September 12, 1995

CEFO Minutes

(J. Carter, Secretary)

M I N U T E S

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FACULTY ORGANIZATION Thursday, September 12, 1995 @ 12:30 PM CARC Building – Room 101
Dr. Rick Lejk opened the meeting at 12:38 PM. The following individuals signed the attendance sheet:

COLLEGE OF ENGR: R. Snyder, S. Middleton, N. Schul. COMPUTER SCIENCE: M. Allen, K. Chen, S. Chen, G. Epstein, R. Lejk, T. Mostafavi, J. Quinn, G. Revesz, Z. Ras, H. Razavi, R. Shaw, K. Subramanian, J. Xiao. ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY: E. Braun, J. Carter, D. Liou C. Liu, J. Patten, R. Priebe, W. Shelnutt, D. Smith, P. Wang. CIVIL ENGINEERING: J. Evett, J. Graham, R. Janardhanam, M. Kane, E. King, J. Wu, D. Young. MECHANICAL ENGR & ENGR SCIENCE: P. DeHoff, R. Dubler, H. Estrada, Y. Hari, J. Hill, R. Hocken, R. Johnson, R. Kim, S. Patterson, J. Raja. ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING: S. Bobbio, K. Daneshvar, A. Edwards, R. Greene, Y. Kakad, V. Lukic, R. Makki, F. Tranjan. CAMERON A.R.C.: H. Leamy, T. Rufty. ENGR RES & IND DEVMT: J. Roblin. COMPUTING SVCS & LABS: J. Grant. GUESTS: None. Total documented attendance: 54 (45 Voting Faculty)

I. Minutes of the August 17, 1995 meeting. The minutes of the 08/17/95 meeting were approved as submitted after a name misspelling change.

II. Assistant Dean’s Report, Dean Middleton. Copies are available of the SUCCEED directory of students with a GPA of over 3.5. Also, help is needed in establishing facilitating groups in the ENGR 1201 course. Faculty are invited to come, observe, and participate.

III. Dean’s Report, Dean Snyder.

A reminder. this week is the “Celebration of Teaching” week. There are several scheduled events in which faculty may participate.
Strategic planning. The departments and the college prepared and submitted materials to the office of academic affairs in February. It is assumed that the version submitted is current. Questions have been raised concerning how to move forward and implement the plan, and on how periodic adjustments can be made. The Strategic Planning Committee addressed modification methods and processes to achieve goals. For example, “How do we demonstrate that the things we say we are improving are indeed improved, and how do these things help achieve goals of the strategic plan?”
Industrial Assessment Group. Another group, comprised of Bill Lee leading industrial people, faculty, and students is to be formed with the assignment to look at strategic planning assessment, and how we obtain and use input from outside the college and university.
The College Planning Committee has suggested we do not try to do everything at once, but rather each department should pinpoint specific targets and work on a focused effort to establish mechanisms to achieve and measure the accomplishment of goals pertaining to those targets. Such assessment documentation will be needed and used for communications with both SACS and ABET. It is suggested that we identify a few very specific targets defining what we want to achieve, and go through the exercise of assessment. The committee also proposed setting up a Planning Process Guidance Team for the purpose of encouraging and helping groups of faculty who undertake a formal effort in the continuous planning effort. A significant amount of discussion followed the presentation of this proposal. A motion was made and seconded to stop discussion. Motion passed. Since the formation of this committee does not fall within the organization of faculty governance, no motion is needed to form it. However, a recommendation was made to hold a vote of the faculty in order to determine the consensus of support for the forming of such a committee. Following discussion, a consensus vote was held to determine support for the formation of the committee. The vote was positive, establishing support for this committee. Support was not unanimous.
Faculty Rewards. It is suggested that a mode of attack of reorganizing the faculty rewards system may be to design a department or pseudo-department set of guidelines, with an effort to improve the rewards system. The Faculty rewards task Force has prepared a report which was presented to the faculty last year. The Vice Chancellor was pleased that the faculty were putting forward proposals which were “unconventional and daring.” The Vice Chancellor suggested that pilot projects are being done between institutions. The college may undertake a pilot project using the Faculty Rewards Task Force report as a model.
Academic Advising. The Engineering Technology department is using a computer-based advising system on the MOSAIC network. Though this may not be the only solution to improving advising, such a system will provide better access to information and records.
Post-Award Contract Administration. It is time that we make an effort to improve this system. Can someone from outside be brought in to make suggestions for improvement?
Merit Rewards. Successful, planned, improvements within the college will be tied to the faculty rewards system. When merit money is considered, demonstration of merit will be done by presenting goals in September which will be in place and shown successful in May.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:57 PM.