December 1, 2005

CEFO Minutes
J. Carter, President
D. Binkley, President Elect
J. Bowen, Secretary
Stuart Smith, Parliamentarian

M I N U T E S
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FACULTY ORGANIZATION (CEFO)
Thursday, December 1, 2005 12:30 PM
College of Education Building, Room 010
Regular Meeting
The following individuals signed the attendance sheet:

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING: R. Johnson, C. Blat, K. Elmore, M. Hermann, D. Blackmon, K. Franco, L. Thurman, R. Smelser, J. Stein, T. Koch
CAMERON A.R.C.:
COMPUTING & ENGINEERING LABS:
CIVIL ENGINEERING: J. Anderson, D. Boyajian, J. Bowen, S. Chen, J. Daniels, J. Gergely, J. Graham, H. Hilger, R. Janardhanam, M. Kane, V. Ogunro, D. Weggel, K. Warren, D. Young
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING: D. Binkley, L. Casperson, J. Conrad, K. Daneshvar, M. Hasan, J. Hudak, Y. Kakad, M. Miri, A. Nasipuri, L. Sheppard, E. Stokes, F. Tranjan, R. Tsu, T. Weldon
ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY: A. Barry, A. Brizendine, N. Byars, J. Carter, D. Cottrell, B. Gehrig, J. Kimble, S. Kuyath, D. Murphy, R. Priebe, D. Sharer, S. Wang, G. Watkins
MECHANICAL ENGR & ENGR SCIENCE: K. Bose, R. Coger, G. Elliott, H. Estrada, Y. Hari, B. Mullany, E. Ozelkan, J. Raja, J. Raquet, Y Sireli, T. Xu
GUESTS:

Documented attendance: 61

Documented attendance of voting faculty: 50 (59% of voting faculty)

Total Voting Faculty: 85

Quorum of voting faculty: 43

1. Call to Order and Approval of Past Minutes (Jack Carter)

� CEFO president Jack Carter called the meeting to order at 12:43 PM following refreshments outside Co. Ed. Bldg., Room 010.

� Minutes of the September 1, 2005 Regular Meeting were approved at 12:45 PM. These and all CEFO meeting minutes are available on-line at http://www.coe.uncc.edu/faculty_staff/CEFO.

2. Presentation of Survey of Student Use of Mosaic System (Jack Stein)

Jack Stein, the Director of Engineering Computing presented the results of a survey of student computer access and use. Surveys were distributed to students in ENGR 1201 during the Fall 2005 semester. The survey asked students about their access to computers and their use of Mosaic computers. A total of 273 responses were received. These were some of the findings from that survey:

80% of students responding to the survey own a PC that is capable (meets requirement for operating system, processing power, available hard disk space, and size of memory) of running Mosaic applications,
the majority of current student use of computers in and out of the Mosaic labs is with office applications, email, and web browsing,
the majority of students survey do plan to use a Mosaic lab computer to run applications that are not available to them on their own computer.

Results of the survey will be used by Jack and his group to guide future development of the Engineering Computing infrastructure. Jack then answered questions from the audience on issues such as future plans with regard to wireless networking, and the Mosaic Anywhere system.

3. Discussion of COE Admissions Procedure (Ron Smelser)

Ron Smelser led a briefing and discussion of the policies regarding admission of new students to the College. With the implementation of the Banner system in the next year, he explained that there is an opportunity to adjust the way in which incoming students are admitted. In the current system students are admitted directly to the Department or are admitted only to the College. Students admitted to the College may choose a preferred major or elect to be considered undecided. All student advising in the Freshman year is done by the advisors in the OSDS. Students admitted to the College are then admitted to a Department after their freshman year, subject to the continuation requirements of each Department. Ron suggested that the current system can be quite confusing to incoming students, as some students who would wish to be admitted to a Department are not allowed to do so right away. The current system does allow for students to wait to choose an Engineering major until after they have arrived at UNCC. Ron suggested two possible alternatives to the current system that might be preferable to the current system in terms of transparency and uniformity.

1. Admit all incoming students directly to the Departments according to requirements that may differ from one Department to the next. The admissions office would administer the admission process. In this system, students could be admitted to the College as “undecided” should they choose to do so. Later admission to the Department during or after the Freshman year would still be available to these students.

2. Admit all incoming students to the College, but not to individual Departments. Students would be able to designate a preferred major, but would be admitted to a Department either during or after the Freshman year. Departments would administer admission of these students. Admission standards could differ by Department.

These two options generated much discussion from the faculty. Advantages and disadvantages of each proposal were presented by the faculty. Several faculty expressed their preference for option 1, in that it allowed incoming students who knew which major they wanted to be immediately admitted to that department. Several faculty were concerned with the new workload that would come from having to administer Department admissions. Questions were raised as to how the options might differ in terms of measures of student retention. Other faculty raised concerns about option 1, stating that it might not give incoming students sufficient time to learn about the particular major before they made a choice. Several faculty expressed an interest in maintaining at least some minimal Freshman Engineering curricula before students chose a major.

A motion was then made and seconded to have a informational vote of the faculty in attendance as to their preferred option. Option 1 was preferred by a large majority of the faculty in attendance.

3. Dean’s Report (Bob Johnson)

Bob Johnson then spoke briefly to give an update of several items of interest to Engineering faculty.

Dean Johnson informed the faculty that the Engineering Technology Department had received a favorable decision from the ABET accreditation visit that had occurred earlier in the semester. He thanked the faculty and staff in the ET Department for their hard work in preparing for and conducting the review.

Dean Johnson then provided some recent information on the College budget. He expressed the desire that the student laboratory fee be increased to keep up with increases in necessary expenditures for computers and laboratories related directly related to instruction.

Dean Johnson then discussed progress on renovations of the Smith Building and the Cameron Center. Because of unexpected expenditures by the University on the two new buildings most recently opened (Woodward, ERB), it was expected that renovations would be delayed. He stated that work on Smith is now planned to start after Commencement. He also stated that renovations in the Cameron Center are not expected to start until the next fiscal year.

4. Adjournment (Jack Carter)

Jack Carter adjourned the meeting at 1:53 PM.

Please submit additions or corrections to Jim Bowen, CEFO Secretary at jdbowen@uncc.edu.