April 6, 2004
CEFO Minutes
B. Hocken, President E. Braun, President Elect D. Binkley, Secretary S. Kuyath, Parliamentarian
MINUTES
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FACULTY ORGANIZATION (CEFO)
Tuesday, April 6, 2004, 12:30 PM
Cameron Applied Research Center, Room 101
Special Meeting on Joint BSEE Program with Western Carolina University
The following individuals signed the attendance sheet:
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING: R. Johnson, C. Blat, E. Haro, M. Thurman CAMERON A.R.C.: COMPUTING & ENGINEERING LABS: CIVIL ENGINEERING: D. Boyajian, J. Daniels, D. Young ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING: D. Binkley, J. Conrad, K. Daneshvar, Y. Kakad, F. Tranjan, T. Weldon ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY: F. Ahmad, A. Barry, E. Braun, A. Brizendine, N. Byars, J. Carter, B. Gehrig, J. Kimble, S. Kuyath, D. Liou, D. Murphy, C. Orozco, R. Priebe, D. Ramers, D. Sharer, B. Sherlock, G. Watkins MECHANICAL ENGR & ENGR SCIENCE: R. Coger, Y. Hari, J. Hill, R. Hocken, C. Lee, G. Micklow, E. Morse, J. Raquet, M. Rodgers, Scott Smith, S. Teng, G. Elliot GUESTS:
Documented attendance: 42
Documented attendance of voting faculty: 36 (quorum not present)
Total Voting Faculy: 79
Quorum of voting faculty: 39
1. Call to Order and Approval of Past Minutes CEFO president Bob Hocken called the meeting to order at 12:35 PM. Minutes of the February 10, 2004 regular meeting were approved. These and all CEFO meeting minutes are available at http://www.coe.uncc.edu/faculty_staff/CEFO. 2. BS Construction Management Program in Engineering Technology, Tony Brizendine Tony Brizendine, chair of Engineering Technology, presented plans for an anticipated fall, 2006 BS program in construction management. North Carolina is experiencing a 21% annual growth rate in construction, providing a significant need for this program. American Council for Construction Education (ACCE) and ABET accreditation are planned. The curriculum would likely include some lower division overlap with Civil Engineering, although planning is in the early stages. A long term plan involving programs in Engineering Technology, Civil Engineering, Building Science (college of Architecture), and an MS in construction management (Engineering Management) will lead to a construction institute at UNC Charlotte. This institute is being advocated by North Carolina industry. 3. College Introductions and Joint BSEE Program with Western Carolina University, Bob Johnson Dean Bob Johnson introduced Gloria Elliot and Linda Thurman who have recently joined the College of Engineering. Bob described the joint BSEE program with Western Carolina University (WCU) and its history. Following a request from the president’s office of UNC, WCU will offer a joint BSEE program with UNCC. Like UNC Asheville, NCSU and Eastern Carolina, NCSU joint programs, this allows the UNC system to offer engineering programs in different parts of the state with less investment. Eastern Carolina now has their own college of engineering, offering a general engineering degree. WCU also hopes to develop their own EE or ECE department and sees the joint program with UNCC as a starting point for this. A UNCC faculty associate will be hired to support the logistics of the joint WCU/UNCC BSEE program. Planned start date is August 2005. Courses will be separately accredited at UNCC and WCU. Synchronous teaching with parallel UNCC and WCU classrooms is anticipated. There was considerable discussion on advantages and concerns with the joint BSEE program. Advantages include the potential of attracting top WCU undergraduate students to our ECE graduate programs. Additionally, the joint BSEE program was supported by representative Charles Taylor. Representative Taylor supported initiatives that led to funding for the UNCC Center for Optoelectronics and Optical Science. Also, UNCC will receive funding for credit hours of remote teaching. The funding formula will evolve. Concerns include the added ECE faculty workload associated with the preparation of distance learning classes. A NC board of governor’s report on distance education was cited that described the increased resources and costs associated with providing distance education. Additionally, concerns were expressed that our local UNCC students would experience a degraded learning experience in courses synchronously taught with WCU. There were concerns that the added teaching loads would work against building our research programs. Farid Tranjan, chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, indicated the number of affected courses is relatively low. Additionally, long term, WCU hopes to bring all courses in-house and offer a stand-alone degree. There was discussion that faculty workload will need to be fully considered for the additional workload associated with delivering courses to WCU. There is a strong desire in the College and Electrical and Computer Engineering department that the joint program be a net positive for UNCC, while also supporting WCU. The College has considerable experience in distance education programs in its various departments and recognizes this as an important component of a modern university. 4. Promotion and Tenure Policy Review Team, Gary Teng Gary Teng, director of the engineering management program within the College, described changes being considered in promotion and tenure policies. Special concerns were cited for separate, college-wide programs. Here, a candidate’s home department would likely not have sufficient expertise in an interdisciplinary area to compose the usual departmental review committee. Such a committee might instead be composed of members in various departments possessing relevant experience. It was not clear how such a review committee should be selected. The dean could appoint members, but this raised concerns that the departmental review process should remain independent from the college administration. The promotion and tenure policy will evolve to consider separate, college-wide programs. Details will be forthcoming. 5. Invitation for College of Engineering Faculty Organization Nominees and Adjournment Bob Hocken CEFO president Bob Hocken invited voting faculty members of the college to nominate themselves or others for the upcoming spring elections. Nomination forms were made available for members to take with them following the meeting. (Following the April meeting, CEFO received a large number of nominations from faculty from all of the college departments). Bob Hocken closed the meeting at 2:05 PM.
Please submit additions or corrections to David Binkley, CEFO Secretary at dmbinkle@uncc.edu.