Report on Undergraduate Forum of Feb. 3, 2011

The CSE Undergraduate Studies Committee (UGSC) organized the annual undergraduate forum on Feb. 3, '11 in DL 480. The forum started at about 5:30 pm and continued till about 7:15 pm, with most students staying on till near the end. The summary below tries to describe the main points that were made during the discussions but does not capture the enthusiasm of the participants.

Students:

Michael Schoenberg, senior;

Matthew Vaugh, junior;

Joachim Bean, freshman;

Chelsey Salberg, freshman;

Ria Sugembong, freshman;

Sean Hanrahan, third-year;

Bruce Lamb, freshman;

Marc Mustric, senior;

Amanda Kauppila, junior;

Matt Meinwald, senior;

Jonathan Tubb, senior;

*name omitted*, sophomore;

Alex Brukhart;

Steve Bedell, sophomore;

Kyle Kyhard, third-year;

Colin Drake, sophomore;

Jordan Look, junior;

Fred Eruo, freshman;

Matt Smith, junior;

Kathryn Johnson, sophomore;

Rosi Wyan, senior;

Peter Tefft, junior;

Ryan Mcgowan, junior;

Michael Yanovich, junior;

Esteban Escobar, senior;

Isaiah St. John, freshman;

Ben Stahl, senior;

Brianna Hemeyer, senior;

Mohammed Shareef, senior;

Alums:

Keith Chima, BS-CSE alum (also advising staff);

Mike McGrath, BS-CSE alum;

Faculty: Paolo Bucci, Rick Parent, Rajiv Ramnath, Paul Sivilotti, Neelam Soundarajan, Ken Supowit, Xiaodong Zhang (Chair);

Advising Office: Peg Steele, Keith Chima;

Systems Staff: Michael Compton, Shaun Rowland.

1. Everyone in the room briefly introduced themselves.

2. Xiaodong made some brief remarks about the central role of computing in the most important sectors of the US economy from IT to movies to defense industry etc. Moreover, computing-related businesses (whether core computing or businesses that rely heavily on IT) seem to be recovering well from the economic downturn.
   This led to a general discussion of students' recent experiences with looking for jobs (full-time, part-time, and internships). Most students who have recently looked for jobs reported finding satisfactory ones. There was also a comment about some of the jobs being relatively low-level ones ("web developers"). While this may be true to an extent, many challenging and interesting jobs do seem available. Students should, of course, research carefully any job before accepting it. Students were also reminded of the services of the Engineering Career Services (ECS) which are available to both CIS and CSE students -- but the student must register with ECS; many employers tend to go to ECS when hiring for computing positions, hence it is important for students to use ECS.
   Xiaodong also mentioned an event organized by IBM and the College of Engineering that would be interesting to CIS and CSE students. Registration is required; see here for details.

3. Transition to semesters: Neelam briefly outlined the plans for the semester versions of the BS-CSE and BS-CIS programs including, especially, the plans for students who are here during the transition. One key point of the transition plan is that any courses/credit hours that students have taken because they are required under quarters will be counted either towards required courses under semesters or toward the technical elective hours. Thus students will not "lose" any hours. Further, the Advising Office will work with individual students to come up with a suitable transition plan that is tailored to the particular courses that the student has completed under quarters to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in completing the program as OSU transitions to semesters. The proposed programs are available on-line.

4. Courses: There was some discussion of the impact of semester-switch on the programs. On the one hand, the increased length of the term would mean individual courses can go into greater depth; the flip side is that the number of courses that students will take will be reduced, resulting in reduced breadth. Moreover, the fewer terms during the year means that the impact of a student dropping a course (may be because it turns out not to be what he/she expected) will be more serious under semesters. It was also pointed out that there are some other advantages to the switch to semesters. For example, since most schools are on a semester calendar, it should be easier for students to transfer between schools (with, in the case of other schools within Ohio, many of the courses having direct equivalents in OSU). Moreover, again because most schools are on a semester calendar, it should be easier for students to schedule internships since employers would not have to make special start and end-date arrangements for OSU students.

   Some more details about courses under semesters: The 221-sequence (plus 421) will be replaced by Software I, II which will use Java (but will continue to have the focus on specifications/design-by-contract etc. that the 221-sequence does). There will be multiple "project" courses (which will replace 560). Students will be required to take one of these courses. For example, one of the proposed project courses will involve GUI design; another will involve web services; etc. The 600-level courses that are currently required of all students will be replaced by four groups of courses with each group containing two courses. For example, one group consists of the replacements for 625 and 655; another consists of the replacements for 675 and 677; etc. Each student will be required to take one course from each group (with the other course being available as a tech elective). All students will be required to take a capstone design course (these being the replacements for the current CSE 758, 762, 731 etc.)

   There were some comments about a few of the (current) courses. One student noted that CSE 551 (Information Security) seems to be devoting too much attention to security issues in the Windows (mobile) platform and this may be detracting from the more general conceptual discussion. A couple of students noted that CSE 652 (Inf. Sec. Projects) was a very useful course and provided a lot of practical knowledge and experience. There were some complaints about the 221-sequence to the effect that some relatively simple matters were made unnecessarily difficult without any pedagogical rationale for doing so. (Paolo Bucci who is involved with the sequence tried to address the questions; some changes in the course materials may also be made.)

5. Student organizations: Representatives from a number of student organizations were present: ACM-W; Open Source club; Upsilon Pi Epsilon Association; and the Ruby group. The representatives talked briefly about their organizations, mentioned upcoming events, and invited students to join. Becoming active in these organizations is an excellent way for students to get involved in interesting projects, both technical and non-technical, and is not only fun but can also open many doors.

6. Scholarship applications: There have been changes in the way that students apply for (departmental) scholarships; the full details are available on the scholarships page. One important change from previous years is that CSE majors must apply on-line using the link at the scholarships page. CIS majors have to complete the application that is available at the scholarships page and submit it to the Advising Office. The deadline for all scholarship applications is April 1 (not March 1 as in previous years).

7. Accreditation (of the BS-CSE program): The BS-CSE program is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission and the Computing Accreditation Commission (both of ABET). The next accreditation evaluation of the program will be in Au 2011. Several of the students at the forum knew about and were interested in accreditation-related issues. Neelam summarized some of the activities going on currently to prepare for the upcoming evaluation. One important set of requirements that are specified in the accreditation criteria have to do with the program's objectives and outcomes; the former are statements of what the program expects graduates of the program to accomplish 3-5 years after graduation; the latter statements that specify the expected knowledge and skills the students in the program would have acquired by the time of their graduation. The current set of objectives and outcomes are available on-line.

   Another important set of requirements has to do with assessment of the objectives and outcomes using well-defined, documented, processes, the results of the assessments being used to identify possible improvements in the program. We use a number of assessment mechanisms (see this page for details). One of these is POCAT, the multiple-choice exit test that graduating students are required to take. Several students knew about the test and were interested in learning more about it; so we spent some time talking about it. The results of the test have been useful in helping us identify improvements in a number of courses. Comments about our objectives, outcomes, and assessment mechanisms and results, are welcome; please email them to neelam AT cse

8. SOC lab: Michael Compton asked for comments/concerns/issues about the computing labs. Most students were satisfied with them. There was one comment about some of the labs being much too cold. Partly this is because the buildings are old and the HVAC systems, as Michael pointed out, take time to respond to changes in outside temperature. Mostly students were satisfied with the facilities. There were questions about switching to Linux (from Solaris) and when we will move to Windows 7. These are all being planned for but major changes like these take time (partly because, being major changes, they require a lot of work; and partly because they can have severe impact on various courses in which faculty have programming labs that may not work properly if we switch without adequate preparation). In any case, some changes are expected over this summer.