CSE Undergraduate Studies Committee
Agendas and Minutes (2005-'06)

2. Meeting Minutes:

Spring:	May 23; May 9; Apr. 18; Apr. 4;
Winter:	Mar. 7; Feb. 21; Feb. 14; Feb. 7; Jan. 31; Jan. 24; Jan. 10;
Autumn:	November 30; November 23; November 16; November 2; October 26; October 12; September 28.

1.  Agenda Items and Actions to Date

Topic	Details/Actions	Status/plans
Preparation for accreditation evaluation	Details: These preparations are in full swing. The site-visit is scheduled for Oct. 30, 31, Nov. 1. Neelam provided some details of the preparations at the meeting of 9/28. There will be a detailed discussion about the preparations at the faculty meeting of 10/17.	On-going.
Advising workshop for faculty	9/28: For the last several years, we have organized a workshop for new and recent faculty to help them understand the structure and organization of our undergraduate programs and bring them up to speed on serving as faculty advisors for our majors. The workshop for this year will be organized most likely during the week of Oct. 10.	9/28: Neelam will work with Peg on organizing the workshop. 10/12: This is now scheduled for Oct. 13 at 2:00 pm in DL 480.
Interviewing Workshops	9/28: Last spring, Rosemary Hill of Engineering Career Services offered a "workshop" during a class session of CSE 758 (for details, see the minutes of May 13). The workshop was based on the standard "interviewing workshops" that ECS conducts regularly. The session seems to have been quite useful to the students who attended it. We will try to arrange a similar session to be offered in an appropriate class (CSE 757 and 758 were suggested, during the UGSC meeting of 9/28, as possibilities).	No action so far.
Evaluation of capstone courses	Background: Following the revision, more than a year ago, of our criteria for capstone courses, we had asked the faculty invovled with the individual courses to give us a presentation evaluating how well each course meets the new criteria.	This is complete. Details of the individual evaluations are available.
Papers in 222/321 and later courses on important/controversial ideas/questions	Tim had planned to try this in the Summer but couldn't because of the shorter term. He plans to try it this fall, and has promised to tell us about this soon.
Recruiter surveys? Surveys of prospective students/parents?	None.	Not yet considered.
Developing a common (one week?) "module" for all capstone courses; this will deal with project management, team working, and oral communication related topics.	Background: During the evaluations of some of the capstone courses, the idea was suggested that there are some items such as project management, team working, and oral communication, that are common to all the capstone courses. Students should have developed essential skills related to these items (especially team working and oral communication) earlier in the curriculum but it would seem useful to reiterate them at the start of each of the capstone courses. During informal email discussions (between Bruce, Rajiv, Raghu, and Neelam (in May '05)), the idea was proposed that perhaps a week-long "module" that does this could be developed and one or two people could be responsible for teaching this module at the start of each of the capstone courses. While this seems like a good idea, it has involved implications with respect to teaching credits etc. so implementation details would have to be worked out carefully.	Given the implications it has on teaching loads, we will wait until Dr. Zhang takes over as chair.
Math 566/CSE 680 coordination	Background: Following the recent revisions in the CIS program, Math 566 is required for all CIS majors who entered OSU in Au '04 or later. This will allow us to update CSE 680 to include more in-depth discussions of some of the topics included in Math 566. David Mathias and Rafe Wenger have been working with Tim Carlson of the math department on coordinating the two courses.	David will keep us updated about this.
Changes in Engineering GEC	Details: The College of Engineering has proposed revising the GEC program required of all engineering students. The net effect of the proposal would be that the number of GEC hours for engineering students would go down from 38 to 35. For CSE majors, however, the accreditation requirements dictate a minimum of 45 hours. If the college proposal is approved (by the CAA), we will specify the additional 10 hours of GEC required of CSE majors to consist of Comm 321 and one of the five courses in the business minor.	Still pending at CAA; but it looks like much of the college's proposal will be rejected by CAA. The one exception might be the approval of a required Ethics course (which will be allowed to be double-counted in one of the other categories so there is no increase in the number of GEC hours).
Allow a minor to count as the "related work" section of the BA degree?	Background: The BA-CIS program includes a "related work" portion that requires students to take 15 hours of courses in a related field and 8 hours of courses in the related field, CSE, or math. It would seem reasonable to allow students to substitute a suitable minor (similar to what we now allow in the individualized option of the BS-CIS program) for this section. (This was a suggestion from Dean John Wanzer (when we discussed the proposal to include a minor as part of the individualized option for the BS-CIS program (May '05).)	No action yet.
Change name of the CIS program to CS program	Background/proposal: CIS students have occasionally reported that recruiters confuse them with MIS students. It would therefore seem to make sense to change the name of the program to Computer Science. Inclusion of the word "information" no longer makes very much sense since the word is no longer part of the department name. There seems to be general consensus on this, but we will wait until the new chair is in place before pursuing this. In any case, such a name would have to be approved by several levels of the university.	Wait until Dr. Zhang takes over as chair next January before deciding on how (and whether) to proceed on this.

1. Results of Spring POCAT (BS-CSE exit test): Summary results of the Spring POCAT which was held on on 4/11 are available at: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/DIRASSMNT/pocatResultsSp06.pdf. In general, the results were similar to those of the Winter test but there were some important differences. First, students seem to have done much better on the question that described a design situation and asked to students to choose from among a number of choices of data structures. In both of the earlier POCATs, students had performed relatively poorly on this test; indeed, it was for this reason that we introduced a new activitiy in CSE 680 that involves considering a variety of problems similar to this one. It is not clear why there was such a difference in student performance. One difference from the earlier tests was that this time, the question was (deliberately) moved to the beginning of the test whereas in both of the previous tests, the corresponding question appeared near the end. We will see how students in future POCATs do on this question.

   Second, this test included a question that probed students' understanding of basic digital encoding of information. The performance of students (22 out of 38 students got the correct answer) was not quite as good as we would have expected, given how simple the question was. We need to consider this further; perhaps it would be useful to share this information with the math faculty involved with Math 366 and 566.

   Third, there was some concern that the questions on the test were not quite as well designed as they could be. Specifically, for several questions, depending on how a student interpreted the question, different answers could plausibly be regarded as "correct". Given that this is a multiple-choice test, it is important to try to eliminate this type of ambiguity in questions.

   Fourth, it was suggested that it would be useful to have summarize the results in a somewhat different manner, providing information about the number of students who picked each of the possible answers for each of the questions. This information is available in the current summary but it is not explicit. At the same time, it is also necessary to continue to have the current form of the summary since it provides useful information to interested students about their individual performance on the test. Neelam will look into this, and also into the possibility of automating the production of the summary results.

   Overall, the conclusion was that the first three offerings of the POCAT have been useful and that we should continue to use it.

2. Changing the names of the BS-CIS and BA-CIS programs: Over the years, we have heard that the word "information" in the names of the BS-CIS and BA-CIS programs has resulted in these programs being thought of, by several people including potential recruiters of graduates of these programs, as MIS-type programs. This is clearly unfortunate, especially in the case of the BS-CIS program since that program is a strong CS program. The question is whether we should omit the word "information" from the names of these programs.

   One potential problem with doing this would be that other units in the university might interpret this to mean that we, as a dept., no longer have an interest in the area that might be called "informatics" and the areas. Since it was already nearing 11:30, it was decided that we will continue the discussion of this point and the general question in the next meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.

At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Peg, Raghu.

Next meeting: to be announced.

1. Status of accreditation evaluation: We have received the "draft statement" from CAC. There were two concerns listed in the statement. The first was regarding the lack of quantitative, direct assessment of the degree of achievement of the program outcomes. The second was regarding the failure to complete the CGR for the theoretical foundations group in a timely manner. Both of these had been listed as weaknesses in the "program audit form" that the team gave us at the end of the site-visit. The downgrading to "concern" may have been because of the information we provided in the "14-day response" that we sent to the team following the site-visit; or it may have been because of other reasons. The program audit form also listed a concern with respect to faculty advising of students. That is not listed in the draft statement either as a weakness or a concern.
   We have sent our "due process response" to the CAC team chair addressing the concerns noted in the draft statement. Our response provides details of the recently completed foundations group CGR, and the new direct assessment mechanisms, as well as the results we have obtained by use of these mechanisms and the improvements that these results have allowed us to identify.

   The EAC draft statement was expected several weeks ago; but there is still no sign of it and no indication when it will arrive.

2. Plans for the quarter/items to be addressed:
   • Faculty advisors' office hours: Peg reported that during the last few weeks, several students have complained of being unable to get in touch with their faculty advisors even for such things as obtaining necessary signatures on their graduation applications. Faculty are reminded that undergraduate advising is an important part of their responsibilities. And it is not, in general, a time consuming activity at all; a typical advisee sees his or advisor once a year and takes about five minutes of the advisor's time. Given this, faculty advisors are requested to either have regular published hours when they are available, or respond promptly to email messages from advisees requesting appointments, or both. We also considered the possibility, in those cases where an advisee needs the advisor's signature on a graduation application and is not able to meet with the advisor in a timely manner, that Peg and Nikki be authorized to approve the applications assuming that the student has met all the requirements, both with regard to the required courses as well as the electives for the particular option that the student is pursuing. It is not clear whether this would be acceptable to the college offices; we will look into this and, assuming that it is acceptable, discuss this option further.
   • Name change for BS-CIS and BA-CIS programs: In the past, we had talked about changing the names of the BS-CIS and BA-CIS programs to BS-CS and BA-CS respectively. The main reason for considering this is to eliminate the occasional confusion, especially among recruiters, about the nature of the programs; in particular, they seem to think our programs are MIS-type programs. We will consider this further in a future meeting before deciding how (and whether) to proceed.
   • POCAT: The recently instituted "exit test" for BS-CSE students who are close to graduation will be offered on 4/11 (at 6:00 pm) this quarter. Over 20 students are expected to take the exam on 4/11. We will discuss the results as soon as possible. David noted that following the relatively poor performance of students in the test during Au and Winter quarter in the question related to choosing the right data structure for a given design situation and the discussion we had in UGSC about the results, he has revised 680 to include two lectures where he leads a couple of brainstorming sessions where students solve similar problems. Interestingly, David's experience when he did this at the end of Winter quarter was that students did reasonably well, definitely better than he had expected based on the POCAT results. We will discuss this further in later meetings.
   • Reports from capstone courses: The other recent change was the introduction of rubrics for evaluation of oral presentations, team-skills, written communication skills, and lifelong learning ability for use in the capstone courses. The intent was that instructors of the capstone courses will present the results, from their particular course sections, of these evaluations. The question was how frequently this should be done. One possibility would be have this presentation from each section of each capstone course at the end of the quarter in which the particular section of the course was taught; but this seems too frequent. An alternative would be to have this as part of the regular evaluation of each capstone course. Recall that the coordinator of each capstone course is asked to present a detailed evaluation of the course to UGSC once every two years or so, evaluating it against the capstone course criteria. It might be appropriate to add the discussion of evaluations using the new rubrics to that biannual evaluation. It was suggested that even if we do this, that the course instructors be asked to give to the UGSC chair, copies of the actual evaluation sheets from their respective sections at the end of the quarters in which those sections are taught. That will ensure that the information is readily available during the biannual evaluation.
   • Report from CSE 601: There is a similar set of rubrics for evaluating oral and written communication skills, as well as "understanding of professional and ethical responsibility", for use in CSE 601. Here too it would seem appropriate to have a discussion of the results about once every two years. Again it would be reasonable to have the 601 instructor give to the UGSC chair, copies of the evaluations at the end of each quarter in which the course is taught.

The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.

At the meeting: Daniel, David, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Peg, Raghu;

Next meeting: to be announced.

1. Evaluation of outcomes ((h) and (j)) related to societal issues (CSE 601): Following discussions in the fall quarter, we decided to implement, in CSE 601, a requirement for a paper that would allow the development of both written communication skills as well as, by appropriate choice of topic, the outcomes related to "broad education" and "knowledge of contemporary issues". Each student is required to explore a new or recent product or practice or event etc., consider the impact it may have in a "global, economic, environmental, and societal context" (outcome (h)); consider as well any relevant contemporary issues (outcome (j)) related to the product, practice, or event (p/p/e); and present the findings in a 3-4 page paper. The paper is evaluated using a specific rubric that assesses the degree to which students achieve these outcomes. The rubric evaluates student papers along six dimensions, these being: awareness of global effects of the p/p/e; understanding of economic factors; awareness of implications to society; awareness of other contemporary issues; organization of paper; and style of presentation. Bob Mathis reported on his experiences this quarter with this activity in CSE 601.

   The full results of the evaluation are available on-line. Students seem to have done satisfactorily along most of the dimensions. The one problem area seems to be understanding of economic factors. It was noted that this area should see improvement in the coming years since we have recently instituted a requirement that all BS-CSE students should take either Econ 200 or Econ 201 as part of their GEC courses. Overall, the activity seems to be serving its intended purpose and the rubric seems effective in evaluating the degree of achievement of these particular outcomes ((h), (j), and (g)). CSE 601 is also offered in the Spring quarter; we will try to schedule a discussion of the results from that offering in late Spring quarter.

   (Note: Off-line discussions after the meeting suggested that it might be a good idea to evaluate these student papers along another dimension, i.e., ethical and professional issues. This would be logical since the course is intended to include discussion of these issues.)

The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.

At the meeting: Bruce, David, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Paolo, Peg; Bob Mathis.

Next meeting: to be announced.

1. Lifelong learning/written communication skills in capstone design courses (CSE 682, 772): Partly in response to the recent accreditation evaluation team's findings, we have added a component to the capstone design courses that allows the further development of students' lifelong learning skills as well as their (written) communication skills. Equally important, we developed suitable rubrics that capstone course instructors can use to evaluate this activity and reporting the results to UGSC, so that we can use the results to assess the degree to which the outcomes related to lifelong learning and written communication are being achieved. For details, please see: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/DIRASSMNT/writingLifelongLearningRubric.html.

   The first courses to include this activity are CSE 682 (Computer Animation) and 772(Information Systems Project) offered this quarter and taught by Rick Parent and Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu respectively. In 772, Hakan combined this activity with the planning phase of the design project of the course. The task that students were assigned to perform was to prepare an individual project plan that, in addition to the standard requirements for project plans, also required:

   A discussion of the potential tools, algorithms, and approaches that could be used to accomplish your responsibilities. These could include design environments, database management systems, algorithms to handle technical issues; essentially any tool that requires you to make a design decision. Provide information about each of the options. Compare the options to each other and name the option you plan to use and the reasons for using that option. If it is unwise to make a firm selection at this point, list the most likely candidates and the factors that you will use in making a selection.

   This essentially required students to research various tools, discover what their strengths and weaknesses were, and report their findings as part of their "project plan document", thereby ensuring that students' lifelong learning skills as well as written communication skills were developed. The plans submitted by the students were evaluated using the rubric at the url cited above.

   Most of the students in the class seem to have taken the assignment seriously and scored well (3 or 4 on the scales specified in the rubric) in all four dimensions: research, analysis, organization (of paper), and style.

   In CSE 682, Rick similarly required the students to evaluate various tools and techniques to accomplish a specified task, for example, generating the visual effect of a fire. Students were required to research such approaches as 2 1/2D animation, animated textures, or a full CFD implementation, and evaluate the quality of the resulting visuals and the effort required in each case to meet the needs. They were then asked to write a paper presenting their findings. These papers were evaluated, again using the same rubric. In this paper too, students performed reasonably well although the scores on the research dimension as well as the analysis dimension were somewhat lower than in the case of 772 (average of about 2.5 and 2 respectively). This may have been because students may have been more focused on activities more directly related to their design project and not spent as much time and effort on exploring the general context and applicability of the tools and techniques. Rick also seemed to feel that having the paper due early in the quarter when students are gearing up to get started on their design project hurts. As an aside, the reason for doing that this quarter was that we were expecting to have to respond by mid-February to the EAC draft statement; but there is no sign of the EAC statement yet, so this could have been scheduled for later in the quarter although obviously we didn't know that at the start of the quarter. In any case, it is expected that, the experience of this quarter, and the flexibility of having the paper due at a much later point in the quarter, will ensure that students will perform better on these dimensions in future offerings of the course.

   Oral communication skills: Hakan also presented his evaluations of some initial oral presentations using the rubric at: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/DIRASSMNT/oralPresRubric.html. The rubric has four dimensions, respectively organization, mechanics, delivery, and relating audience. Hakan added a fifth dimension, technical content. Presentations were evaluated both by all members of the audience. For any given presentation, the evaluations by different evaluators generally produced consistent results. [It should also be noted that this rubric was designed without taking account of the fact that many presentations in capstone courses tend to be team presentations. A new rubric has now been developed for evaluating team presentations and is available at: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/DIRASSMNT/oralTeamPresRubric.html].

   As may be expected, there was some variation in the scores across different presentations. It is clearly too early to consider any changes that may be implemented in order to improve students' oral communication skills. We should also note that we already have implemented an importance change, the requirement of Comm 321, the 5-credit course on public speaking, as part of the BS-CSE general education courses. But this change has just gone into effect so most students currently in the capstone courses will not have taken the course. One possible course of action for the next two or three years might be to compare the oral communication scores of students who have not taken Comm 321 with those of students who have. Another might be to share our results with the Communication faculty most involved with Comm 321. We will explore these possibilities.

The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.

At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Paolo, Raghu; Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu, Rick Parent.

Next meeting: to be announced.

1. Impact of McHale report proposals on our programs (contd.): We continued discussion of the impact of the changes proposed by the report of the McHale Committee on our programs. (Please see the previous discussion at the meeting of Jan. 31.)

   NMRs (Non-major requirements) for BA students under McHale:

   1. Writing and related skills (English 110, second writing): 10 hrs;
   2. Quantitative and logical reasoning: 10 hrs;
   3. Natural science: 15 hrs;
      Must take coursework from a designated list in both physical science (including technology) and biological science (?); must include a sequence; must include at least 1 course with lab.
   4. Historical study: 10 hrs;
   5. Arts & literature: 10 hrs;
   6. Social science: 10 hrs;
   7. Foreign language: left to individual colleges.
   Note: Under item (3), it is not clear whether students are required to take at least one course from each of physical science and biological science; or the intent is simply that all 15 hrs. in this category must come from the set (physical science (incl. technology) + biological science).

   The report also specifies the same reductions/exemptions as for the BS programs.

   Impact on BA-CIS: The current requirements of the BA-CIS program are:

   1. Writing and related skills (English 110, second writing): 10 hrs;
   2. Quantitative and logical reasoning: 10 hrs;
      (In fact we require many more hours: Math 151, 152, 153; Stat 245 (5 hrs); Math 366.)
   3. Natural science: 20 hrs;
      (including a sequence; must include one course in phy. sc. and one in biol. sc.)
      (In fact we require many more hours since most of the CSE courses will fall under "physical science/technology" category.)
   4. Historical survey: 10 hrs (2-qtr seq.)
   5. Arts & hum. (other than history): 15 hrs;
   6. Social science: 15 hrs;
   7. Foreign language (through 104): 10 hrs.
   8. Issues of contemporary world: 5 hrs.

   Impact: None on (1) or (2); could reduce (3) by 5 hrs; none on (4); could reduce (5) by 5 hrs; reduce (6) by 5 hrs; (7) depends on the college; it is not clear where (8) came from originally; there is no mention of it in McHale.

   NET: Could reduce GEC by 15 hrs; might be possible to reduce an additional (5) hrs in (8). But the program is already at 191 hrs. So we will probably only reduce (5) and (6) by 5 hrs each bringing the program to 181 hrs.

   Han-Wei noted that there were serious reservations in the MPS Curriculum Comm. about the McHale proposal since it may have fairly serious negative consequences for some of the departments (Math, Physics, etc.) if various programs "took advantage" of the proposal to substantially reduce requirements in these areas. So in our report to the MPS CC, we may want to note that, if the McHale proposal goes into effect, we will probably reduce the GEC component of both the BA-CIS and BS-CIS programs by 10 hrs (in each case reducing Arts & hum. by 5 hrs and Social Sc. by 5 hrs); the resulting programs will be 181 hrs. each; but we will also note that if other programs were to reduce their GECs by a greater amount, then we will probably reconsider our plans.
   (Note: There are a couple of faculty/staff forums on the McHale report being held in the next couple of weeks:
   Thursday, Feb. 16, 8:00-9:30, Smith Seminar Room, Physics Research Bldg.;
   Thursday, Feb. 23, 4:00-5:30, Wexner Center Film/Theatre Room.
   People interested in offering their comments on the McHale proposal should try to attend one of these.)

2. Results of the Winter POCAT (Program Outcomes Achievement Test): Twenty three students took the Winter POCAT. The results are available. There was only a limited amount of time available to discuss the results. One point had to do with a question, concerning binary search trees, that only one student (out of 23) had answered correctly. David mentioned that he had noted this problem consistently among students in 680. The topic of binary trees is covered in 321, but Paolo who teaches 321 regularly noted that he had been under the impression that the topic is covered again in a later course. In fact, it used to be, in CIS 570; but when 570 was replaced by 670, this went away. In any case, we need to address this problem. Another point had to do with the question on the right data structure to use for a given design situation. As in the Autumn POCAT, only about half the students answered this correctly.

The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.

At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam, Peg, Paolo, Raghu, Han-Wei.

Next meeting: to be announced.

1. BS-CSE program objectives and outcomes: We continued discussion of possible revisions to the objectives and outcomes statement. With respect to the outcomes, we decided that we should adopt the EAC Criterion 3 outcomes as the outcomes for the program with one minor change, i.e., in outcome (3.k), replace the phrase "engineering practice" by "practice as a CSE professional". We also decided that it was not necessary to add the qualifier "including discrete mathematics" in outcome (3.a) as had been proposed previously. Thus the proposed new outcomes are as follows. Students will attain:
   1. an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering;
   2. an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data;
   3. an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability;
   4. an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams;
   5. an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems;
   6. an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility;
   7. an ability to communicate effectively;
   8. the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context;
   9. a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning;
   10. a knowledge of contemporary issues;
   11. an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for practice as a CSE professional.
   The new set of outcomes will be posted on student newsgroups and discussed at the Undergraduate Forum (scheduled for Feb. 13) before being presented to the faculty for discussion and approval.

   There was also agreement that the program objectives should be simplified as discussed at the meeting of Jan. 24; i.e., replace the current set of five objectives by the following:

   1. Graduates of the program will be employed in the computing profession, and will be engaged in learning, understanding, and applying new ideas and technologies as the field evolves.
   2. Graduates with an interest in and aptitude for advanced studies in computing will have completed, or be actively pursuing, graduate studies in computing.
   One important reason for doing this is that EAC Criterion 2 requires that the program have "a process of ongoing evaluation of the extent to which these objectives are attained, the result of which shall be used to develop and improve the program outcomes". The statement of some of our current objectives is such that measuring the extent to which they are attained may be difficult. At the same time, the discussion again highlighted the importance of having an additional "philosophy of program" statement that describes the program's goals and approaches. We will create and publish such a statement at the same time that the program objectives are officially revised. The philosophy statement will include the important parts of the current objectives as well as outcomes statements that are omitted from their revised versions.

   Neelam pointed out the EAC requirement that objectives be established based on input from important constituents including alumni. We will therefore try to get feedback from alumni via the alumni survey which is scheduled to be sent out soon before presenting the revised objectives to the faculty for discussion and approval. The revised objectives will also be presented at the Undergraduate Forum for feedback from current students.

2. Impact of McHale report proposals on our programs: We briefly discussed the impact of the changes proposed report of the McHale Committee on the BS-CIS and BS-CSE programs. It should be noted that the report is long and, in places, fairly involved. Moreover, the recommendations may change as feedback from various colleges are received. Therefore the analysis below should be considered rather preliminary and subject to change.

   There are two versions of the "Non-Major Requirements (NMR)" under the McHale proposals, one "with Cluster" and the other without. Since it is not clear when clusters will be developed nor how many students are likely to take them, here we only consider NMRs without clusters.

   NMRs for BS students under McHale:

   1. Writing and related skills (English 110, second writing): 10 hrs;
   2. Quantitative and logical reasoning: 10 hrs;
   3. Natural science: 20 hrs;
      Must take coursework from a designated list in both physical science (including technology) and biological science; must include a sequence; must include at least 1 course with lab.
   4. Historical study: 10 hrs;
   5. Arts & literature: 10 hrs;
   6. Social science: 10 hrs;
   7. Foreign language: left to individual colleges.
   Note: Under item (3), it is not clear whether students are required to take at least one course from each of physical science and biological science; or the intent is simply that all 20 hrs. in this category must come from the set (physical science + biological science).

   The report also specifies the following reductions/exemptions:

   1. The program can nominate any one of the categories (2) through (6) most closely related to the program for a one NMR course exemption; for example, an English major can be exempt from a course in Lit. [Note: This does not seem to be a real reduction since, presumably, the program could simply have listed one of the relevant courses from the area as an "NMR course" rather than treating it as a "major course".]
   2. One "breadth" course (categories (3) through (6)) can be substituted by any of the following: an upper level course in another breadth area that the student has already fulfilled [so, for example, an extra course -beyond the 20 hrs- in "natural sc. can substitute for a history course?]; or, *appropriate* internship; or 5 hrs of independent research/completion of honors thesis.
   3. A minor in a suitable area will be counted as meeting the NMR in that area (for e.g., an Econ minor will meet the social sc. NMR). [Note: In effect, minor hrs. can be double counted toward NMR hours.

   Impact on BS-CIS: The current requirements of the BS-CIS program are:

   1. Writing and related skills (English 110, second writing): 10 hrs;
   2. Quantitative and logical reasoning: 10 hrs;
      (In fact we require many more hours: Math 151, 152, 153; Stat 427, 428; Math 366, 566.)
   3. Natural science: 25 hrs;
      (Phys 111-112 or 131-132; plus 15 hrs: must include biological sciences and at least 1 course with lab.)
   4. Historical survey: 10 hrs (2-qtr seq.)
   5. Arts & hum. (other than history): 15 hrs;
      must include at least 5 hrs. of lit., 5 hrs. of VPA.
   6. Social science: 15 hrs;
   7. Foreign language (through 104): 10 hrs.
   8. Diversity requirement (can be double counted with any of the above) must be met.
   The program includes a drop-a-GEC option to drop one course as follows: Can drop one course:
   in (3) from among the 15 "more hrs", but must meet biol. sc., and at least 1 course with lab requirement;
   in (4), provided first course in a seq. is included;
   in (5) provided one lit. course and one VPA course are included;
   in (6) provided courses in certain categories are included;
   in (7) provided through 103 [in whatever language] is included.

   Impact: None on (1) or (2); could reduce (3) by 5 hrs (out of the "plus 15 hrs", but must require biol. sc. and lab course.); none on (4); reduce (5) by 5 hrs; reduce (6) by 5 hrs; (7)-no change?

   NET: Reduce GEC by 15 hrs but give up drop-a-GEC for a net reduction of 10 hrs.

   Impact on BS-CSE: The current requirements of the BS-CSE program are:

   1. Writing and related skills (English 110, second writing): 10 hrs;
   2. Quantitative and logical reasoning: 10 hrs;
      (In fact we require many more hours: Math 151, 152, 153, 254; Stat 427, 428; Math 366, 566.)
   3. Natural science: 19+many more hrs:
      Phys 131, 132; Chem 121; one of Phys 133, Chem 125, Biol 113; many hours of engineering sciences/technology.
   4. Historical survey: 10 hrs;
   5. Arts & literature: 10 hrs (lit: 5hrs; VPA: 5 hrs.)
   6. Social science: 10 hrs (Econ 200 + 5 hrs).
   7. Oral comm. skills: 5 hrs (Comm 321).
   We also have a CAC requirement of 45 hours of general education (in which we are counting Comm 321; but Comm 321 is not a GEC/NMR course).

   NET: The only impact seems to be on (3): we may, depending on how the McHale requirement is interpreted, have to require students to take a biological sciences course.
   What about: "b. One "breadth" course (categories (3) through (6)) can be substituted by any of the following: an upper level course in another breadth area that the student has already fulfilled"?
   On the basis of this, can't 5 of the extra hours in (3) be used against one of (4), (5), or (6)? This may apply to OTHER engineering programs, but not to BS-CSE since we have the CAC requirement of 45 hours of general education (which consists of courses in categories (1), (4), (5), (6), (7)).

The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.

At the meeting: Bruce, Peg, Paolo, Raghu, Daniel, David, Eric, Eitan, Neelam.

Next meeting: to be announced.

1. Items to be addressed: Neelam summarized the items that need to be looked in the next few weeks. The first is a discussion of the McHale report on the university GEC (available at: http://oaa.osu.edu/reports/ur_index.php). The main question for the UGSC discussion is what impact the proposed changes will, if implemented, have on the BS-CSE and BS-CIS programs. The second is a discussion of trends in the number of students being admitted to the CIS and CSE majors and any potential changes in the GPA required (currently at 2.3) for admission to the major. The third is the continuing activities related to the accreditation evaluation of the BS-CSE program and responding to the reports expected to be shortly received from ABET.

2. Undergraduate forum: The annual student forum is scheduled for Monday, February 13 at 6:00-7:30 pm; room to be announced. A number of faculty and staff are expected to attend: Xiaodong, Bruce, Eric, Neelam, Paolo, Peg, Rajiv. There was an extended discussion on how the forum should be organized and how student participation can be improved. There was also some discussion of other related topics. Some questions that were raised and ideas that were mentioned:
   • Is a single forum involving all undergrads from pre-majors through seniors a good idea? Or would it be better to have two, one for pre-majors (and maybe students very recently admitted to the major), and the other for juniors and seniors? The question is whether, if we were to do this, there will be enough students at either session.
   • Should there be a discussion of such topics as how to find employment following graduation? The consensus seemed to be that this kind of discussion doesn't belong in the forum. On the other hand, maybe some discussion of trends in the field may be appropriate.
   • Should we try to get someone from industry, especially someone who works with recent grads and/or is involved with hiring new and recent grads, to attend the forum and offer any ideas? Last year we did this (Gautum Reddy of Microsoft attended the first part of the forum). This may be useful but we don't know if anyone would be available. We will try to do this.
   • A related question was, should we try to get some recent alums to attend the forum? They may have some useful ideas and tips for students. Again this seems like a good idea and we will see if we can do this.
   • A broader question was, how do we improve student participation in the department and, in particular, how do we strengthen and vitalize the student organizations and ensure that they remain active? In one sense, it is obviously only the *students* who can ensure this but there may be things that we can do that may encourage students to participate in these activities. One suggestion was that perhaps some activity can be introduced into CSE321 to help with this. Since the students in that class have (typically) been recently admitted to the major, maybe it would be good to have a presentation in the class that welcomes them to the field, introduces the student organizations to them, and try to get them interested in the organizations (as well as in other departmental activities including the forum).
   • One note of caution that was mentioned was that, as in past forums, there should be an agenda for the forum (announced in advance) so that it doesn't become a free-for-all. Neelam and Peg will put together a tentative agenda.

3. Revising program objectives and outcomes for BS-CSE program:
   (The current set of objectives and outcomes is available at: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/ugrad/cseobjectives.shtml.)
   One important conclusion of the recent accreditation evaluation of the BS-CSE program is that any program outcomes we have must be measurable, and that the assessments we use must be direct assessments. Further, we also have to ensure that EAC Criterion 3 outcomes are either explicitly included among our outcomes, or are somehow implied by our outcomes. Given these factors, Neelam proposed that we adopt Criterion 3 outcomes, with a couple of minor modifications (to tailor them to apply to CSE; the modifications are enclosed in "[...]") as our outcomes:
   1. an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics [including discrete mathematics], science, and engineering;
   2. an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data;
   3. an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability;
   4. an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams;
   5. an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems;
   6. an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility;
   7. an ability to communicate effectively;
   8. the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context;
   9. a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning;
   10. a knowledge of contemporary issues;
   11. an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice [replace "engineering practice" by "practice as a CSE professional"].

   With respect to the objectives, there are no particular EAC-specified objectives that have to be included among (or be implied by) our objectives. Neelam proposed that we replace our current objectives with the following simplified set:

   1. Graduates of the program will be successfully employed in the computing profession, and will be actively engaged in learning, understanding, and applying new ideas and technologies as the field evolves.
   2. Graduates with an interest in and aptitude for advanced studies in computing will have successfully completed, or be actively pursuing, graduate studies in computing.

   Note that EAC does require the program objectives to be determined "based on the needs of the program's various constituencies"; and this has been interpreted to mean we have to get input from such groups as alums, industrial advisory board, etc. in determining the objectives.

   There was general consensus that these changes would be appropriate. One suggestion that was made was that while it might be appropriate to revise the objectives and especially the outcomes given the ABET requirements, it might also be reasonable to retain our current set of objectives and outcomes and rename them to something along those lines of, "our philosophy". We will continue this discussion in a future meeting before deciding what to recommend to the faculty.

The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.

At the meeting: Bruce, Peg, Paolo, Raghu, Daniel, David, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam.

Next meeting: to be announced.

1. Plans for Winter: Neelam summarized the plans for Winter quarter. We should be receiving the draft statements from the CAC and the EAC teams either in late January or in early February. We will then have 30 days to send a response. The response is supposed to primarily be a summary of the changes we have implemented since the visit, summary of the results we have obtained from these changes, and how these address the issues raised in the reports. The hope is that the implementation of the "exit test", the changes in the capstone courses (using clear rubrics for evaluating various soft skills and reporting the results to UGSC for discussion and identification of possible improvements), and the similar changes in CSE 601 will together provide enough evidence to convince the teams that the issues raised in the reports have been addressed.

   CSE 682 and 772, the two capstone courses offered this quarter, will each require students to write a paper that will develop their lifelong learning skills as well as their communication skills. The papers will be evaluated using an appropriate rubric we recently developed. Both courses will report the results to UGSC by late January. This quarter's offering of CSE 601 will require students to write a paper that will require students to explore social and/or ethical and/or professional issues related to some recent technology or development. This paper will be evaluated using another rubric we recently developed. The results will again be reported to UGSC by late January. Both sets of results will be discussed in a UGSC meeting in early February.

   The exit test will be offered this quarter on January 17. The results will be discussed at the Jan. 24 meeting of UGSC. Another activity this quarter will be the annual forum. Plans for this will be discussed soon.

2. Results of the pilot run of POCAT, the direct assessment of BS-CSE program outcomes during Au '05: We discussed the results of the pilot run of POCAT, the exit test that was conducted in Au '05. 21 students took the test. These were all students in CSE 758 or 778. Here are some points that were noted:
   • Since only about half the students correctly answered the question concerning the ACM Code, and since the question related to a fairly simple (and important) factual issue, we should make sure that the discussion in CSE 601 is revised to stress this point adequately.
   • Students did rather poorly in the question dealing with recurrence relations/algorithm analysis. David (and other faculty involved with 680) will try to find ways to address this.
   • Students' understanding of design-by-contract principles clearly seems to have deteriorated since CSE 321. So if we want to be sure that they are able to apply these ideas in professional careers following graduation, we need to reiterate them in some later courses; CSE 560 and 655 would be candidates.
   • Some students may have done poorly in some questions (for example, the one involving performance of two computers A and B) because of the possibly too-heavy use of acronyms. It might be a good idea to spell them out in future tests.
   • Our expectation that students will take the test seriously despite its not having any impact on their course grades etc. seems to have been met.
   • One suggestion that some students taking the pilot test made was that students have the option of having the department officially report, at the request of the student, to potential employers the score the student received in the test. After a brief discussion, we concluded this would not be a good idea since it will turn the test into an evaluation of individual students and may well compromise its reliability in evaluating the program.
   In summary, the test seems to be effective, does provide us useful information about the degree of achievement of (some of) the program outcomes, and does provide some ideas on how the program can be improved.

3. Evaluation of oral communication in CSE 758: Rajiv Ramnath used, in the section of CSE 758 that he taught in Au '05, a recently developed rubric to evaluate students' oral presentations. He reported the results of this evaluation. One point that was highlighted during the discussion (but is not brought out by the table of results) is that the presentations in 758 are team presentations. This rubric was designed mainly to evaluate individual presentations. Clearly, since team presentations are a common feature of capstone courses, we need to develop a suitable presentation that accounts for the team aspect. We hope to be able to do this in time for use in evaluating the presentations in the sections of CSE 682 and 772 being offered this quarter.

The meeting adjourned at 10:30 am.

At the meeting: Peg, Paolo, Raghu, David, Rajiv, Dong, Eric, Eitan, Neelam.

Next meeting: Jan. 24.

1. Direct assessment of program outcomes for the BS-CSE program (contd.): At its meeting of 11/28/'05, the faculty approved the UGSC proposal (Powerpoint) to introduce a multiple-choice test based on high-level required courses and to be taken by BS-CSE majors near graduation (i.e., after they apply for graduation) for assessing the achievement of the EAC Criterion 3 outcomes related to technical skills; and to rely on the capstone courses for assessment of achivement of the outcomes related to soft skills (oral and written communication, team working, lifelong learning). At the current meeting we discussed the implementation details. We also discussed the question of assessing the other two Criterion 3 outcomes (related respectively to knowledge of contemporary issues and to the global impact of engineering solutions).

   With respect to the multiple-choice test, we decided that it will be offered once a quarter. It will be held on a week night early in the quarter. BS-CSE majors, when they apply for graduation, will be asked to sign up for one of the upcoming tests.

   With respect to the assessment of soft skills in the capstone courses, we will develop a set of rubrics that will be used by all capstone course instructors. The performance of the students along the metrics in the rubrics will be provided to UGSC by the course instructors for discussion and possible further action if necessary.

   With respect to the outcomes related to contemporary issues and global impact of engineering solutions, we decided that CSE 601 would provide the most reasonable opportunity for assessing them. Neelam will talk to Bob Mathis (who has taught all the recent sections of the course and is scheduled to teach it in Winter '06) about how this may be done. One possibility is to require students to write a paper on a topic that would involve these issues and evaluate the papers using a rubric that would includes the appropriate metrics.

   Neelam will create a set of web pages that will serve to document this new set of direct assessment mechanisms and will also be used to document the results of the assessments and any program improvements based on these results.

The meeting adjourned at 3:35 pm.

Next meeting: Winter quarter.

1. Direct assessment of program outcomes for the BS-CSE program: We continued discussion of how we can implement direct assessment of program outcomes as ABET now seems to require. For now, we are focusing on the Criterion 3 outcomes (ignoring our specific program outcomes). The Criterion 3 outcomes can be divided into three groups. The first deals with "soft skills", i.e., oral and written communication, team working skills, and lifelong learning. The second group relates to technical stuff, for example: "ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems". The third group relates to general education, for example: "knowledge of contemporary issues". Based on the previous committee discussion continued by e-mail during the last week, there was consensus that we should focus on the first two groups and ignore, at least for now, the third group.
   1. With respect to the first group, the capstone courses play an important role in helping achieve these outcomes and it seems reasonable that assessment of these outcomes should be based on students' work in those courses. We are working on identifying appropriate rubrics that all the capstone course instructors can use for assessing effectiveness of oral and written communications, team working skills, and lifelong learning abilities. UGSC will also evaluate these outcomes, using the same rubrics. This is being tried to an extent this quarter (in 758 and 778) and will be piloted more fully in next quarter's capstone courses (682, 772).

      More details on this: For oral communications and team-working, the capstone courses will evaluate student abilities using appropriate rubrics (see, for example, http://www.ncsu.edu/midlink/rub.pres.html, and http://edweb.sdsu.edu/triton/tidepoolunit/Rubrics/collrubric.html; see also http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/rubrics.shtml for a variety of rubrics). These evaluations will be made available to UGSC so the committee can discuss and compare the results across the various capstone courses and suggest possible improvements in the individual courses.

      For the outcomes related to lifelong learning and written communication, the plan is that each capstone course will require each student (individually, not as a team) in the course to write a short paper on some new tool, technology, standard, or process they had to research during the course. This may be something that was done as part of the design/implementation project or it may be independent of the project. The paper will not only describe the tool etc., but also explain the particular problem the student was trying to solve or task he or she wanted the tool to perform, how the student decided to research the particular tool, how it compares with alternatives, etc. The paper will be evaluated using a common rubric and will evaluate students' abilities both with respect to written communication as well as with respect lifelong learning. The papers (or some samples thereof) will also be evaluated by UGSC again with the goal of evaluating achievement of these outcomes as well as suggest possible improvements.

   2. With respect to the second group of outcomes, two different approaches have been discussed. The first involves introducing a multiple choice exam over a range of (required) terminal courses [601, 625, 655, 660, 670, 675, 680; possibly 560]; all BS-CSE majors will be required to take the test. The student's performance in the test will not affect his/her grade in any course but it will be a graduation requirement in the same manner as is the current Exit Survey; we expect that the students will take the test seriously and do their best simply out of a sense of professional responsbility.

      The test questions will be developed by instructors involved in those courses, possibly in consultation with instructors of prerequisite courses. The results will be discussed in UGSC once a year and any apparent problems will be brought to the attention of the faculty in the relevant area for further analysis and possible actions. The mechanics of how the test should be administered is not yet clear. One possibility is that they will be administered as part of each capstone course, requiring that each of these courses sacrifice one class period for this purpose. Another is to have a "program outcomes assessment night" once a quarter during which students will take the test.

      In the second approach, individual instructors of selected courses would be expected to play a key role in the assessment. First, they would map (using the syllabus database) specific learning outcomes of their respective courses to specific program outcomes. Second, they would match specific final exam questions of their course with specific learning outcomes of the course. Third, they would enter the grades that students in the course receive on each of these questions into the system (the syllabus database). In a simplified version of this approach, the second and third steps would be combined into one in which the instructor would simply provide his or her assessment of the degree to which each student achieved each learning outcome of the course. The degree of student achievement of learning outcomes of the various courses combined with the mappings of these outcomes to the program outcomes would be the basis of discussion (in UGSC) to identify possible problems and potential solutions.

   Some advantages of the first approach are that the assessment and evaluation mechanism would be very well documented and clear, it would allow for comparison across different sections of the courses in question, and it would assess the degree of achievement of the program outcomes near the time of graduation. Some advantages of the second approach are that it would be non-threatening to students, would require no time or effort on their part, and that there is no danger that there would be any mismatch between the final exam questions and the class discussion.

   After an extended discussion, and taking account of the email discussion over the last several days, the general consensus was that we should recommend to the faculty that the first approach be adopted at least for now. Assuming the faculty does approve, students in Rajiv's section of 758 have agreed to take such a multiple choice exam (probably on their last day of classes); Saday may also be able to have his 778 students take the exam. This will give us some initial ideas on how the test can be improved and we will use those ideas early next quarter to tweak the test as needed. This was one of the points made in the committee discussion, that we should look for ways to improve the validity of the test results as well as to make it as palatable to students as possible. Indeed, some interesting ideas for improvement already came up at this meeting:

   • The questions on the test should be about essential concepts, not details. Some specific examples: it would be okay to ask about the the difference between blackbox vs. whitebox testing; It would not be okay to ask what the complexity of Mergesort is, but it would be okay to give them a brief description of Mergesort and then asking for its complexity. More generally, questions that might be appropriate in a course final exam may not necessarily be appropriate for this test.

   • For each question, include "I have no idea" as one of the possible answers; a student could choose that, rather than making a random guess, when appropriate. Similarly, perhaps include a checkbox that says, "this is only a guess", as an additional piece of information that a student can flag when choosing one of the non-"I have no idea" answers. This would make the test results more useful.

   • Make the test a bit more appealing to the students by having a "pizza night" following the test; or maybe even a movie+pizza night? (In other words, once each quarter there will be a "program outcomes evaluation night" during which students will be able to take the test (they may have to sign up for it); and following the test there will be pizza or movie+pizza. When BS-CSE students file application to graduate, they can be asked to sign up for the test as well.)

   There was a question whether the test should be anonymous. The consensus here was that since having student names associated with the individual tests would allow us to perform important statistical analysis (such as those based on which section of a given course a given student attended, how long ago the student took the course, etc.) that we would not be able to do in the absence of this information, for now we should not go to anonymous tests. If a reasonable number of students seem to prefer anonymous tests, we can consider that after a quarter or two. Another question was whether students should have the option of knowing their scores in the test. The consesus seemed to be that they should, but it was not clear how easy or difficult this should be. Another suggestion was that questions could be included on the test asking for ideas on how to improve the test both from the point of view of its purpose of assessing achievement of program outcomes and from the point of view of making it more acceptable to students.

   At the faculty meeting of 11/28, we will recommend that the approach using the test for assessing outcomes in the second group and the approach using the capstone course activities as described above for the first group of outcomes be adopted. Further, to the extent possible, we will try these out this quarter, and carry out a more complete piloting/implementation in the Winter quarter.

At the meeting: Daniel, Eric, Neelam, Paolo, Raghu, Rick (Parent).

The meeting adjourned at 3:35 pm.

Next meeting: Nov. ??

1. Preparation for accreditation evaluation site visit: Preparations for the site visit are mostly complete. The schedule for the visit is nearly finalised. Our program will have two guests at the lunch on Monday: Dr. Dinesh Dhamija, Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer, TDCI, an IT firm with headquarters at the Polaris Center; people from TDCI have been heavily involved with CSE 758, one of our capstone courses. And Matt Schwaberow, a recent alum (Matt was a student rep on the UGSC last year), currently at Northrup-Grumman in Cincinnati. As announced earlier, the meeting of the BS-CSE team with students will be on Monday in DL 305 at 2:30-3:20. Messages have been sent to all BS-CSE majors about the meeting, and announcements have also been posted on student newsgroups (also at site-visite web site).

2. Proposal for a new option in Information and Computation Assurance: Given the increasing importance of security/information assurance-related considerations, David Lee and others have proposed adding an Information and Computation Assurance option to both the BS-CSE and BS-CIS programs. The proposal is that students in this option would be required to take CSE 551, 677, 678, 694K (and, in the case of the BS-CSE program, also Math 568/571); and 12 hours of which at least 3 hours had to be CSE courses; various CSE and non-CSE courses that have been "certified" by the CNSS (see the web site for the proposed Center for the Information Systems Security; click the Curriculum link) were listed as recommended courses. Also 459.51 (Perl) was recommended as the course to meet the 459.XX requirement. (Unfortunately, David Lee could not be at the meeting.)

   The committee generally liked the idea but suggested that it might be good to allow students a bit more flexibility in the required courses; i.e., instead of specifying particular courses for all four of the required courses, specifying only two or three particular courses as required and allowing students to choose the remaining one or two from a somewhat longer list of courses. And, for the remaining 12 hours, not explicitly listing any CSE courses as "recommended" since, after extensive discussions last year, we decided to get rid of such recommended lists of CSE courses. The committee suggested that CSE 601 be included among the required courses for the BS-CIS option. And, finally, that there was no strong reason to list the Perl course as the recommended 459 course for the option.

   We will continue this discussion at the meeting of Nov. 2; we hope to have a proposal for such an option for faculty consideration at the faculty meeting of Nov. 7.

   It was also suggested that outside people (i.e., non-students) may be interested in taking these courses if we can give them some kind of certificate saying that they have completed a program in Information/ Computation Assurance or something along those lines.

At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eitan, Eric, Matt, Neelam, Paolo, Peg, Shawn, Tim.

The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.

Next meeting: 11/2.

1. BS-CSE student representatives: Shawn Lee, a BS-CSE junior, and Matt Wyckhouse, a BS-CSE senior, have joined the committee as BS-CSE student representatives. Welcome!

2. Preparation for accreditation evaluation site visit: Preparations for the site visit are in full swing. The schedule for the visit is very much a work in progress. Neelam noted that some items on the schedule have been decided on: the dean will make a presentation to the entire team on Monday (10/31) at 8:00-9:00 am in the new Physics Research Building. The college will host a lunch for the entire team on Monday at 12:00-1:30 in the Faculty Club. The meeting of the BS-CSE team with students will be on Monday in DL 305 at 2:30-3:20.

   Each program has been asked to invite two of their alums or suitable industry reps (or one of each) to the lunch. Neelam, Peg, and Rajiv are working on this. Chairs of the various departments will also be at the lunch.

3. Service learning courses: The Core Committee of the College of Engineering has asked each department to consider the possibility of creating service learning courses in their respective programs. The idea is that such courses will allow students to apply their technical knowledge and skills.in a service activity of benefit to the community.

   It turns out that we already have such a course, CSE 616. This course was approved as a service learning course some time ago, based on the fact that the student projects in the course typically come from non-profit organizations in the Columbus area. On the other hand, it is not clear how active the service learning program currently is. Their web pages don't seem to have been updated in about a year. Nevertheless, the consensus in the committee was that the concept of service learning courses is a useful one and that several of our courses (in addition to 616) might qualify. For example, some of the projects in CSE 758 have a strong service learning component. The one concern was that if a given course were designated as a service learning course, wouldn't that require every student in every section of the course to be involved in projects that qualify as "service learning projects"? And would this not create somewhat of a problem?

   To address this concern, the following was proposed: create a 1-credit (or possibly 1-2 credit) course, similar to the current 693; a student in a given section of a course such as 758 who works on a project that includes a service learning component will have the option of doing additional work on the project in the following quarter where the focus will be on the service learning aspect; and if the student completes this work satisfactorily, he or she will receive an S grade for 1 (or 2) hours of 692; and this can be included as part of the student's tech elective hours. We will consider this issue again after checking with the Core Committee to make sure that this is acceptable.

4. Enrollment in the BS-CIS and BS-CSE majors: The committee briefly discussed the number of students admitted into the BS-CIS and BS-CSE majors. The data over the last several years was considered:

   Qtr      Applications       Accepted         GPA     4-qtr
           Eng  ASC  Tot    Eng  ASC  Tot     Cut-off  admits
   		       
   Au 05     4    5    9      3    3    6       2.3      143
              
   Su 05    33   22   55     31   18   49       2.3      153
   Sp 05    29   15   44     26   13   39       2.3      162
   Wi 05    41   17   58     39   15   54       2.3      165
   Au 04    14    4   18     13    3   16       2.3      158
              
   Su 04    47   14   61     45   13   58       2.5      154
   Sp 04    28   21   49     19   19   38       2.7      170
   Wi 04    43   11   54     36   10   46       2.8      191
   Au 03    10    5   15      8    4   12       2.8      197
   
   Su 03    49   33   82     44   30   74       2.8      197
   Sp 03    39   29   68     32   27   59       3.0      163
   Wi 03    36   23   59     32   20   52       3.1      149
   Au 02     8    6   14      8    4   12       3.2      155
   
   Su 02    26   29   55     19   21   40       3.2      174
   Sp 02    34   24   58     28   17   45       3.2      220
   Wi 02    48   38   86     38   20   58       3.0      233
   Au 01    21   12   33     20   10   30       3.0      229
   
   Su 01    56   42   98     50   37   87       3.0      228
   Sp 01    45   30   75     35   23   58       3.0      235
   Wi 01    46   29   75     32   22   54       3.0      230
   Au 00    12   25   37      8   22   30       3.0      235
              
   Su 00    47   75  122     36   58   94       2.8      231
   Sp 00    40   38   78     31   22   53       2.8      231
   Wi 00    50   29   79     39   20   59       2.8      257
   Au 99    10   17   27     10   16   26       2.8      272
              
   Su 99    59   63  122     47   52   99       2.4      276
   Sp 99    45   50   95     38   42   80       2.4      251
   Wi 99    52   36   88     45   29   74       2.4      235
   Au 98    17   19   36     13   17   30       2.4      252
   

   Although the numbers are rather discouraging and don't seem to show any signs of recovery, it was not clear what action, if any, we should take. One possibility would be to remove the current requirement of 2.3 for admission to the major (so any student who completes all the course requirements and is in good standing, i.e., has a GPA of 2.0 or above) would be eligible for admission to the major. We decided to postpone action on this until our new chair is in place early next quarter.

At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eitan, Eric, Matt, Neelam, Paolo, Peg, Raghu, Shawn, Tim.

The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.

Next meeting: 10/26.

1. New UG brochure: The new undergraduate brochures are ready (available on-line from the "Undergrad Programs" link in the department's home page). The main changes are the ones that were approved last year:
   • Addition of Communication 321 to the BS-CSE program.
   • Addition of Econ 200/201 to the BS-CSE program.
   • Introduction of the new individualized option in both the BS-CSE and BS-CIS programs.
   • Elimination of the Scientific Computing option from the BS-CIS program.
   • Restructuring of the options replacing the exhaustive lists of CSE courses that may be used for the elective hours with a small list of criteria that these courses must meet.

2. Plans for the quarter: The main item for the quarter is the upcoming site-visit for the accreditation evaluation of the BS-CSE program, scheduled for Oct. 30 - Nov. 1. The evaluation team consists of Dr. William Tuel as the chair of the CAC team, Dr. James Aylor as the CAC program evaluator, and Dr. Tai-Chung Tuan as the EAC program evaluator. (Dr. Wayne Neu is the chair of the entire EAC team but we will primarily be interacting with Drs. Tuel, Aylor, and Tuan.)

   A discussion of the evaluation is planned for the faculty meeting of October 17.

3. Advising workshop for new and recent faculty: We typically have the annual advising workshop for new and recent faculty in the fall quarter. Peg and Neelam will work with these faculty to try to find a suitable time for this during the week of October 10. (More senior faculty would also be welcome at the workshop; but the scheduling will be done based on the availability of the new/recent faculty.)

4. Agenda items continuing from last year: We discussed the status of the various items we were working on last year. We will be continuing work on some of those items, see agenda items.

At the meeting: Bruce, Daniel, David, Dong, Eitan, Eric, Neelam, Paolo, Peg, Tim.

The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.

Next meeting: 10/12.