committee about their particular courses.)
- Business course in the CSE curriculum: Feedback from alumni and
other constituents over the years has strongly suggested that CSE
majors need to learn business skills as part of their curriculum. We
will investigate possible ways to add a business course to the CSE
curriculum (without increasing the number of credit hours in the
program). The College of Business has recently developed some
courses, such as Bus Fin 420 and Bus Mgt 430, that would seem to be
appropriate.
- Advising guidelines: New faculty members often have questions
about advising that are not specifically answered anywhere. Possible
solutions such as putting together a set of web pages explaining the
essential points and answering common questions, or organizing a
"workshop" at the start of each year for new faculty (or rather for
faculty who have been here for a year since new faculty are not
assigned any undergrad advisees), were considered. Neelam and Peg will
work on this.
- Student organizations: The web pages of various student
organizations in the department, with the notable exception of that of
NTSig, seem to be in serious need of update and maintainence. Peg will
contact the officeholders to try and ensure that these pages are
maintained on a regular basis.
Since the CSE accreditation evaluation is on the horizon, we will
focus on items (c) and (d) (with (a) being on a longer term).
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: TBA.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, David Mathias, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam
Soundarajan, Peg Steele, Bruce Weide.
-
Report on the Undergraduate Forum of Feb. 18:
Neelam reported
on the Undergraduate Forum that was held on Feb. 18. The report is
available
on-line.
Some possible action items were identified, based on what we heard at
the Forum:
- Work with the people from the Engineering and ASC Career Services
Offices to see how best to ensure that CIS majors are not shortchanged
when it comes to getting interview opportunities with companies that
recruit on-campus.
- Consider changing the name of the CIS major to Computer Science.
- Consider adding a Business course as a required course in the CSE
major; this will count toward the GEC requirements of the CSE major
(and will not add to the number of hours in the program).
- Consider introducing a course (or courses) that deal with
practical programming activities, possibly even at the 100-level.
Georgia Tech apparently has recently introduced such a course and it
has been very successful. We will look at that model.
- Consider possible changes in the core curriculum, including
possibly in the RESOLVE sequence.
We will discuss these in the Spring quarter.
- Report on faculty actions on UGSC items:
The department
faculty, at its meeting of March 8, took the following actions:
- Approved the reduction of the GPA required for admission to the
majors to 2.7 with immediate effect; the 2.7 requirement will remain
in effect until fall quarter when we will reevaluate it.
- Approved the following change in the BS CIS curriculum:
Replace Math 254 by [Math 566 + addition of 2 hours to tech electives].
UGSC recommendation was:
Replace Math 254 by [Math 566 + CIS 601 + addition of 1 hour of tech elective]
but the faculty felt that the
601 capacity is inadequate at the moment for dealing with all CSE and CIS
majors,
and hence it would be
inappropriate to require the course of CIS majors. The faculty
encouraged us
to consider bringing back the proposal of requiring 601 for CIS at a
future time, perhaps late next year.
Some faculty members also had concerns about our proposal to make the following change in the Advanced Studies option:
Replace "One of CIS 725, 755, 780; and One of CIS 760, 775;" by
"CIS 725; and One of CIS 755, 760, 775, 780".
This was
felt to be a potential problem because 725 is a difficult course even for grad
students; requiring all Adv. Studies option students to take it may be
a bit too much. So we were asked to rethink this.
- Briefly discussed the
proposed revised criteria for CSE capstone courses. The faculty
generally approved of these changes, and also noted the importance of
ensuring that our capstone courses are as effective as they can be, given
the central role that the capstone requirement plays in EC 2000.
- Briefly discussed the
proposed revised CSE Objectives and Outcomes.
There was some discussion of the terminology that ABET uses
but no major suggestions for changes. [After the meeting, Stu sent Neelam
some suggestions for wording changes; some of these have been incorporated
in the draft.]
With respect to the changes in the CIS curriculum:
After a brief discussion, we agreed that the proposed change in the
Advanced Studies option is indeed problematic, so we will drop it.
The changes that the faculty did approve in the CIS curriculum still
have to go
through the MPS curriculum committee before becoming effective.
Neelam will work on this.
With respect to the changes in the CSE Objectives/Outcomes, and the
changes in the Capstone course criteria:
Neelam had also posted, to the student newsgroups, pointers to the proposed
revisions to the capstone course criteria, and to the CSE Objectives and
Outcomes, inviting comments.
After a further final discussion in UGSC early in Spring quarter, including
taking account of any further comments that may be received from students,
we will
ask for final approval of both the revised capstone course criteria and the
revised CSE Objectives and Outcomes statement. We will also continue
evaluting existing capstone courses against the revised criteria and work
with instructors and coordinators to identify any needed changes.
The meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm.
Next meeting: Spring quarter.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, David Mathias, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Peg Steele, Rick Parent.
-
Criteria for capstone courses: After a brief discussion, the committee
unanimously approved the proposed
revisions
(revised criteria+rationale) in the criteria for capstone courses.
- CIS 682 as a capstone course: Rick Parent made a detailed
presentation on CIS 682, Computer animation. Some of the key features
that make it suitable as a CSE capstone course are:
- Stress on design: Students are required to engage in a
quarter-long, fairly intensive, design project; the main project
deliverable is a short animation.
- Stress on team-working: Students are organized into teams of about
five students each. The teams often include an art student thus
contributing to the multidisciplinary nature of the design experience.
- Stress on oral-presentation: Each team is required to make four
presentations, essentially progress reports on their design and
implementation activities.
- Stress on documentation: Each team is required to maintain a web page
with storyboard and status of the project including still images and
test animations as they are generated, along with descriptions of
responsibilities and progress of the group members.
- Grading: Although there is a midterm and a final exam, they count
only for 30% of the total grade, with the rest being for presentations
(20%), documentation (20%), and final project (30%).
The committee felt that the course clearly meets the capstone course
criteria. The only concern was that it does not list CIS 601 as a
prerequisite; Rick agreed that it would be appropriate to change the
prerequisites to include 601. Subject to this change, the committee
unanimously approved the designation of CIS 682 as a capstone course
for CSE majors. It is particularly suitable for the Software Systems
option; and also appropriate for Information Systems and
Hardware/Software.
The meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm.
Next meeting: 3/10/'04.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, David Mathias, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Nikki Strader, Bruce Weide, Dong Xuan.
-
GPA for admission to CIS/CSE majors: Based on discussions in previous
meetings, the committee decided unanimously to recommend to faculty
(at its meeting of 3/8/'04)
that the GPA required for admission to the majors be reduced to 2.7
effective immediately. We will revisit the issue in the fall quarter.
-
Changes in CIS curriculum: Last year (see
minutes) we had decided to make
some changes in the curriculum of the CIS program, to correspond to the
changes in the CSE program made about two years ago, involving the
addition of Math 566 as a required second course on discrete math. But
the changes were held up because one of our proposals was to omit Math
254 from the CIS program and Math 254 was a prerequisite for
Stat 427 (which is a required course for
the program). Based on the content of Stat 427 and based on input from
our student representatives, it seemed that Math 153 would be an
adequate prerequisite for the course. The statistics faculty agreed
but it has taken this long to have the prerequisite officially
changed. The change has now been made, so we can proceed with the
proposed changes to the CIS program.
The proposal we had approved last year was:
- Require Math 566 for CIS majors.
- Remove Math 254 from the requirements for CIS majors.
- Require CIS 601 for CIS majors.
- For the Software Systems option: remove CIS 601 from the list of
recommended elective courses; and add 1 hour to the "Electives"
portion, increasing the total number of hours in the option from 21 to
22.
- For the Information Systems option: remove CIS 601 from the list of
recommended elective courses; and add 1 hour to the "Electives"
portion, increasing the total number of hours in the option from 25 to
26.
- For the Scientific Computing option: add Math 254 to the list of
"required courses"; remove CIS 601 from the list of
recommended elective courses; and reduce the "electives" portion
to 7 hours (from the current 11 hours), increasing the total number of
hours in the option from 25 to 26;
also, replace the
requirement of "Either CIS 621, 721; or CIS 640, 642"
by "CIS 621, 721" (since CIS 640 and 642 are no longer
being offered).
- For the Advanced Studies option: remove Math 566 from the list of
"required courses"; replace "One of CIS 725, 755, 780; and One of
CIS 760, 775;" by "CIS 725; and One of CIS 755, 760, 775, 780;"
remove CIS 601 from the list of recommended electives; increase the
number of elective hours from 10 to 13; the total number
of hours in the option will remain at 22.
After a brief discussion, the committee again approved the proposal
unanimously. It will presented to the faculty for its approval (at the
meeting of 3/8).
-
Revised CSE objectives and outcomes statement:
We had previously discussed the
proposed revised objectives and outcomes statement.
There have been some minor wording changes in the statement based on
feedback from the Advisory Board. After a brief discussion, the committee
unanimously approved the revised statement.
It will presented to the faculty for its approval (at the
meeting of 3/8).
It was also noted that our CSE Exit Survey will have to be updated
appropriately to correspond to the changes in the objectives and
outcomes statement. One problem with this Survey (as well as with the
Alumni and Supervisor Surveys) is that it requires some manual
intervention each year to take care of the gathering and tabulating of
the results. We will see if there are ways to mechanize the task more
effectively.
-
Revised criteria for CSE capstone courses:
We continued discussion of the
proposed revised criteria for capstone courses. One change that was suggested
was to reword the requirement about the design component to ensure that
each student participates in the design activities. We will continue
the discussion at the meeting of 3/5.
The meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm.
Next meeting: 3/3/'04.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, Rajiv Ramnath, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Peg Steele, Bruce Weide, Dong Xuan; Prasad Mikkilineni.
-
CIS 731: CIS 731 is one of the capstone courses for the CSE program
(the other courses being CIS 758, 762, 772, 776, and 778).
We plan to analyze each of the capstone courses to see how well they
meet the current capstone course criteria, as well as the proposed
revised criteria; this meeting was devoted to analyzing CIS 731.
Prasad has been teaching this course for the last two years and is
scheduled to teach it again in Spring of this year. The students seem
to enjoy the course; indeed, it was at the suggestion of one of the
student reps, David Wannemacher, to UGSC that we invited Prasad to
tell us about the course and how he organizes it. Here are some of the
highlights of the course:
- The course follows the
official syllabus
fairly closely, including the text book used in the course.
- The main focus of the course is on the project although during
the first few weeks some important new material is introduced; this
includes CLIPS, the system that the students use to build their expert
system on.
- During the first few weeks, some time is also spent on software
engineering-type issues, in particular, questions related to designing
large software systems well.
- Students are organized into teams of (typically) four students
each.
- Students are not given the problem for which they are
asked to build an expert system, but rather are expected to identify
such a problem by consulting with people (typically students and
faculty) in other domains such as transportation, medical, etc.. They
are then required to work with the instructor to define the scope of
the problem so that it is neither too trivial nor too ambitious.
Often, students continue to consult with the outside "experts" to get
any needed information about the problem domain. Some example problems
that student teams have identified and worked on are: ... to be
completed.
- Students submit an outline of how they plan to attack the
problem, including some details of the expert system to be built.
The instructor provides feedback on the outline.
- Starting with the third or fourth week of the quarter, class time
is used to discuss the teams' project designs. Team members work with
each other, and the instructor interacts with each team one at a time,
answering any questions the team may have with CLIPS, pointing out
potential problems in their designs etc.
- During the last two weeks of the quarter, each team is required
to make an oral presentation (of about 30 minutes duration) on their
project.
- Each team is also required to turn in a complete report on their
project.
- There is a midterm exam but no final exam.
The committee was very pleased with the course and felt that it
definitely satisfies the intent of the current and the proposed
capstone course criteria. One possible improvement is in discussion
ethical and social issues; many of the problems that the students work
on should raise social and ethical concerns. Another possible
improvement is in the documentation that the students submit; perhaps
in addition to the initial outline, and the final report, students
could be asked to submit, perhaps during the seventh or eighth week,
an interim report on the project's progress. Prasad felt these were
worthwhile suggestions and agreed to try them in Spring. He also
agreed to come back and give us another presentation in the fall
quarter.
- GPA for admission to the major: We had little time to
discuss this but the consensus seemed to be that we should reduce the
GPA requirement to 2.7 now, let it remain at 2.7 until fall quarter,
and revisit the issue at that time. We will briefly discuss this again
at the next meeting and come up with a proposal to present to the
faculty.
The meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm.
Next meeting: 2/25/'04.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, David Mathias, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Nikki Strader, Dong Xuan, Bruce Weide, Peg Steele.
-
GPA for admission to the major: Over the last three or four years, we
have had to change the GPA for enrollment to the CSE and CIS majors
several times because of substantial changes in demand. These same
changes have also meant, given that the model is based on the demand
during the immediately preceding quarters, that there have
been substantial differences between what the model predicted for how
many students would be admitted to the majors for a given GPA
requirement and the actual numbers that in fact were admitted. When
the demand was going up, the model under-predicted the number; more
recently, in the face of dropping demand, the model over-predicted the
number.
Bruce had suggested that using the enrollment data from 221/222
might provide a better model. We haven't yet got all the data for 221,
but Bruce showed us the results of a model he had constructed that was
based data for 222. This model seemed to do better at predicting than
our current model. We conjectured that this is because the 222
enrollment data are more representative of the demand that can be
expected in the next few quarters, than is the data about number of
students admitted to the majors. We also conjectured that 221 data (or
possibly even 201 data) might do even better. Yet another possibility
would be to use data about the number of fall quarter freshmen who
express an interest in CIS/CSE. It seemed plausible that these numbers
would be even more closely related to the demand for the majors in the
next few quarters than the 222 (or 221) enrollment figures. Moreover,
this number should be available during spring quarter of the preceding
year, so we should be able carry out our GPA calculations in a timely
manner.
Since the most recent four-quarter admit totals seem to have
stabilized at about 190 (which is about where we want it to be),
one possibility would be to leave the GPA requirement at 2.8. Another
would be to reduce it slightly, to 2.7, which is the number our
formula indicates we should set it at.
It was also suggested that we should consider a completely different
approach to the problem. Rather than fine tuning the GPA cut-off every
so often, have a policy along the following lines:
Any student who has finished 222 and has met all other requirements
will be admitted to the major if he/she has a GPA of 3.0. Additional
students whose GPA is less than 3.0 may be admitted in the Summer
quarter (Spring applicants to the major), based on room availability.
(Students with GPA over 3.0 will be admitted at any time.)
The idea here would be that we would have, in mind, some specific
numerical goal N for the number of students we want to admit. In the
Summer quarter, if the number of students already admitted (because
they had a GPA of 3.0 or over) in the preceding four quarters is over N,
we would not admit any more students; if the number is below N,
we would admit the appropriate number of additional students to bring
the total to N.
Note that we cannot have just a numerical quota (as do many
programs in Engineering), because the College of Arts and Science
insists that students must have a specific GPA goal to shoot for to
get into the major. That goal, in the policy above, would be 3.0.
We will probably consider this policy sometime in the future.
(Note: Neelam mentioned the possibility of changing to this policy to
Stu after the meeting. Stu
didn't feel comfortable with it, in particular that
students below 3.0 may not be able to make progress in the program
even if they are ultimately admitted to the major. Stu also suggested,
given that we will have a new chair next year, that it might be best
to wait until next year to consider a major change such as this. Based
on Stu's comments, and further email discussion among committee
members, we are likely to recommend reducing the GPA requirement to
2.7 now, leave it at 2.7 until fall quarter, and revisit this issue in
the fall. This will be decided at the next meeting.)
- UG forum: The annual Undergraduate Forum is scheduled for
February 18 at 6:30-8:00 pm. Bruce, Neelam, Peg, Rajiv, Rick, and Stu
will attend. Announcements will be posted shortly on the newsgroups.
The meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm.
Next meeting: 2/18/'04.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, David Mathias, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Dong Xuan, Bruce Weide, Peg Steele.
- We discussed the
feedback from the Advisory Board.
One suggestion concerning making students consciously aware of
life-cycle issues was that perhaps the individual course syllabi could
explicitly identify which stage of the life-cycle the particular course
was primarily concerned with. Another (concerning the same topic) was
that perhaps this topic really belongs in ISE 504 since the life-cycle is
not just about software products.
A different comment concerned the topic of web-services (item 4 on the
feedback list); an Adv. Bd. member had noted that this is one area
in which development was still being done in-house by many
organizations (instead of being out-sourced or off-shored as is the
case with much other development work). The comment was
that since this is not discussed in any of our
courses, except possibly in particular offerings of CIS 758, it may be
appropriate to include it in the regular syllabus of some suitable
course that all (or at least all Software Systems option) students
will take.
In any case, we will keep an eye on
these (and other items in the feedback list), and make changes as
appropriate and feasible.
- GPA for admission to the major: Since Summer 2003, the GPA
requirement for admission to the CSE/CIS major has been at 2.8;
immediately prior to that, it was 3.0. At the time that we reduced the
GPA requirement (because of moderating demand for the major), the
prediction was that with 2.8 as the new requirement, we would admit
207 students over a four-quarter period. In fact, it has been
lower than that; during the last four quarters the number of students
admitted to the major is 191. (Note that this is with 3.0 as the
requirement for the first of these four quarters and 2.8 in the
other three quarters.)
With our current faculty strength, we should shoot for a target
figure of about 207 admits over a four-quarter period. Based on grade
distribution curves, the current demand, etc., our calculations
predict that 211 students would be admitted if we were to reduce the
GPA requirement to 2.7, and 232 would be admitted if the requirement
were 2.6. But these predictions have been rather unreliable in the
past (at least in part because of the rapid change in the demand for
the major), and that will probably be the case with these numbers as well.
It was suggested that it might be a good idea to see if we can
identify any correlation between the 221/222 enrollments in a given
quarter and the number of students entering the major in the
immediately following quarters, with the hope of arriving at somewhat
more reliable predictions. Peg will try to obtain the 221/222
enrollment history over the last three or four years, and Bruce
volunteered to try to identify any correlation. We will discuss this
again before deciding on our recommendation to the faculty.
- Undergraduate Forum: We have typically held our annual
Undergraudate Forum during Winter quarter, usually in late February.
The plan is to do the same this year as well. We looked at possible
dates for the forum, and the most likely date is Wednesday, Feb. 18,
at 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. This will be finalized shortly. Several faculty as
well as Peg (and possibly others from the Advising Office) will
attend. Announcements about the Forum will be posted to the newsgroups
and via other means.
The meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm.
Next meeting: ???
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, David Mathias, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Dong Xuan, Bruce Weide, Peg Steele.
-
We continued discussion of the draft of a proposed revised version of the
CSE objectives and outcomes statement. The revision accounts for the
changes in the EC 2000 language. Some minor wording changes were suggested.
The current version of the draft is available at:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/propCseObjectives.html.
Comments on the draft are welcome and should be sent to
neelam@cis.ohio-state.edu.
The draft will be presented to
the department's Industrial Advisory Board at its meeting of
Jan. 23. The proposed objectives and outcomes will also be discussed at this
year's Undergraduate Student Forum which is expected to be held in February.
A further revision will be prepared based on feedback from
these groups and discussed at a future UGSC meeting before being
presented to the faculty for discussion and approval.
- We discussed the proposed criteria for Capstone Design courses. Much of
this had been discussed during fall quarter meetings but some additional
changes were dictated by (proposed) changes in the EC 2000 language of which we
were not aware in the fall quarter. A number of wording changes as well
as organizational changes were suggested. The current version of the proposed
criteria (including the changes discussed at this meeting) is available at:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/CAPST/rev6criteria.html.
Comments on the draft should again be sent to
neelam@cis.ohio-state.edu.
This document will also be presented to the Advisory Board for its comments, and discussed at the student forum. We will compare a couple of exisiting
Capstone courses against the proposed criteria to see how they measure up, before presenting it to faculty for discussion and approval.
The meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm.
Next meeting: Jan. 28.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, David Mathias, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Dong Xuan, Bruce Weide.
-
We discussed an initial draft of a proposed revised version of the
CSE objectives and outcomes statement. The revision accounts for the
changes in the EC 2000 language.
Neelam will revise the draft in accordance with this discussion, and
post it (or a link to web page containing the draft) to the newsgroups
for feedback from students and faculty. It will also be presented to
the department's Industrial Advisory Board at its meeting of the
Jan. 23. A further revision will be prepared based on feedback from
these groups and discussed at a future UGSC meeting before being
presented to the faculty for discussion and approval.
The meeting adjourned at 2:30 pm.
Next meeting: Jan. 21.
Note: The revised draft of the proposed objectives and outcomes for CSE
statment is now available at:
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/propCseObjectives.html
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, David Mathias, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Dong Xuan, Peg Steele, Bruce Weide.
- Pending items: We briefly discussed the items that UGSC has to
work on during the rest of the year.
- Objectives/outcomes for the CSE program: There have been some
changes in the EC 2000 language that may require corresponding changes
in our objectives/outcomes.
- Capstone criteria/courses: Some of the changes in the EC 2000
language have to do with the requirements for the capstone courses.
This may require us to slightly revise the proposed new capstone
course criteria that we came up with last quarter; the changes are
likely to be simplifications of the criteria. Once we have done that,
we need to look at some existing courses (perhaps CIS 731 and 758) to
see how well they match up to the proposed criteria, before
recommending the new criteria to the faculty for its approval.
- CAC requirements for the CSE program: Recall that our CSE program
is accredited by both EAC (Engineering Accreditation Commission) and
CAC (Computing Accr. Commission). One of the requirements of the CAC
reads, "... the science requirement includes a full year (two-semester
or three quarter) sequence in a laboratory science for science and
engineering majors ...". There was some concern that with the changes
in the science requirements that we made (as part of the changes that
the college made), the letter of this requirement may not be quite
satisfied.
- Possible changes in GEC requirement for CSE: Stu had suggested
that we ought to consider the possibility of introducing a Business
course as part of the GEC requirement for CSE majors. The College of
Business has some new courses (which are part of the new Business
minor) that may be appropriate.
- New CSE minor for engineering/science students: Bruce had
suggested that it would be useful to introduce a new minor (minor
track?) tailored to meet the needs of science/engineering students;
such a minor would include the new Applied Software Sequence as a key
component.
- GPA for admission to major: With the continuing drop in the demand
for the CIS/CSE majors, we may be able to further reduce the GPA
required for admission (from its current value of 2.8).
- Replacing Math 254 in the CIS program with Math 566 (and CIS 601
and an additional tech elective hour): We had proposed this previously
(see the minutes of
last year)
but did not act on it since Math 254 was a prerequisite for Stat 427
and that is a required course for the CIS program. The statistics
people have now changed (at our request) that prerequisite to Math
153, so we can now act on this. The proposal will be presented to
faculty.
We spent the rest of the time discussing the change in the EC 2000
language with respect to objectives and outcomes. A number of possible
alternative ways of revising our objectives/outcomes statement to be
consistent with the revised EC 2000 language were tossed out and
discussed briefly. This discussion will continue electronically and at
the next meeting (1/14). We should have a tentative proposed revised
version in the next few days; this will be posted on newsgroups for
comments from students and faculty; it will also be presented to the
department's Industrial Advisory Board at its meeting later in the
month.
The meeting adjourned at 2:25 pm.
Next meeting: Jan. 14.
In attendance:
Paolo Bucci, Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, Brad Moore, Rajiv Ramnath, Matt Schwaberow, Han-Wei Shen, Neelam Soundarajan, Dong Xuan, Peg Steele, David Wannemacher.
- CSE Capstone course criteria: After a brief discussion, the committee
agreed that the
current draft of the revised criteria is satisfactory. One change
that was suggested was that the "possible models" section which suggests
some possible ways of organizing capstone courses be moved to a separate
document since these are only suggested models and are not requirements
that capstone courses must satisfy.
The committee also decided, after a brief discussion, that it would make
sense to look at some current capstone courses to see how well they meet
the revised criteria before asking faculty to approve these criteria.
This makes sense because one important question that is likely to come
up in the faculty is, how well do current courses meet these criteria
and what changes would need to be made to those courses that don't
meet them. Hence, starting in early winter, we will evaluate several of
the capstone courses with respect to these criteria.
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 am.
Next meeting: Winter quarter
In attendance:
Eitan Gurari, Neelam Soundarajan, Bruce Weide, Dong Xuan, Peg Steele, Brad Moore, Matt Schwaberow, David Wannemacher.
- Combines BS/MS program: The combined BS/MS program allows current
CSE or CIS majors to start graduate study before completing the BS
degree, and allows upto 15 credit hours of courses to be counted
simultaneously for credit toward both the BS and MS degrees. This can
shorten the time to get a BS and MS degrees by 1-2 quarters. The
details of the program are available at the
departmental grad web pages.
CCAA had asked if there were any issues they needed to address with
respect to the joint program, and also wanted to know how many
students were in the program.
There was some discussion about what the purpose of the program was. If
the goal is to encourage our best undergrad majors to complete their
Masters' in our department, the program doesn't really seem tailored
for that; for example, according to the page cited above, these
students have to meet all the requirements for grad admission,
including the GRE, and are treated as normal grad applicants when
their applications are evaluated. Moreover, they are at a disadvantage
from a support point of view since many of them would typically finish
their BS program in the Spring quarter which means that quarter, and
possibly
the preceding quarter, would be the one(s) during which they would
be working on both their BS and MS. But support is generally not
available for students entering our grad program in the Winter or
Spring, so they are at a disadvantage. Moreover, once they are in the
joint program, students have to pay graduate tuition for their courses
and this is obviously a major burden if the students do not get any
support. Thus, clearly, there are no special motivations for students
to consider this program (other than the possiblity of double counting
upto 15 hours).
The following recommendations were made:
- If indeed we want our best undergrads to follow this program, we
should promote it more than we do now; the best time for doing so
might be in CIS 560 since it is when students are in that course that
they ought to consider applying for the program.
- If we encourage our best students to follow this program, the
department must at least provide a tuition waiver that would cover the
difference between grad and undergrad tuition for these students.
There were no other issues that we felt needed to be referred to CCAA.
- CSE Capstone course criteria: We ran out of time to complete the
discussion of this item. This will be taken up at the next meeting.
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 am.
Next meeting: To be announced.
In attendance:
Eitan Gurari, Neelam Soundarajan, Bruce Weide, Han-Wei Shen, Paolo Bucci, Rajiv Ramnath, Peg Steele, Brad Moore, Matt Schwaberow, David Wannemacher.
-
Criteria for CSE capstone design course: The discussion was based on our
current criteria
for CSE capstone courses and possible
revisions.
A number of ideas were suggested and these have been incorporated into
yet
another revision of the criteria.
UGSC will work with coordinators of individual capstone courses to see
to what degree each course meets these criteria and in cases where
there is a gap, how much effort would be needed to revise the courses
to narrow the gap. Once we have done this for some of the capstone courses,
we will prepare a final revision of the criteria for faculty approval
(and then start working on implementing needed changes in the capstone
courses).
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 am.
Next meeting: To be announced.
In attendance:
Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, Neelam Soundarajan, Bruce Weide, Paolo Bucci, Rajiv Ramnath, Peg Steele, Brad Moore, Matt Schwaberow, David Wannemacher (CIS major).
-
Criteria for CSE capstone design course: The discussion was based on our
current criteria
for CSE capstone courses and possible
revisions. The current criteria were approved a number of years
ago. The reasons for considering a revision are that the current criteria
seem a bit weak with respect to such items as oral and written communication, team working, and etc., all of which are key considerations in the
EC 2000 accreditation
criteria. Since we will be up for reevaluation by EAC in two years, this
is a good time to take a look at the criteria, make any needed changes,
and revise the courses appropriately.
The general consensus was that the proposed revisions are indeed
appropriate and reasonable. One item that was modified was to reduce
the recommended size of the oral presentation from "15 minutes or
longer" to "10 minutes or longer" since it was felt that 10 minutes
was probably adequate for a presentation.
Much of the remaining discussion focused on how individual courses can
best implement these aspects. One interesting suggestion was that all
capstone courses should be 4 credit courses, that they should meet for
3 regular lectures each week, and that they should meet for a
fourth hour
during which team meetings can be held, the instructor can comment on
the design approaches that the teams are following, individual teams
can critique each others' designs, etc.
One concern that was expressed had to do with the language of the
EC2000 criteria about the capstone design course: ".. major design
experience .. incorporating engineering standards and realistic
constraints that include most of the following considerations:
economic; environmental; sustainability; manufacturability; ethical;
health and safety; social; and political." The problem is that most of
these considerations do not seem appropriate for CSE projects. For
example, while some software projects may indeed raise environmental
questions most, including the ones that are likely to be in our
capstone courses, do not. Similarly, health and safety issues are not
very likely to show up in the projects in our courses; or politicial
issues, etc. Now it may well turn out that our accreditation evaluator
appreciates this; or we may have an evaluator who insists on going by
the book. Hence it seems important to make a special effort to include
whichever of these factors we are able to. For example,
"sustatinability" could be interpreted as "maintainability" which is
indeed a reasonable question to ask of nearly any software project.
Ethical and social issues may not belong in every project but we
should make a special effort to include such questions as security,
privacy, etc.
We hope to get faculty feedback on the proposed revisions to the
capstone course criteria. We will continue this discussion in our next
meeting and finalize the revisions for faculty approval. Once the
revised version is approved, we will look at each currently designated
capstone course to see what changes are needed in the course to meet
the revised criteria.
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 am.
Next meeting: To be announced.
In attendance:
Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, Neelam Soundarajan, Bruce Weide, Dong Xuan, Paolo Bucci, Rajiv Ramnath, Peg Steele, Brad Moore, Matt Schwaberow, David Wannemacher (CIS major).
-
Proposed revision of GEC requirements for the CSE major: There was an
extended discussion of this topic by email as indicated in the minutes
of the meeting of September 30. No further clarifications have been
received from the college about this course. After a further brief
discussion, the committee decided to recommend to the CIS faculty that
this proposal be approved; but also to try to work with the College
Core committee to ensure that this careful attention be paid to this
course so that it primarily deals with ethical and professional issues
that are of importance to engineering students, rather than being a
general philosophical discussion of ethics.
-
CSE capstone courses: We had discussed the criteria for capstone
courses at our meeting of
May 16, 2003.
We will come up with a revised set of criteria based on that discussion
for consideration at our next meeting. We also briefly discussed
possible (longer-term) options for capstone courses. Some of the ideas
suggested were:
- Multi-quarter capstone course: The design project in some
capstone courses tend to have be abbreviated substantially because
of the 1-quarter limitation. These courses would obviously benefit
if we had multi-quarter courses. This benefit, of course, to be
weighed against not only resource questions but also scheduling
questions (both for faculty and students).
- Interdisciplinary capstone courses: ???
- Industry-sponsored capstone courses: Some programs (even within
OSU) have industry-sponsored projects in their capstone courses.
The benefit is, of course, the realism that this would bring to the
project. The difficulties have to do not only with finding industry
sponsors, finding interesting projects that students can complete,
etc., but also questions about intellectual property rights, etc.
- Having a single capstone course with projects from different
areas: ABET considers questions concerning project management,
ethical and social issues, etc., as important items that should be
considered for inclusion in the capstone course. But not everyone
who teaches one of the current set of designated capstone courses
discusses these items. One possibility might be to have a single
capstone course that in different offerings has different projects,
but includes discussion of these items. Another alternative here
might to have every capstone course include discussion of these items
as part of the course. Again resource questions as well as scheduling
issues are concerns that will have to be addressed.
We will continue this discussion at the next meeting on Oct. 21.
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 am.
Next meeting: Oct. 21 at 8:30 a.m. in DL 698.
In attendance:
Eitan Gurari, Tim Long, Neelam Soundarajan, Han-wei Shen, Bruce Weide, Dong Xuan, Paolo Bucci, Brad Moore, Matt Schwaberow.
-
Enrollment trends: The GPA required for admission to the CSE/CIS
majors has been reduced from a high of 3.2 in Au '02 to 3.1 for
Wi '03, to 3.0 for Sp '03, to 2.8 since Su '03 in response to
falling demand, from students, for the majors. We looked at the
4-quarter total of
admits to the program over the last several quarters:
Quarter |
4-qtr admits |
GPA cut-off |
Au 03 | 197 | 2.8 |
Su 03 | 197 | 2.8 |
| | |
Sp 03 | 163 | 3.0 |
| | |
Wi 03 | 149 | 3.1 |
| | |
Au 02 | 155 | 3.2 |
Su 02 | 174 | 3.2 |
Sp 02 | 220 | 3.2 |
| | |
Wi 02 | 233 | 3.0 |
Au 01 | 229 | 3.0 |
Su 01 | 228 | 3.0 |
Sp 01 | 235 | 3.0 |
Wi 01 | 230 | 3.0 |
Au 00 | 235 | 3.0 |
| | |
Su 00 | 231 | 2.8 |
Sp 00 | 231 | 2.8 |
Wi 00 | 257 | 2.8 |
Au 99 | 272 | 2.8 |
| | |
Su 99 | 276 | 2.4 |
Sp 99 | 251 | 2.4 |
The steep decline we saw in Su '02 through Wi '03 seems to have leveled
off. The 197 figure of Su '03 and Au '03 is almost exactly where we
should be given our current faculty strength and the size of our grad
program. Hence the committee decided not to recommend any changes in
the cut-off GPA for now, and to revisit this early in the Winter
quarter when the next set of numbers become available.
-
Nomination for CRA scholarships: The Computing Research Association
has an annual competition for recognizing undergraduate students "who
show outstanding research research potential in any area of computing
research". Students are to be nominated by their departments; a
department may nominate upto four students (two male, two female).
According to the CRA brochure, two awards each of $1000 will be made,
one to a male student, the other to a female student. Several other
top students will receive honorable mention.
The question was whether there were any candidates in the department
that we should consider nominating. Our past experience with the CRA
scholarships has not been very rewarding. We have nominated several
students who we thought were highly qualified and, indeed, who fairly
soon thereafter
won prestigious awards such as the NSF grad fellowships;
but they didn't even get Honorable mention in the CRA competition.
Looking at the students who did win the competition, it seems only
students who have published several research papers in fairly major
conferences and/or journals stand a chance in this competition. If any
student or faculty member knows of such students in our program (CIS
or CSE), please send a brief email to Neelam (neelam@cis); otherwise,
we will not nominate anyone.
-
Proposal for revision of the GEC program for engineering students
(including CSE majors): The Core Committee, a subcommittee of the
Engineering College's Committee on Academic Affairs (CCAA), has been
looking
at possible changes to the GEC program for engineering students. The
Core Committee has produced a detailed
proposal for changes. Individual
departments have been asked to discuss and hopefully approve the
proposal (by the end of October) before CCAA discusses it.
UGSC had a fairly long discussion about the proposed changes.
A number of questions were raised. As it turned out, later on the same
day (Sept. 30), the Core Committee had a meeting. Neelam brought up
UGSC's questions at that meeting. The following is a summary of our
questions and the responses from the Core Committee:
-
Is there a list of courses that will be used for the category of
"Ethics and professionalism"?
The answer was not yet. It is expected
that courses in the Communication dept., in the Philosophy dept., and
some others will be on this list. The process for adding courses to
the list is described in the full report (link above)
(see Appendix 8, in particular pages App-23, 24). Also, this still
needs to be approved by the rest of the university; and CCAA or CAA
(the university Council on Academic Affairs) may well
decide to set up an alternate mechanism (assuming any of this is
approved).
Discussions have been held with some depts (Philosophy,
Communications, some others). The Communication dept. has written to
the college that they would be able and willing to modify their course
to meet these needs and also be able to increase their offerings to
handle about 300 students. The college is waiting to hear from some
other depts.
- Is there any guarantee that the reduction in the no. of GEC hours
won't be added to the major programs?
No guarantee but
it is the intention of this proposal that programs not do this. When
we send our approval (assuming our faculty approves it), we can note
that we strongly feel that reduction in the GEC hours should result in
a corresponding reduction in the total hours of the programs.
- Is it appropriate to use foreign language courses to substitute for
two Soc. Sc. courses?
The detailed recommendation is that a student who
completes a foreign language *minor*, can use that to substitute upto
two Soc. Sc. / Arts & Hum. courses. Otherwise, a student who completes
one or more 104 level courses can only substitute one Soc. Sc. / Arts
& Hum. course.
Apparently, by the time you get to 104-level courses, the course is no
longer just about the mechanics of language; instead, there is
considerable discussion of the associated culture. And this is even
more so for foreign language minors. That was why this
recommendation was felt to be appropriate.
- Is it appropriate to use a Univ. capstone course to substitute for
a Soc. Sc. course?
The university has guidelines for classifying a
course as a univ. capstone course.
In effect, these guidelines require the course to deal with
diversity issues, the course must be interdisciplinary, etc. So it
does seem appropriate to count such a course toward the Soc. Sc.
requirement. (See Biology 597 for an example.)
-
The Core Committee discussion also noted that there is a proposed
change in ISE 504 to expand it to a 5-credit course and to make it
count as a GEC course in the Social Sciences category. But this
proposal will probably be separated from the main GEC proposal and
will be considered independently.
There was an extended discussion among UGSC members via email
following these clarifications from the Core Committee. A
summary of this discussion:
-
If and when our department sends its approval for the proposed changes
in the GEC, we should state that the proposed reduction in GEC hours
should result in a corresponding reduction in hours to graduation; and
that individual programs should not use this an opportunity to
increase hours in the major.
-
The proposed 5-credit course on Ethics and Professionalism may be a
bad idea if the course is taught by departments such as Communications
or Philosophy (as is the current plan). Although increasing the focus
on ethics and professionalism issues is a worthwhile idea, doing it in
this fashion will be worse (or at least no better) than not doing
anything. There is indeed potential for harm because there is a
distinct possibility that such a course taught by a humanities
department might mostly be an "exercise in techno-bashing".
Moreover,
5-credit courses in general tend to be disliked by students and not
have much more real content than 3 credit courses. Further, if it was
a 3-credit course, someone would have to design such a course (rather
than take an existing course and tweak it slightly as currently
proposed) and it is more likely to meet the real needs of technical
students, including discussions of practical issues such as
recognizing the difference between sharp business practices and illegal
dealings, rather than simply moral preaching.
If no humanities
departments are able or willing to develop such a course (or courses) then
either the individual engineering programs and/or the college could
try to develop such courses, assuming that the required resources are
available. For example, again assuming availability of resources,
we could convert our 601 into a 3-credit
course and do a much more thorough job of presenting the material, as
well as strengthening the course's communication components.
-
Many UGSC members had similar concerns about the proposed change of
ISE 504 to a 5-credit course. The course already has the reputation of
being mostly fluff and this change would likely make it worse.
-
There was no time to discuss the proposed "Graduation with Honors in
Engineering". We will take it up in our next meeting.
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 am.
Next meeting: Oct. 14 at 8:30 a.m. in DL 698.