September 11, 2008

James Conrad, President
James Bowen, President Elect
Ertunga Ozelkan, Secretary
Stuart Smith, Parliamentarian
M I N U T E S
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FACULTY ORGANIZATION (CEFO)
Thursday, September 11, 2008, 12:30 PM
CARC, Room 101
 
Regular Meeting
 
The following individuals signed the attendance sheet:
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING: R. Johnson, W. Heybruck, M. Hermann, T. Rufty, D. Furr, M. Castle
OFFICE of STUDENT DEVELOPMENT & SUCCESS: P. Tolley, C. Blat, J. Braganza, K. Franco, L. Thurman
ENGINEERING COMPUTING SERVICES:  J. Stein
CIVIL ENGINEERING:  J. Anderson, D. Boyajian, S. Chen, J. Gergely, J. Graham, M. Kane, D. Naylor, K. Warren, D. Weggel, J. Wu, D. Young
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING: R. Adams, N. Bousaba, J. Conrad, F.D. Essenwein, M. Hasan, I. Howitt, J. Hudak, B. Joshi, Y. Kakad, S. Mahaffer, M. Miri, A. Mukherjee, A. Nasipuri, A. Ravindran, F. Tranjan, A. Willis, J. Xie
ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT:  C. Lim, E. Ozelkan, Y. Sireli, S. G. Teng,  
ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY:  N. Byars, A. Brizendine, T. Cavalline, R. Coowar, D. Cottrell, C-S. Cho, C. Denton, B. Gehrig, J. Gresser, J. Hildreth, D. Hoch, A. Kitts, S. Kuyath, W. Meier, D. Murphy, T. Nicholas, M. Noras, R. Priebe, P. Schmidt, B. Sherlock, J. Urbas, S. Wang, C. Whitehead, M. Wilson
MECHANICAL ENGR & ENGR SCIENCE:  T. Beauregard, R. Coger, A. El-Ghannam, H. Fang, S. R. Patterson, Stuart Smith, W. Turner, M. Uddin, T. Xu, H. Zhang, N. Zheng
GUESTS:
Documented attendance: 79 total
Documented attendance of voting faculty: 52
Total Voting Faculty: 100
Quorum of voting faculty: 47
 

Agenda:
 
1. Call to order (CEFO president, Jim Conrad)
 
Jim called the meeting to order (approx.) at 12:40 PM.
 
2. Approval of past minutes (from April 3, 2008 meeting) (CEFO Secretary, Ertunga Ozelkan)
 
A motion to approve was made by Ertunga, and seconded, then passed on a voice vote.
 
3.      Announcements
 Job fair on 9/16,  9-3:30, SAC-Indoor Track
 Engineering picnic 10/3, 11-2, Hayes Field
 NC Jets help needed (Kuyath)
 Next meetings:  11/13, 1/22, 4/2
 
4. Introduction of new employees (Department Chairs)
 CEE: Dr. David Young introduced two new faculty/lecturers (Mr. David W Naylor, Dr.  William L Saunders) and two new staff (Ms. Tammy Disabatino, Mrs. Christine Maynard).
 ECE: Dr. Yogendra Kakad introduced a new faculty associate: Frederick D. Esenwein
 ET: Dr. Tony Brizendine introduced Mr. John Gresser, Dr. John Hildreth, Mr. Ted Jarrell, Dr. Chung-Suk Cho and Ms. Amy Kitts
 ME: Dr. Robin Coger introduced Dr. Ahmed Soliman, Dr. Steve Patterson
 Dean s Office: Dean Johnson introduced Mrs. Beverly Ann Guessford
 
5. Special Faculty Recognitions (Dean Johnson)
This part of the program has been set aside to recognize our faculty for their accomplishments over the past year. 
 Dr. Helene Hilger of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.  Helene was named as the 2008 recipient of the prestigious UNC Board of Governors - Award for Teaching Excellence.
 2008 Excellence in Teaching Award recipients for undergraduate and graduate teaching: Dr. Arun Ravindran of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is the recipient of the Undergraduate Award in Teaching Excellence.  
 Dr. Robin Coger of the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Engineering Science as the recipient of the Graduate Award in Teaching Excellence
€        Other nominees.  They include:  Dr. David Boyajian, Dr. Kimberly Warren, Dr. Bharat Joshi, Dr. David Cottrell, and Dr. Kevin Lawton. 
 John H. Maxheim Faculty Fellowship award. This year s recipient is Dr. Andrew Willis of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.  
 Dr. Terry Xu and Dr. Brigid Mullany were recipients of the NSF CAREER Awards. 
 ADVANCE participants: Robin Coger, Helene Hilger, Cathy Blat, Brid Mullany, and Terry Xu.  
 Dr. David Naylor  of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering    was named recipient of the 2007-08 Chi Epsilon Outstanding Faculty Member Award.
 Dr. Ed Morse  of the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Engineering Science     was awarded a three-year appointment to the Sections Board of the Society of Automotive Engineers.
 Dr. Churlzu Lim   was awarded the IIE Transactions on Operations Engineering Best Paper Award.  Dr. Lim was coauthor of the paper entitled,  Algorithms for Discrete and Continuous Multicommodity Flow Network Interdiction Problems.     AND 
 Dr. Scott Smith  of the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Engineering Science -  was  bestowed double honor on being named as the 2008 Fellow of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (limited only to a select group of individuals) AND  a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 
Reappointment as Assistant Professor
 Shen-En Chen              Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering
 Dave Cottrell                  Dept. of Engineering Technology
 Bharat Joshi                 Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
 Srinivas Pulugurtha      Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering
 Kimberly Warren         Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering
 Qiuming Wei                  Dept. of Mechanical Engineering & Engineering Science
 Andrew Willis              Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
 Terry Xu                      Dept. of Mechanical Engineering & Engineering Science
Promotion to Associate Professor with Permanent Tenure
 Brian Anderson                       Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering
 Bruce Gehrig               Dept. of Engineering Technology
 Arindam Mukherjee     Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
 Patricia Tolley              Dept. of Engineering Technology
                
Promotion to Full Professor
 Harish Cherukuri         Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Science
 
6. College update (Dean Johnson)
 
Dean Johnson updated the faculty on several items:
 
College Highlights:
 Dramatic growth continues.
€        Enrollment up 6% from 2006 to 2007; 40% since 2002.
€        Proposals submitted increased by 26% in one year.
€        Our freshman enrollment in 1201 is up 17.3% this year.
 Research awards up 18%; expenditures up 37%.
 New programs.
€        Systems Engineering (new BS).
€        Construction Management (new BS; MS pending).
€        MS in Fire Protection pending.
€        New distance ed MS in Engineering Management.
€        Industrial Solutions Lab   generated $130k in industry support.
€        EAO generated $320k in external funding.
 EPIC: the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center.
€        A huge opportunity for economic development for the Charlotte region.
€        A major initiative: a chance for UNC Charlotte to distinguish itself.
 In a survey of employers, 88% believed that their Lee College educated employees were either  frequently  or  always  an asset to their companies
 The college had two new NSF CAREER Awardees: Brid Mullany and Terry Xu; another CAREER Award holder is Scott Kelly who joined from the Univ. of Illinois.
 The college received two MRI awards: Xu and Stokes/Tsu/Fiddy/Smolski.
 Mosaic launched the Personal Computer Support group.
 ME is the 32nd biggest program and CEE is 54th.
 CEE graduate program was ranked 69th in US News  Top 100  CEE graduate programs, and  .
 UNC Charlotte ranks 9th among the upcoming national universities
 
See the COE annual report for many more highlights: www.coe.uncc.edu/college
 
Renovations:
2007-2008 project- still underway
 Conversion of the Woodward lounge to a computer lab -$75K
 Fume hoods in Cameron - $100K
2008-2009 Projects
 Cameron hall renovation - $560K
 Cameron Hi-by-Dust collection system- Health and safety issue - $100K
 Smith Building- $500K
2009-1010 Project
 Smith Building- $500K
 Others not yet identified
 
EPIC:
 Dr. Steve Patterson   Founding Director of EPIC
 Scott Carlberg (CRI)   providing administrative support
 
Budget
 Enrollment growth money funded by the legislature
 However, the continuing budget had some initial cuts and will likely have a reversion   ending overall about breakeven
 $57M for EPIC was funded
 Expecting chancellor to provide college budgets by Oct. 1
 Chancellor is preparing an expansion budget request. Included for COE is about $3.5M for EPIC and 1.5M for Self-aware manufacturing.
 can be formed. It was discussed that this process may be useful for the next year s elections.  It was discussed that the committees like Faculty Graduate Council have significant impact on the college curriculum. So the Dean encouraged senior faculty to participate.
 Currently searching for ECE and ME&ES department chairs   ECE candidates already visiting
 Search for Karen Elmore s replacement underway   rewrote the position description to focus on transfer advising and leading SSS group
 
7. Old Business - Brief report   Graduate Faculty Status (CEFO Parliamentarian, Stuart Smith)
 Stuart reminded the faculty of an issue that was raised during the April 3rd, 2008 meeting:
 Grad School Criteria on Membership to Graduate faculty: there were some concerns that there is too much control by the grad school, and there are some vague statements in the criteria definitions. It was suggested to invite Tom Reynolds to clarify. It was also suggested that a letter indicating disagreement with the new graduate school regulations was to be prepared by the graduate coordinators with input from CEFO. The faculty voted for the communication letter and approved on a hand vote.
 Stuart mentioned that on May 30th, Graduate Committee sent a letter to Jerry Ingalls (Chair of the Graduate Council). Invited them to a presentation during the next CEFO meeting.
 Dr. Wu suggested talking to the Grad School Dean (Tom Reynolds) since council does not have policy power.
 Dr. Tranjan indicated that he served on the council and objected this issue
 Dr. Young also indicated that objections were there. He said that the current effort to bring the Grad School Dean/ Grad Council is good.
 
8. Adjourn (CEFO president, Jim Conrad)
 
Dr. Conrad asked the attendees if there were any other items of interest to be discussed or other announcements to be made. A silence indicated that no more items remained for discussion. The meeting was then adjourned by Dr. Conrad at (approx.) 1:35 PM.
 
Please submit additions or corrections to Ertunga C. Ozelkan, CEFO Secretary at ecozelka AT uncc DOT edu .