CSE Undergraduate Studies Committee
Minutes of Meetings (2011-'12)

Winter:	(Meetings on Fridays at 8:30am-9:30 am in DL 698.) March 9; Feb 3; Jan 27;
Fall:	(Meetings on Thursdays at 10:30am-11:30 am in DL 698.) Nov. 10; First few meetings;

03/09/'12

1. Linear algebra course:
2. POCAT results:
3. Undergrad forum: 2. Report on Annual Undergrad Forum (see: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~neelam/abet/ugforumfeb12.html
4. ABET evaluation results (draft report):

The meeting was adjourned at ???

Next meeting: ??

02/03/'12

1. Discrete math/logic course: ... to be written <-- decided on 3345; faculty approved it; math dept. has assured us that sections will remain small; we will need to evaluate it -->
2. Transition policy for BA students: ... to be written
3. POCAT: ... to be written

The meeting was adjourned at 9:30

Next meeting: ??

01/27/'12

1. Annual Undergrad Forum: We decided to hold the forum on Thursday, Feb. 9 at 5:30. Place to be decided.
2. Enrollment management: Neelam mentioned that the ASC has approved/accepted our plan to require students to have 2.5 GPA for admission to the major starting with students who are admitted in Sp '13.
3. Admission to major: The question here is the following: when deciding admission to the major, how do we deal with students who repeat a course? Are all grades in the course used in the calculation or only the most recent ones? After some discussion, we decided on the following policy:
   • with respect to the requirement that students must have a C- or better in CSE courses that count toward the major, we will use the most recent grades;
   • with respect to the overall GPA requirement, we will use whatever approach OSU uses in computing GPA (which currently counts all grades in repeated courses).
4. CSE 675 vs. ECE 2000 for CIS majors: The question here is: if a student completes CSE 675.02 (architecture) before the transition, should we require him/her to take ECE 2000 after the transition? Under quarters, students are required to take CSE 675.02 and may take CSE 677 (networking) as an elective. Under semesters, they will be required to take ECE 2000 and to take one of CSE 3421 (arch.)/CSE 3461 (networking), this pair being one of the pick-list pairs; and may take the other one as an elective. After some discussion, we decided on the following policy:
   • if a student has completed CSE 675.02, he/she may use it to meet the architecture/networking pick-list requirement, in which case the student will have to take ECE 2000;
   • or the student may use it to meet the ECE 2000 requirement, in which case he/she will have to take CSE 3461 (or CSE 677) to meet the pick-list requirement.
   In other words, CSE 675.02 may be counted toward either the ECE 2000 requirement or the architecture/networking pick-list requirement but not both.
5. Math 2566/3345: Under quarters, all our majors are required to take the following "discrete math/theory-oriented" courses: Math 366, 566; and CSE 625, 680. Under semesters, they will be required to take CSE 2321, 2331 (Foundations I, II); and a discrete math course. The question concerns the discrete math course and what its content (as well as what the contents of the foundations courses) should be. Math 345, Foundations of Higher Mathemtics, to be converted to Math 3345, is a course on logic taken by most math majors; 3345 is a possibility as the discrete math course for our students. The following points were noted:
   • Several sections of Math 366 (and 566), in the last year or so, have been extremely large (60+, in some cases over 65 students), whereas Math 345 sections are capped at 30.
   • "Separate and equal" never works; in other words, the only way to ensure that the Math Dept. treats the course taken by our students seriously is to make sure that math majors take the same course. Indeed, this is already clear from the difference in class sizes between Math 366 and 345 reported above.
   • On the other hand, if our students take the course intended for math majors, we will not have much say in what the course will contain. For instance, the examples that will be used in Math 3345 will be from such domains as real analysis, not CS-related domains, whereas we should be able to determine the detailed content of Math 2566 (a course intended mainly for our majors).
   • Michael Schoenberg, who has taken both Math 366 and 3345, felt that for CS students, the former is more valuable.
   • It is not clear where formal languages/automata theory (currently the topic of CSE 625) is going to appear in Foundations I/II/discrete math.
   There were strong opinions in favor of both possibilities: on the one hand have our students take Math 3345 and, on the other, design a course, Math 2566, to be taken only by our students. We will continue the discussion at the next meeting (2/3).

The meeting was adjourned at 9:30

Next meeting: Feb. 3, '12.

11/10/'11

1. Credit for Systems I: The closest quarter equivalent of the Systems I course to be taught under semesters is (CSE 360 + CSE 459.21). The question was, what do we do about students who complete CSE 360 before the switch to semesters but do not complete 459.21? Including, in particular, students who complete a different 459 before the switch? Gagan noted that it would not be a good idea to treat the other 459's as equivalent to 459.21 for this purpose because when students take Systems II, they would be expected to have reasonable facility with pointers which Systems I is expected to provide. After some discussion, we decided on the following approach:
   • Encourage students who are planning to take CSE 360 in Winter '12 or Spring '12 to also complete 459.21 (in Winter or Sp '12); offer additional sections of 459.21 to meet the demand from such students.
   • Offer CSE 2193 (1 hr) in Su '12 to cover the same material as in 459.21 for students who complete 360 in Wi/Sp but are not able to take 459.21 in Wi/Sp; and treat it as equivalent to 459.21 for this purpose.
   • Students who miss both the 459.21 and the 2193 will have to take the 2-credit CSE 2451 (in addition to completing CSE 360) to get credit for Systems I. The additional hour will be counted towards their tech electives.
   • Students who complete CSE 660 before the transition will get credit for Systems I and II no matter which 459 they have completed.
   • The Advising Office will advise students about this to ensure that the number of students who complete CSE 360 (but not 660) before the transition and who do not complete 459.21 or 2193 (in Su '12) is as low as possible.
2. Special Action Probation (SAP) policy (for BS-CSE): The current SAP policy says that a student whose MPHR (major point hour ratio) falls below 2.0 will be put on probation. In computing MPHR, only grades in CSE courses that can be included in the major are counted. Grades in other courses, for example, ECE courses, are *not* included even if those courses were used to substitute for specific CSE courses. The question is what we should do under semesters. (We have to send our intended policy to the college fairly soon.) The possibilities and arguments in favor of each are the following:
   1. For counting *only* CSE courses: We (presumably) have more or less uniform grading standards in our courses; including grades from non-CSE courses in computing the MPHR will mean comparing the proverbial apples and oranges.
   2. For counting CSE courses plus those used to substitute for CSE courses: There is no strong reason to think that grades in courses such as (the replacement for) ECE 265 follow a substantially different standard from that in CSE courses. If we don't include those grades, we won't be comparing students fairly: for some students (who take our Systems I course), we will be using their grade in that course in evaluating them; for others (who take the equivalent course in ECE), we won't be using their grade in that course. That doesn't seem reasonable.
   3. For counting CSE courses plus those used to substitue for CSE courses plus courses such as ECE 2000 and Math 2566 (which we think of as key computing courses): This is a continuation of the argument under (2). If these courses cover key computing topics, it makes sense to include grades in them to decide how well the student is doing in CSE, and hence in making SAP decisions.
   Electronic voting indicated a slight preference for (2). We will decide at the meeting of 11/17.

The meeting was adjourned at 11:30

Next meeting: Nov. 17

Various Thursdays in Sept., Oct