March 26, 1996

CEFO Minutes

(J. Carter, Secretary)

M I N U T E S

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FACULTY ORGANIZATION Tuesday, March 26, 1996 @ 12:30 PM CARC Building – Room 101
Dr. Rick Lejk opened the meeting at 12:37 PM. The following individuals signed the attendance sheet:

COLLEGE OF ENGR: R. Snyder, S. Middleton. COMPUTER SCIENCE: M. Allen, K. Chen, S. Chen, G. Epstein, R. Lejk, T. Mostafavi, J. Quinn, H. Razavi, J. Robinson, R. Shaw, K. Subramanian, B. Wilkinson, J. Xiao. ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY: B. Barry, J. Bowen, E. Braun, N. Byars, J. Carter, C. Liu, C. Mobley, R. Priebe, W. Shelnutt, P. Wang. CIVIL ENGINEERING: J. Evett, J. Graham, R. Janardhanam, M. Kane, D. Young. MECHANICAL ENGR & ENGR SCIENCE: R. Coger, R. Dubler, H. Estrada, Y. Hari, J. Hill, R. Johnson, R. Kim, G. Mohanty, J. Raja, Stuart Smith, R. Wilhelm. ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING: K. Daneshvar, A. Edwards, E. Giess, R. Greene, M. Hasan, Y. Kakad, F. Kiamilev, M. Miri, D. Phillips, R. Tsu, D. Zhou. CAMERON A.R.C.: T. Rufty. ENGR RES & IND DEVMT: J. Roblin. COMPUTING SVCS & LABS: J. Grant, D. Rowe. GUESTS: None. Total documented attendance: 55 (43 of 78 Voting members attended; a quorum of 40 was attained.)

I. Minutes of the February, 1996 meeting. The minutes of the 02/27/96 meeting were approved as submitted.

II. Visitors, David Smith. As part of the faculty and student exchange program with Bethune IUT, France, we have two faculty members from that institution who will be spending a couple of weeks with us. David introduced professors Michael Couvreur (Electrical Engineering) and Marc Evrard (English.) All are encouraged to meet them.

III. College Elections, Rick Lejk. Elections will be held soon in order to fill positions in faculty governance including CEFO president elect, secretary, and parliamentarian. Also, positions on several college committees will be filled. Nominations may be submitted to Rick Lejk. A nomination ballot will also be provided to the college faculty before the next regular meeting so that elections can be held. Also, department chairs have some positions to report to the college.

IV. Computing Facilities Committee (CFC), Taghi Mostafavi. The CFC has adopted a process plan, including its vision, goals, and expectation for the next two years. Some end of year money is available, and proposals for computing facilities requests are to be submitted to the committee. The process documentation and proposal guidelines were distributed to the faculty. The deadline for proposals is April 1. However, following some discussion from the floor, the committee agreed to meet immediately following the meeting to consider extending the deadline. Secretary’s note: the deadline was extended to April 15. A motion was made to accept the CFC plan. Passed.

V. CEAPCC Proposals, H. Estrada. Proposals from Engineering Technology, Computer Science, and Civil Engineering were considered for action. Proposals from Electrical Engineering will be considered in the next CEFO meeting. The following action was taken (only graduate faculty voted on graduate course proposals):

Engineering Technology. Proposal to replace a major elective requirement in the Civil Engineering Technology program with INET 3233, Engineering Economics (3). Some minor changes to wording still need to be made. Motion passed, unopposed.

Computer Science. Addition of CSCI 6148, Advanced Object-Oriented Systems (3G). Motion passed, unopposed.

Motion passed, unopposed.

Civil Engineering. Proposals for several additional courses, including:
CEGR 6144 Environmental Biotechnology (3G)
CEGR 6146 Advanced Groundwater Analysis (3G)
CEGR 6147 Stormwater Modeling (3G)
CEGR 6148 Water Conservation (3G)
CEGR 6172 Air Dispersion Modeling (3G)
CEGR 6126 Analysis of Plates and Shells (3G)
CEGR 6128 Structural Optimization (3G)
Catalog change for CEGR 6141, name changed to “Water Quality Modeling.

VI. Dean’s report, Dr. Snyder.

CFC. Dean Snyder stated that he was “pleased and encouraged” with the work done by the Computing Facilities Committee. They have presented a real attempt to develop a platform that is to be functionally driven rather than technology driven.

Tech Expo. The college has a double booth at Tech Expo ’96 at the Charlotte Convention Center. Its purpose is to showcase undergraduate research and work. Anyone who has relevant student work to showcase should contact Bob Coleman.

Proposals. Proposals for ENGR1201 and ENGR1202, the international option, and the restructuring of the calculus sequence passed the University Curriculum Committee. Those changes are as good as done.

Distance Learning. The colleges of engineering in the State of North Carolina are under a directive from the board of governors and the chancellors to develop a comprehensive plan for delivering engineering education to all the State by any appropriate means. This includes

(1) Master’s level education on off-campus basis. It is still necessary to develop the method of delivery.

(2) Making the 2+2 concept more viable and effective. This involves the development of matriculation agreements. This will involve changes including the offering of some of our courses at the community colleges, and providing for a smooth transfer.

(3) To provide courses at the Sophomore and Junior level which make the transfer more effective. The goal is to make it as easy to complete the transfer program as it is to complete a resident program.

(4) The delivery of short courses and professional seminars.

(1) He is concerned with the confidentiality of promotion and tenure deliberations within the college. He may make some formal recommendations for guidelines on the subject.

(2) It is getting tougher to get outside references because those outside evaluations must be made available to the candidate. Often outside referees decline because of this. He may suggest ways to continue the exercise, and to do so in a more workable manner.

(3) He is concerned about consistency between annual reviews, (including feedback, acknowledgment of receipt of feedback, and formal rebuttal), and the decisions made by the promotion and tenure committees, department chairs and deans. There is also a wide variation between the departments, colleges, and individuals. Individuals submit a wide range of documentation. Chair persons submit from detailed to general recommendations. Some are thorough, some are superficial. All of these documents are part of the candidate’s package and their content, or lack of it, often speak loudly. Problems arise in cases where every year the same deficiencies are noted, but are then ignored when promotion and tenure decisions are made. Sometimes a “you’re doing a good job” is communicated, then a negative decision results. These situations raise flags at the Dean’s and Vice Chancellor’s levels. The annual evaluations need to be taken seriously. Feedback from the candidate must be considered. Together these provide an important component of the promotion and tenure process.

(4) Student teaching evaluations have become a big sore point on campus. They are the only significant instrument to judge performance as a teacher. It is to be used as constructive feedback. The college has been dodging this problem by considering these evaluations as feedback. Students cannot see the results. As an assessment tool, there are many factors involved which question their correlation to effective learning. It is a questionable instrument to be used as a total instrument. When reviews are good, we shout, “this is an excellent teacher.” When they are bad, we say that student evaluations are ineffective and unimportant. We try to use them both ways. The Vice Chancellor has called us on the carpet for that. We must decide one way or the other. Either use them for feedback, or for assessment. We need to put integrity into the process, and develop some method for documentation of effective teaching. We need to decide the role of student evaluations. We need to find a way to assess the effectiveness of teaching in the classroom.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:52 PM.

Submit corrections/additions here: ( jcarter@uncc.edu)