October 1, 1996

CEFO Minutes

(J. Carter, Secretary)

M I N U T E S

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FACULTY ORGANIZATION Tuesday, Oct 1, 1996 @ 12:30 PM Cameron Applied Research Center – Room 101
CEFO President, Dr. Art Edwards opened the meeting at 12:34 PM. The following individuals signed the attendance sheet:

COLLEGE OF ENGR: R. Snyder, S. Middleton, N. Schul, P. Tolley
CAMERON A.R.C.: T. Rufty.
COMPUTER SCIENCE: M. Allen, B. Chu, R. Lejk, T. Mostafavi, J. Quinn, H. Razavi, J. Robinson, K. Subtramanian, W. Tolone, J. Xaio.
E.R.I.D.: J. Roblin
ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY: A. Barry, J. Bowen, E. Braun, N. Byars, J. Carter, C. Liu, C. Mobly, T. Owen, J. Patton, R. Priebe, W. Shelnutt, D. Smith, P. Wang.
CIVIL ENGINEERING: J. Evett, J. Graham, R. Janardhanam, M. Kane, J. Wu, D. Young.
MECHANICAL ENGR & ENGR SCIENCE: R. Coger, P. DeHoff, R. Dubler, H. Estrada, Y. Hari, J. Hill, R. Johnson, G. Mohanty, E. Munday, S. Patterson, J. Raja, R. Wilhelm.
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING: T. Dahlberg, A. Edwards, R. Greene, Y. Kakad, V. Lukic, R. Makki, M. Miri, D. Phillips, M. Sleva, F. Tranjan, R. Tsu, T. Weldon.
GUESTS: None. Total documented attendance: 59 (49 voting members.) Quorum=39

I. Clarification from the AAIT, Art Edwards. Prof. Al Maisto, Chair of the Academic Advising Improvement Team (AAIT) sent a letter to the college stating

His team does not want official representation on the CEAPCC
They want to receive copies of the agendas for the appropriate committees so that they can decide which meeting they might be able to contribute to.
They would attend as visitors.
They would inform the Committee Chair prior to the visit.
They recommend that Silvia Middleton act as the visitor.

II. An Approach to Discussion of Post-Tenure Review. Art Edwards. The following agenda was proposed by Dr. Edwards:

September 6, 1996. Choose a representative for an ad-hoc committee to study post-tenure review.
October 30, 1996. Respond to the surgey on evaluation of tenured faculty.
November 22, 1996. Synthesize input into a list of features of a meaningful system pf post-tenure review.

After lively discussion a consensus was attained that this effort is not worth the expense, as the documents have already been drafted and are in the Vice Chancellor’s hands at this time. The faculty felt that what we are already doing is consistent with the currently planned policies.

III. Computing Facilities Update, Taghi Mostafavi. if there are questions concerning regular MOSAIC operations, call the help line at extension 3150 from 8:00 – 5:00 Monday throught Friday. Graduate students have been assigned to help on this line. If you have a special MOSAIC request, contact Dr. Allen at cma@uncc.edu.

Kennedy 235 is now open for faculty and graduate student use. The machines in Kennedy 235 are Gateway 2000 120 Mhz Pentiums. They have two different operating systems loaded on their hard drives — Windows NT Workstation and NetBSD, a port of Berkely UNIX 4.4 to the Intel family of microprocessors. The users of the machines can reboot to either of the two operating systems from the login screen.

We have worked hard to make the NetBSD environment closely resemble the COE Mosaic system. The Mosaic user password database is loaded onto all the machines. The COE file system, PAF, is seen through client AFS software on each Pentium, making them peers to the Mosaic Sun workstations with respect to the file system. Dr. Mostafavi distributed a handout describing the laboratory in more detail.

For more information on the project, please refer to the following URL: http://www.cs.uncc.edu/DIIS/

IV. Report from the CEAPCC, H. Razavi. The following actions were approved by the faculty:

ENGR 1202. Change from 1 to 2 credit hours.
Delete CEGR1102, ENGR1102, MEGR1102.
New electrical engineering courses:

EEGR 6127 Medical Ultrasonics.
EEGR 6128 Physical Design of VLSI
EEGR 6146 Advanced VHDL
EEGR 6156 Application Specific IC Design
EEGR 6171 Simulation of Electrical Mat.
EEGR 6187 Modelling and Analysis of Communication Systems
EEGR 6281 Microwave Circuit Design

V. Report from SPART, R. Makki. The Dean has asked SPART to look at student evaluations and review of classroom teaching using the Cafeteria set of questions. At this point the use of the Cafeteria system is still under development. Bill Shelnutt. The following two retreats have been planned:

College Biennial Structured Reassessment Retreat:

October 17-18, Catholic Conference Center, Hickory.
Faciitator: Eve Snead, Duke Power Company.
Attendees: College ECAC and some SPART Representatives.
Format: Present state, desired state, gaps, threats and opportunities, in context of present plan and proposed changes, dynamic note taking and immediate displayed results.
Resources: SPART data on most deliverables.

Department Biennial Structured Reassessment Retreats:

EE: October 22
ME: Date to be announced
CE: November 1
CSC: Date to be announced.
ET: November 2 or November 23.
Facitator: Eve Snead and/or others.
Attendees: At departmental discretion.
Format: Present state, desired state, gaps, threats and opportunities, in context of present plan and proposed changes, dynamic note taking and immediate displayed results.
Resources: SPART data on most deliverables.

Strategic Web Site: Interim site with current plan. A web side for input and discussion will be up shortly.

VI. Dean’s Report, Dean Snyder.

Evaluation of the learning environment. The department has adopted a set of guidelines for the evaluation of teadhing. These were suggestions for implementation, and were not policy. We are fairly inconsistent in the application of teaching evaluations, and have gotten into difficulty in some previous promotion and tenure decisions. SPART has been assigned to look at current policies and come up with implementation procedures. We need to get implementation procedures formalized quickly so that they can be in place for current P&T decisions. We need to get this adopted yesterday. The Cafeterial quesions must be defined by the end of the semester. A common evaluation system must be adopted by the end of the semester. A discussoin sessoin should be held.
A Sigma Psi lecture has been scheduled for October 7.
A workshop on effective teaching will be held October 28th and 29th. An announcement was mailed to all faculty.
During the past month the Engineering Education Village has been up and available. We need to determine what value and use this resource has.
Begin planning the use of additional space. The Chancellor will be constructing a new bookstore and we are ready to put together a planning group and come up with a plan to utilize all of its current space. A small group should be put together to come up with a programmatic plan. Department chairs should provide advice on the makeup of this group. We could be getting into serious planning in about nine to twelve months.
A SUCCEED institutional advisory board meeting was recently held. At the top of the agenda was an outline of ENGR 1201 and ENGR1202. Their testimony was, “This is what we have been looking for.” We are well out in front of the other institutions in this area.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:51 PM.

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