We reviewed preparations for the upcoming accreditation evaluation of the CSE program (and ONLY the CSE program).
Details: The ABET/CSAB evaluation team's on-site visit is set for November 7, 8, 9, with the main day of the visit being the 8th. The team will meet with faculty, students, and administrators. Neelam is working on the schedule for the visit and during the next few days will contact several indvidual faculty to arrange meeting times. Any individual faculty member who wishes to meet with the team may send mail to neelam@cis.
The meeting of the team with the students will be on the afternoon of the 8th (most likely time: 4:00 pm - 5:15 pm). Students will be informed of/invited to the meeting by postings on newsgroups and via individual e-mail messages.
The team will also meet with Peg Steele, and Tom Mlay; as well as other people (such as Mary Joe Arnold of the library?) on campus.
The evaluation team is a joint one with representatives from the Accreditation Board for Engineering Technology (ABET) and from the Computer Science Accreditation Board (CSAB). The ABET representative is:
Preparations for the site-visit (which will include examination of course materials that were collected previously) are progressing reasonably well. Any important developments will be announced on the newsgroups.
The meeting adjourned at 4:35 pm.
Next meeting: Oct. 12.
1. We reviewed preparations for the upcoming accreditation evaluation of the CSE program. The evaluation team's schedule for November 8 (the main day of the visit) is still evolving; the schedule should be finalized within the next few days.
2. We briefly listed the main agenda items for this year: Review enrollment management (Winter '00); Evaluate the exit-surveys, including whether to require it of CIS majors; Revisit the criteria for capstone design courses.
3. Doug presented a proposal for a revision of the CSE curriculum following the `new core' approved recently by the College. (Information about the new core is available at http://www.eng.ohio-state.edu/~core_faq/index.html.)
Briefly, the proposal was as follows:
The main changes from the existing requirements are as follows:
In terms of number of hours, the net result is a reduction of about 12 hours in this portion of the program. It was proposed that 8 of those hours be added to the technical electives, and the remaining 4 be dropped from the program.
There was some discussion about the appropriateness of requiring Biol 101; perhaps it could be left to the students to choose one of Phys 133, Chem 125, or Biol 101. There was also some discussion about ISE 504; it was generally agreed that our students would be well served by business/finance type courses (that is what our exit surveys as well as the alum/supervisor surveys have told us), but it was not clear that ISE 504 was the best course for that job, nor was it clear that there was any other course that would be any better. Doug also noted, in an e-mail message after the meeting, that it may be appropriate to continue to require one of the engineering science courses (EM 220, ME 500, MSE 405).
We will have some further discussion on this topic at our next meeting and present to the faculty a proposal along the above lines for its approval. It will then go to CCAA and then to the University OAA for final approval. Other engineering programs are expected to propose similar changes in their programs and the entire set of changes in all engineering programs including CSE, is expected to be sent to the OAA as one package (some time in Winter?).
The meeting adjourned at 4:40 pm.
Next meeting: TBA.
1. Neelam briefed the committee on preparations for the accreditation site-visit (November 7, 8, 9). The schedule for November 8, the main day of the visit, is still a bit fluid but is expected to be finalized in a few days.
2. We discussed changes to the CSE curriculum. The proposed changes are as follows:
The main issues/concerns that were raised during the discussion were:
a. One course reduction in the science requirement, and two course reduction in the general engineering courses (although this is partially offset by the replacement of EG 166 by IE 1 and IE 2): Here the general consensus was that even with these reductions, the program has a strong science and general engineering component (and more than meets accreditation requirements for these components).
b. No course on biology is required although students may opt to (and are recommended to) take one: Here the general consensus was that engineering is still mostly based on physical sciences; perhaps in five years we will revisit this issue and replace the clause `One of Phys 133, Chem 125, Bio 113' by just `Bio 113'.
c. The addition of Math 566 was generally considered a good thing but there was some concern that courses such as CIS 680 cannot be redesigned to take advantage of Math 566 because 566 would still not be required in the CIS program: The consensus here was that the question of adding Math 566 to the CIS program will have to be considered later; if and when we add Math 566 to the CIS program, that will be the time to consider having that course as a prerequisite for CIS 680.
d. Our surveys have suggested that students need additional training in business practices but we are not adding any courses that would serve this purpose: Here the committee felt that there was no suitable business course that could reasonably be added to the program. Perhaps the college as a whole should work with the College of Business to develop a rigorous two quarter sequence `Business practices for engineers' or something along those lines; if that happens, we should consider replacing ISE 504 by such a sequence (in which case we would take back the three hours being added to the technical electives portion, so the total number of hours for the program would still be 196).
The overall consensus in the committee following the discussion was that the proposed changes to the CSE program are appropriate and should be presented to the faculty for its approval.
The meeting adjourned at 4:35 pm.
Next meeting: To be announced.
Neelam reported on the state of preparations for the accreditation visit. Course materials from all the required courses, all the capstone design courses, and many of the popular electives have been collected and filed to be easily accessible to the evaluators when they review the materials.
For each course, the collected materials include course syllabi, course notes and other student handouts; copies of assignments, programming projects, and exams; and samples of average, above average, and below average student work for each assignment, project and exam. Also for each course, a copy of the text book has been collected. All the course materials will be on display in DL 298 which is also the room reserved for use by the CSE evaluators during their visit. (DL 263 has been reserved by the college for use by the entire ABET team.) Materials from EE courses that our students take will be displayed in the EE conference room (DL 259).
The schedule for one-on-one interviews of several of our faculty with the CSE evaluators has been finalized. All interviews are scheduled for Monday, November 8. Each interview is expected to last about 20 minutes; Neelam is in touch with each of the faculty who is scheduled to meet with an evaluator to ensure that everything runs smoothly without any time being wasted. (This is a critical concern given how tight the evaluators' schedules are.) The meeting of CSE students with the evaluators will be in DL 480 starting at 4:00 p.m. on November 8. Last minute changes to the schedule are possible depending upon what the visiting team wants to focus on. Faculty are requested to be as flexible as possible if such changes are necessary.
The exit interviews, at which the evaluators will present their preliminary comments on the program, are scheduled at 11:00-11:30 for CSAB, and 11:30-12:00 for ABET, on November 9. A final exit interview for all the programs in the college is scheduled at 2:00 pm on the 9th. The schedule for 8:00-11:00 on November 9 will be determined either late on November 8, or possibly even early on November 9; the evaluators may want to have follow-up visits with some faculty, or possibly visit supporting departments such as math or physics, etc.
The meeting adjourned at 4:35 pm.
Next meeting: To be announced.
I. Neelam reported on the feedback that we received from the accreditation evaluators at the exit interviews. Overall, the evaluators were pleased with our CSE program. ABET did not identify any deficiencies, concerns, or weaknesses. CSAB did not identify any deficiencies, but noted the following issues:
In his 14-day response, Stu focussed on two things:
The official preliminary report from ABET and CSAB should arrive some time in February.
II. We briefly discussed an alternative exit survey (for the CSE program) that the College has recommended to us. The one big advantage this new survey offers is the possibility of comparative data with peer schools. But it has some disadvantages too -- among other things, it is substantially longer than the current survey; will not be on-line as far as we are concerned, so processing the results will be somewhat more difficult; and, most important, the questions are not directly related to our program objectives and outcomes. We have asked graduating students to volunteer to complete the survey and will decide in a few months whether to switch to this survey or stay with our current survey.
III. We identified the main agenda items for the winter quarter:
The meeting adjourned at 4:30 pm.
Next meeting: Winter quarter.
I. CIS 489: CIS 489 is a 1 or 2 credit class that students register for when they are on internship or co-op position. This is done to enable them to keep their status as being currently enrolled in the university. The only requirement for satisfactory completion is to turn in a completed form at the end of the quarter, answering a few simple questions about their internship/co-op.
Since the work that students actually do in these positions vary substantially from one position to the next, UGSC concluded that it is NOT appropriate for students to use CIS 489 as a technical elective. This has indeed been our policy for a while (the departmental course brochure says `these hours may only be used as free electives'). Faculty are reminded not to permit students to use CIS 489 as a tech elective. (Recently some students had been allowed by their advisors to do this.)
This raised the general question of ensuring that (especially new) faculty are aware of important advising issues. Possibilities such as creating web pages that contain important information, as well as perhaps holding orientation sesssions for new faculty were discussed. No decisions were made but we will continue to work toward finding and implementing ways of addressing this.
II. Mechanism for keeping tech elective options updated: The question was how to ensure that the list of recommended courses for the various tech elective options (such as Software Systems, or Software/Hardware etc.) remains current. Each option has a designated option coordinator; it was decided that each spring quarter UGSC will work with these coordinators to ensure that these lists are examined and any needed changes are proposed (depending on any new courses or revisions to courses that the Curriculum Committee might have approved, and based on input from appropriate faculty) and discussed by UGSC.
III. GPA for admission to the major: This was the start of our annual discussion on what the gpa requirement for admission to the (CIS and CSE) major should be. It was increased (from 2.0) to 2.4 effective Summer '98, and to 2.8 effective Summer '99. We looked at various numbers (such as number of pre-majors, number of admits to the major etc.) to see whether we need to increase the gpa requirement further. One problem is that we have relatively limited data to work with because the 2.8 gpa requirement has been in effect for a relatively short period of time. Nevertheless, any decision to increase the requirement has to be made now (because of budget cycles, the need to give students sufficient notice of any changes, etc.).
The discussion was inconclusive (partly because of the limited data). We will try to finish the discussion at the next meeting; we will also try to get some additional data (such as the number of freshmen this year who have indicated CIS/CSE as their initial choice of major) to help us make an informed decision that we can take to faculty for its approval.
The meeting adjourned at 3:35 pm.
Next meeting: Feb. 2, '00.
I. GPA for admission to the major: Last summer, in response to rapidly increasing number of students being admitted to the major, we increased the GPA requirement for admission to the CSE and CIS majors to 2.8 (from 2.4). The hope was that this would bring down the number of students admitted to the majors over a four quarter period to something like 190. In fact, this has not happened. Based on the numbers for the last two quarters, it looks like the four-quarter total of the number of admits to the majors will be around 230.
The number of admits to the majors over a four quarter period that we should aim for, given our current faculty size, is 185; this number is arrived at on the basis of a university-approved formula. Given the current demand for the majors, our calculations show that achieving this target would require us to raise the gpa for admission to the major to 3.0 and it was proposed that we do so. In the discussion that followed, the main argument against such a move was that we should be using this opportunity (the high demand for the majors) to persuade the higher administration to allow us to dramatically increase our faculty size and provide the resources to do so, rather than closing out students from the major; the flip side of this is that if we don't raise the gpa requirement to 3.0 and our faculty size does not go up, we will be in really serious trouble.
After considerable discussion, the committee approved the proposal. It will be presented to the faculty at its meeting of Feb. 7, for its approval. Assuming the faculty does grant its approval, the new requirement will go into effect starting Summer 2000.
II. Changes in Database courses and requirements for the CIS/CSE majors: Doug presented changes being proposed to database courses and corresponding changes in the courses that will be required and courses that will be electives. The involved courses are CIS 516, 570, 670. CIS 516 is `Information Systems Analysis and Design', CIS 570 is `File Design and Analysis', and CIS 670 is `Introduction to Database Systems'. Currently, CIS 570 is required for all students; and CIS 516, 670 are required for students in the Information Systems option, and electives for everyone else.
The reason for the proposed changes are mainly that details of file systems are no longer appropriate for all students, but an understanding of databases (from the user's point of view) is. Hence the changes being proposed are:
After a brief discussion, the committee approved of the following changes:
The meeting adjourned at 3:35 pm.
Next meeting: Feb. 16, '00.
I. CIS 560: This item was put on the agenda because of concerns from some people who teach the course that it is much too demanding; since the course plays such a central role in the undergrad programs, it was felt it would be useful for UGSC to have a preliminary discussion to see if changes are warranted.
As expected, a range of opinions was expressed. Among others:
II. Adding Math 366 to the Information Systems track of the CIS Minor: There are two tracks in the CIS minor; the algorithms track and the Information Systems (IS) track. 366 is required in the algorithms track but not in the IS track. This is a problem because CIS 570 which has 366 as a pre-req is required for the IS track. Shortly we will replace 570 with 670 as the required course at which point the problem will be even more acute because Math 366 is an even more important pre-req for 670 than for 570. The obvious solution is to add Math 366 as a required course to the IS track.
After a short discussion, the committee approved the proposal to add Math 366 to the IS track; the other requirements for the IS track minor will remain unchanged. With this change, the minimum number of hours in the two tracks will become equal to each other. This change will go into effect starting Autumn '00.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: March 8, '00.
I. Tech Electives: The question was whether our majors should be allowed/encouraged to use the new Software Engineering-related courses being developed/piloted by Furrukh Khan (of EE) and Bruce, as tech electives. One of these courses, 694J (to be piloted in Fall '00), will essentially be a 3-credit course on Java, so it would not be appropriate for our majors. But the remaining courses will address important ideas in OO design and analysis at a fairly advanced level, hence these are appropriate as tech electives for our majors, especially for students in the software systems option; this applies particularly to CSE majors since the examples/case studies in these courses are likely to be from engineering applications; CIS majors with strong interests in scientific computing should also find the courses interesting. Faculty are requested to keep this in mind when advising their advisees in the choice of tech electives.
II. Objectives, assessments etc.: As part of our preparation for accreditation evaluation, we put into effect some new processes these being course group reports, exit surveys, and alumni surveys. The course group reports are intended to deal with ALL of our courses, not just those taken by the CSE majors; but the surveys are specific to the CSE program. It was felt that it might be useful to extend at least the exit survey to also apply to the CIS program. (Extending the alumni survey to apply to the CIS program would be more complicated since that would require the help of ASC to keep track of alumni, send out the surveys, collect the responses and return them to us.)
Implementing an on-line exit survey for the CIS program along the lines of the CSE exit survey, should not be difficult. But the CSE exit survey is based on the program's published objectives and outcomes; so to do this for the CIS program, we will need to establish objectives and outcomes for that program. We will discuss this further and if it seems reasonable, will propose a set of objectives and outcomes for the CIS program for approval by faculty. (It was also noted that it may be useful to define the objectives of the program even if we decide not to implement an exit survey.)
III. Substitutions with respect to the new (engineering) core: The question here was whether current CSE majors would be allowed to follow the new engineering core (once it is approved). If a student is willing to complete all of the requirements of the new core, he or she will indeed have that option. The more difficult question is about a student who might have completed part of the current core; this applies in particular to EG 166 in the current core versus Eng 181, 182 in the new core. This seemed to be a question that should be answered by the CCAA or its core subcommittee rather than UGSC, and we hope CCAA will take it up; one possible answer to this particular question would be that EG 166 plus another engineering course (such as ME 500) would seem a reasonable substitute for Eng 181, 182. In addition, individual students in special situations can, of course, petition the committee for approval of particular substitutions that they can show meet the goals of the new core.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next meeting: Spring quarter.
Jacob, a new student rep on the committee, was introduced. (So now we have two student reps: Jacob, and Ron Luman.)
I. The only agenda item was a discussion of the preliminary statements from ABET and CSAB.
The ABET statement did not identify any deficiencies or concerns. The statement said "The program has an outstanding faculty committed to the offering of an excellent undergraduate program and to the education of their students ... The caliber of the students is excellent." The statement also said "The self-study was well prepared. Materials available for the program were well presented and clearly organized ... helped to make the evaluation smooth and efficient." In summary, ABET seemed very pleased with the program and felt that the program meets the ABET criteria in a very satisfactory manner.
The CSAB statement also did not identify any deficiencies but did express three concerns (which the team had also expressed to us during the exit interviews):
1. Frequency of course offerings: Stu had provided some numbers indicating how few of the majors (who follow proper registration procedures) are in fact closed out of required or elective courses. The CSAB statement does refer to these numbers but also notes that the feedback the team got from the students suggests a more serious problem than is indicated by the numbers.
In our discussion in UGSC, it was pointed out that even if "only" 4% of the registration requests are not satisfied (this is what the numbers supplied by Stu indicate), this may in fact be a big problem: if a student takes 4 or 5 classes in a given quarter (as many majors do), there is, with a 4% closeout rate, a 15 to 20% chance of the student being closed out of at least one course. Moreover, since nearly all courses run at almost full capacity, students do not have the luxury of changing their mind about a given course if they discover, once the quarter begins, that it is not what they thought it would be, since all the other courses would already be full. The obvious solution is to offer more sections of all courses, although it is not clear HOW to do this given our tight faculty situation.
2. Currency of lecturers: Stu had provided evidence that the department supports full-time lecturers to attend conferences and that many of them do so. The currency of outside lecturers was much less clear, and it is possible this is what the team was concerned about. Stu has now put into place a process that requires outside lecturers to provide updated vitas regularly so that we can be sure that our outside lecturers do remain current in the discipline.
But again the long-term solution has to be to increase the strength of the regular faculty. The committee strongly felt that we should use the concerns expressed by the CSAB team to argue for more resources from the College/University.
3. Development of oral communication skills: The CSAB criterion requires that "oral communication skills must be developed and applied in the program [emphasis added]". In other words, it is not sufficient, to meet this criterion, for students to make one oral presentation in one course since this does not ensure that students' oral skills are developed before being applied. It was (presumably) for this reason that the team felt that, although students were exercising their oral skills in CIS 601, this by itself did not quite do what the criterion asks for.
By lucky coincidence, the Journalism and Communications people are currently in the process of revising one of their courses (currently numbered JCom 305) to include a substantial component dealing with developing oral skills of students. If the proposed changes are approved, this course will also be usable as a second writing course (and will be numbered JCom 367).
After some discussion, we felt that a good solution to CSAB's concern would be to require our CSE majors to take JCom 367 (assuming it is approved) as the second writing course. This will ensure that oral communication skills are developed before being applied in CIS 601, thereby meeting the intent of the criterion; and there will be no increase in the number of hours in the program. There is one further consideration. Journalism will not guarantee that our students will get priority in enrolling in this course (in fact, since this course will be a required one for their students and given the tight situation they are in, they can probably guarantee that our students will NOT get in!). Neelam has had some preliminary discussions with the Journalism people about this and it looks like they might be willing to give our CSE majors priority (perhaps using a mechanism like our M section) if we can provide them with support for one GTA each quarter for the course.
We will discuss this issue further in our next meeting (and with Stu, given the resource issues) before deciding whether to recommend it (the proposal that CSE majors be required to take JCom 367 as their second writing course) to faculty for approval.
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
Next meeting: To be announced.
I. There was only one agenda item: Possible ways of addressing the concern with respect to oral communication that CSAB expressed in its preliminary statement.
Specifically, the discussion focussed on requiring our CSE majors to take JCom 367 as their second writing course. (Neelam reported that the course has indeed been approved by the second writing course committee.)
There was general consensus that, from an academic point of view, this would be the right thing to do. Indeed, it was suggested that from this point of view, we should consider requiring this course, as well as CIS 601, for CIS majors as well. But there was no obvious answer to the problem of resources. One other concern was raised: currently many students use the second writing course to also meet the social diversity requirement of the curriculum. If JCom 367 becomes the required second writing course, the social diversity requirement will have to be met elsewhere, perhaps in the 7 hours of "additional GECs", or the 9 hours of "Literature/Visual & Performing Arts", or the 9 hours of "Social Science" that all CSE majors are required to take.
We concluded, after prolonged discussion, that we should recommend to the faculty that:
The meeting adjourned at 11:30 am.
Next meeting: To be announced.
Additional note: The faculty at its meeting later on the same day
(4/24), considered our recommendations; it approved requiring CSE
majors to take JCom 367 as the second writing course; and expressed
general agreement with the other two recommendations listed above.
I. There was only one agenda item: Discussion of the results of our surveys (for the CSE program) for this year. The survey results are available online.
In summary, the results were similar to last year's.
Some points that came up during the discussion:
Next fall, we will make any needed changes in the statement of objectives and outcomes; in doing this, we will take account of the feedback we have got from these surveys. Of course, we will get feedback from our various constituents (students, faculty, advisory board, etc.) on any proposed revision to our objectives and outcomes before asking for faculty approval.
We also briefly discussed the statement that has been sent to CSAB in response to their preliminary statement. The statement addressed all three of CSAB's concerns:
The meeting adjourned at 11:35 am.
Next meeting: Next fall (unless unforeseen circumstances require
us to have another meeting this year).