1. Policy for probation/reinstatement for CSE majors: Currently, CSE majors are put on probation if their overall GPA or their major GPA falls below 2.0. They are then required to bring the GPA above 2.0 within a few quarters, and also have some other probation-conditions such as not withdrawing from classes without permission from the undergraduate advisor, not taking too many CIS classes in any given quarter, etc. If they do not meet the probation conditions, and in particular if they do not bring their GPA above 2.0 within a reasonable number of quarters, they are subject to dismissal from the program. The actual decision to dismiss is made by a committee of the Engineering College (the Academic Standars and Probation Committee), based on recommendations from the CIS UGSC chair, and the undergraduate advisor. The student may apply for reinstatement into the major after a minimum period of one year after the dismissal. The decision on reinstatement is made by the UGSC chair and the undergraduate advisor.
The question was what criteria should be used in making the reinstatement decision. In particular, should this be treated as a new admission to the major, which will (currently) then require the student to have an overall GPA of 3.0 or above or make this decision more flexibly based on such considerations as how well the student has done since dismissal, how many more CIS courses he or she has to complete before finishing the degree etc. It was decided, given the relatively small number of students involved, to stay with the current approach of having the UGSC chair and undergraduate advisor make this decision in a flexible manner using such considerations.
2. Plan for the year:
a. As in other years, one important item is answering the question of what the GPA requirement for admission to the major should be. We will try to look at the numbers this quarter (rather than waiting till Winter as we usually do) to see what the trends indicate. This also makes sense because the 3.0 requirement has been in effect since last fall, so we should have more data about its impact than we had when we looked at the numbers last winter. (Of course we would be trying, based on this data about the effect of 3.0, to predict what effect the 3.2 requirement which will go into effect later this academic year will have and that will bring some uncertainties into the picture.) One other point that was mentioned was that last year when CAA (the University Council on Academic Affairs) approved the proposal to remove the 3.0 cap on the GPA for guaranteed admission to any (engineering) major, they also indicated that they would be examining all enrollement management plans this year. If they actually meant that, this may mean substantial additional work for the committee but it may also mean an opportunity for us to highlight the severe enrollment pressures the department has been facing.
b. There have been a number of changes in the curriculum recently, including several new advanced courses. We plan to go through the various tech electives options and make sure that the courses we require in each option, as well as the courses we recommend for each option, are reasonable, given these changes. Option coordinators will be asked for their input on this; indeed, they will be the ones who will have to initiate any changes, or decide to keep their particular option unchanged, etc.
c. No other items were explicitly discussed as "plan for the year". But it is assumed that the usual items such as coordinating with the Curriculum Committee to ensure that things like Course Group Reports are prepared and presented. Although the next round of accreditation is still some time away, we cannot slack off on such items since EC 2000 is very fussy about processes.
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 am.
Next meeting: TBA.
1. Tech electives in various CSE and CIS options:
(This was a
preliminary discussion on this topic, and will continue at a future
meeting. Based on these discussions and input from options
coordinators, UGSC will make recommendations to faculty concerning
changes, if any, to be made in the required courses and recommended
electives in the various options.)
We only talked about the Scientific Computing option in this meeting.
Between 10 and 15 students are currently in this option. These
students face an important
problem because CIS 640 and 642 which are required for this option are
offered irregularly. The reason for this is, of course, the shortage
of faculty and the discussion turned to that question going over
ground that has been covered many times in previous discussions.
There seem to be three possible alternatives for the Scientific Computing option:
In discussions with Stu after the meeting, a couple of other options were raised. The first would be to explore the possibility of the Math department teaching one or both of these courses; but it is not clear that they have the expertise to do this (since they are pretty slim on people with an interest in scientific computing). The second is to consider the possibility of getting rid of the courses but migrating the important topics covered in these courses to other courses (such as CIS 621 and 681).
The committee will make a recommendation after consulting with the option coordinator (Supowit) and further discussions.
2. Undergraduate lounge: We noted that every other department in
engineering (at least those that responded to our request for info on
the topic) had an undergraduate lounge that was reasonable-sized given
their number of students, and that all these lounges were reasonably
furnished to give students a good place to meet in, study in, etc.
Apparently, when our current building was designed and built a few
years ago, the space on the ground floor, adjoining Baker Systems, was
designated to serve as the undergraduate lounge. But that space, at
least as it stands, is completely unsuited to this purpose. It is a
public space with vending machines and glass double doors leading to
the outside, not to mention that an elevator opens into it as does a
set of stairs, and the entrance to the EE high voltage lab
is through this space.
There was strong feeling in the committee that the department should have a suitable lounge for our undergraduates. From a reasonable place that CIS560 teams can use when working on their projects, to studying for mid-terms and finals, to just hanging out and catching up on the latest rumors about MicroSoft or Linux, an undergrad lounge is really needed. It may be possible to remodel the currently assigned space so that it is more usable than it is now although, given its location and size (compared to the size of our student population), this would be far from ideal. We will discuss this further and come up with a definite proposal for the department to consider (and act on!), for creating a reasonable UG lounge.
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 am.
Next meeting: TBA.
1. Undergrad lounge: There seem to be a couple of different options here, each involving different degrees of remodeling. Neelam and Peg, in consultation with some of the other committee members, will put together a report outlining these options for consideration by the department. As in earlier discussions, the importance of setting up an undergrad lounge soon was reiterated.
2. Criteria for capstone design courses: The capstone design course is
an important ABET requirement (for the BS CSE program). The current
criteria for our capstone courses is available
on-line. These criteria were arrived at several years ago, and
were based in part on meeting the ABET requirements for this course.
The purpose of the discussion was to see if any changes should be made
in these criteria.
There was an extended discussion of each of the points in the list of criteria, but there was general agreement that each criterion serves an important purpose and should be retained. The one question that was raised concerned a limit on the class size. Some of the people involved in designing the original criteria recalled that the capstone classes were to be limited to 25 students, to allow for interaction between teams, discussions about the designs that the different teams came up with, oral presentations by the teams, etc.; but our criteria currently do not list such a requirement. There was general consensus that such a limit should indeed be imposed. This will be discussed further in the next meeting (Nov. 29).
There was also some discussion of the current list of capsone courses and the possibility of adding to the list. Although the current list has six courses in it (CIS 731, 758, 762, 772, 776, 778), some of these are somewhat "iffy". 731 was developed primarily by Rick Lewis and he is no longer in the department. Similarly, 776 was developed by Feng Zhao who too is no longer in the department. The courses are continuing to be taught (776 only by an outside instructor) but there was concern that without the involvement of the original course designers, the quality of the courses may suffer. That is why, it was felt, it would be appropriate to identify new courses that could be designated as capstone design courses. One course that looks rather promising in this respect is the new graphics (animation) course that Rick Parent has developed. It has group projects, involves quite a bit of design, requires each group to make multiple presentations and produce several reports, and has a mix of students. Rick agreed to consider the possibility of making this a capstone course seriously.
The meeting adjourned at 9:30 am.
Next meeting: Nov. 29.
The purpose of the meeting was to identify issues that need to be addressed this quarter and briefly discuss each.
1. GPA requirement for admission to the majors: The 3.2 gpa requirement goes into effect for Spring '02 admits to the majors. This means, according to our procedures, this will be in effect through Wi '03 (according to the procedure we have to follow, we determine the gpa requirement for one year at a time). So we need to determine the gpa requirement that will be applicable for Sp '03 and beyond; and in order to ensure that we provide the required one year notification, the Sp '03 requirement has to be announced this quarter. Since the number of students who have been admitted to the majors during the most recent quarters are essentially identical to the numbers on which the gpa requirement of 3.2 was based, the same requirement should apply also to Sp '03 and Su '03 admits. We will ask for faculty approval of this at its meeting of February 4. Also, this coming fall, we will determine the gpa requirement for Au '03 - Su '04.
2. UG lounge: Peg and Neelam will put together a proposal for an Undergrad lounge for the department's consideration and, hopefully, action.
3. UG advising: There was some concern that faculty advising of our UG majors is not as effective as it should be. An indication of this is the fact that many students go through almost the entire program without any interaction with their designated advisor, often not even knowing the name of the advisor; when it is time to file their graduation papers, they then go the advising office to find out who their advisor is, so they can go and get his or her signature. On the flip side, advisors often do not seem to have sufficient knowledge or information about the details of the curriculum to provide useful answers to the questions that students typically have. The general consensus, following a brief discussion, was that we should try to find ways to address some of these problems. For example, it may be useful to put together a somewhat detailed description of the overall curriculum that describes the relations between the various courses; not surprisingly, the current course descriptions focus on the individual course in question rather than on the relations with other courses. Another suggestion was to reinstate a program we used to have until a few years ago when new faculty members were asked to attend a `training session' where they could learn about the details of our undergrad programs and get answers to questions about advising. We will flesh-out these possibilities further in future meetings.
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
Next meeting: TBA
The main agenda item for this meeting was the gpa required for admission to the CISE/CSE majors.
Background: The gpa required for admission to the majors will go up from 3.0 to 3.2 starting with students admitted to the majors in Spring '02. This decision was made in Winter '01 , based on the demand for the majors, using our standard formula for determining the gpa requirement. The requirement would normally have gone into effect at the start of Au '01 but the university administration intervened with some issues, and by the time those were cleared, the requirement could only go into effect Spring '02. Since enrollment management plan we are operating under requires us to determine the gpa requirement for one year at a time, the 3.2 requirement will expire at the end of Winter '03. Further, since the university requires us to give students one year's notice of the gpa requirement, we need to decide now what the gpa requirement will be for Spring '03 and Summer '03. [The requirement for Au '03 through Su '04 will be determined in early Au '02.]
We looked at the number of students admitted to the majors during the last few years:
| Year | GPA reqd. | No. of admits |
|---|---|---|
| 1996-'97 | 2.0 | 190 | 1997-'98 | 2.0 | 252 | 1998-'99 | 2.4 | 276 | 1999-'00 | 2.8 | 235 | 2000-'01 | 3.0 | 229 | 2001-'02 | 3.0 | 230 (expected) |
After a general discussion going over the usual ground that for Ohio State to be closing out, year after year, over two-thirds of otherwise qualified students wishing to major in a field as important computing, is extremely unwise, the motion to set the gpa requirement for admission to the CIS and CSE majors for Sp '03 and Su '03 at 3.2 was adopted unanimously. Patrick and Diane, our student reps, while voting in favor of the requirement, registered their extreme disappointment at the department/university's failure to address this problem.
The proposal to require a 3.2 gpa for Sp '03 and Su '03, will be presented to the CIS faculty at its meeting on February 4, for its approval.
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
Next meeting: TBA
The main agenda item for this meeting was a (preliminary) discussion of the ACM/IEEE Computing Curriculum 2001 (CC'01).
Here are some of the points that were noted:
This discussion will continue in the committee and possibly in the Curriculum Committee.
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
Next meeting: TBA
1. Proposed Linguistics minor: Lingusitics has developed a minor
program tailored to the needs of CIS and CSE majors. Dr. Craige
Roberts of Linguistics described the details of the program to the
committee. The minor consists of the following courses:
After a brief discussion, the committee expressed its approval of the proposed minor. The minor has to be still formally approved by the college (ASC), but no formal approval is required from either UGSC or the CIS Dept. The committee thanked Dr. Roberts for presenting the proposal.
2. Requirements for CIS/CSE majors who wish to switch to BSBA-IS:
We occasionally have CIS/CSE majors who want to switch to the
BSBA-IS (Bachelor of Sc. in Business Administration,
Info. Sys. concentration, in the College of Business). This program
requires students to take, among other courses, CIS 214 and 314 (in
place of the CIS 221, 222, 321 sequence that the CIS/CSE students
take). The question was what should students who switch be required to
take. The proposal was that if the student has finished both CIS 221
and 222 (and possibly other courses), he or she would not be required
to take CIS 214 but will be required to take 314. If the student has
finished only CIS 221, then both 214 and 314 will be required.
The rationale for the proposal was as follows: CIS 214 is, in part, a "data structures" class. So students who have taken only CIS 221 would not have covered this material (although their coverage of basic software development ideas will be stronger than that of the 214-students). On the other hand, students who have completed both 221 and 222 would have covered at least as much data structures-related material as the 214 students. It was noted that one particular data structure, binary trees, is included in 214 but not in 222; so students who take 221-222 but skip 214 as proposed, will not see this material; this was considered acceptable since CIS 570, the only course in the BSBA-IS curriculum that uses binary trees, is no longer part of that curriculum. Hence it is appropriate to allow the second group of students to skip 214, but require the first group of students to take it. Note that all students (in the BSBA-IS program) will still be required to take CIS 314. This is because CIS 314 uses COBOL in business applications and business students need this material.
After a brief discussion, the committee endorsed the proposal. Next we will take the proposal to the College of Business (since the BSBA is officially a program in the COB) for their approval. Assuming they approve it, we will change the prerequisites for CIS 314 to read "CIS 214 or 222".
3. Transfer students: The university seems to have admitted some
students who have already completed a substantial fraction of the
hours of required and elective CIS courses in some
other university. The question was whether we should impose a
requirement on the minimum number of CIS hours the student must take
at OSU.
As far as we could tell, currently a student can complete all required and elective CIS courses at another university, transfer here, take 45 hours of GEC classes, and would then be able to graduate with a OSU-CIS degree. (Note: The only "residency" requirement that the university seems to have is that students must take at least 45 hours of credits at OSU; presumably these could all be GEC hours.) One proposal was to require students to take at least 50% of their CIS hours at OSU. But it was not clear that we can impose such a requirement. The College of Arts and Sciences seems to have a requirement that at least 20 hours of the courses that are part of the major must be completed at OSU. The history behind this requirement is not clear, nor is it clear where the requirement is documented. We will continue to work on this question, maybe talk to some other departments to see what, if anything, they have done, etc.
4. Bill mentioned a couple of FYI items:
a. It looks like one thing that
is unlikely to come out of the current university-level GEC
discussions, given budget considerations, is a reduction in the number
of either GEC hours or major-program hours.
b. Informal discussions are going on with the Math department about
how to improve the calculus sequence so that it serves our students
better. In particular, the question is, is it possible to teach these
courses in such a way that proofs and rigorous, logical reasoning play
a more central role in these courses, since it is these items, rather
than specific calculus-related results, that are likely to be of use
for our students later in their programs.
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
Next meeting: TBA
1. Results of CSE Surveys: Neelam distributed copies of the results of
the CSE
Exit Survey and the CSE Alumni Survey for this year. The survey
results are available on-line at:
survey results
(under the section "Assessment and Feedback Mechanisms"). Year-by-year
results, as well as combined results (showing the responses for each
year, side-by-side) are available at that site. Note that this year's
survey results for the "supervisor survey" are not yet available. They
should be available in the next few weeks. One point to note is that
the exit survey has been revised slightly, following the slight
revision in the objectives/outcomes statement of the CSE program (the
revised as well as original statements are accessible from the above
web page). The alumni survey did not have to be revised since previous
years' surveys already included questions concerning the objectives
that were implicit or buried in the original objectives/outcomes
statement that became explicit in the revised statement.
The results of this year's surveys were consistent with previous years' results. This is particularly evident in the "combined results" pages. The variations from one year to another seem statistically insignificant. Some concern was expressed about the overall statistical significance of the survey results, especially of the alumni surveys, given that the number of respondents is fairly low (just under 20 each year). There doesn't seem to be any way around this problem. Return rates for such surveys are typically in the range of 20% and that is the case with our return rates as well.
As in past years, the alumni survey also asked if the respondent had any other comments. The few respondents who did provide comments seemed generally satisfied with the program. As in past years, there was some concern, among some of the respondents, that the program may be a bit too theoretical. These people suggested that it would be useful to expose students to software methodologies and software packages commonly used in industry; and, again as in past years, there were some suggestions that it would be useful to include some business-oriented courses in the curriculum.
The meeting adjourned at 12:30 pm.
Next meeting: TBA
1. We discussed the tech electives for the CIS and CSE programs.
Some points that were noted were:
This discussion will continue at the next meeting.
The meeting adjourned at 12:30 pm.
Next meeting: TBA
1. We continued discussion of the tech electives for the CIS and CSE programs.
Some points that were noted were:
This discussion will continue at the next meeting.
The meeting adjourned at 12:30 pm.
Next meeting: TBA
We continued discussion of the tech electives for the CIS and CSE programs.
Some points that were noted were:
The meeting adjourned at 12:30 pm.
1. Undergrad lounge: Neelam, with help from Peg, had prepared a report
outlining the need for an undergraduate lounge, listing some of the
requirements that such a lounge should meet, and some suggestions for
possible locations. The report was discussed and has since then been
revised, based on the discussion in the meeting. The revised report
is
available on-line. The report will
be given to Stu; the committee strongly urges Stu to act on the
recommendation for a UG lounge.
2. Manager/Supervisor survey results (for the CSE program): The survey results for this year for the manager/supervisor survey are now available on-line. Results of all previous years, as well as a "combined results" page are als available on-line. The results were discussed briefly. There were no major surprises; the respondents seemed to stress the importance of "soft-skills" such as communication abilities and team-working skills, as well as that of knowledge of "current technology items"; perhaps somewhat surprisingly, they didn't rank "global" aspects of engineering very highly (they also didn't rank our students' preparedness in these aspects very highly).
There was also some discussion of possible changes, or additional infomration that might be useful: One of the questions on the survey was, "An understanding of and ability to use computing technology in communications". Some members of the committee felt that this question was unclear. There was some question about return rates (the sample sizes are relatively small; last year there were only 4 surveys returned; this year there were 8); it was suggested that we should compare our return rates with that of the rest of the college. Some possible ideas for improving the return rates (such as entering the names of respondents who return the surveys into "football ticket pool") were suggested. Since all this survey as well as the alumni survey are administered and managed by the college, these suggestions will be passed on to the college committee.
This being the last meeting of the year, and since Patrick and Diane are graduating this quarter, the committee thanked them for their able service as student reps on the committee.
The meeting adjourned at 12:20 pm.