ECE Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes for 20 Oct, 2006

1. The Curriculum Committee approved the minutes of the Oct 13, 2006 meeting.
2. The Committee decided to keep our website and minutes accessible only to ECE logins, rather than make it world-readable.
3. Bruce Wheeler proposed that we invite Associate Dean of Academic Programs, Professor Keith Hjelmstad, to discuss with us ideas for curricular revision that are circulating at the College level.
4. Continuation of our open-format discussion of curricular concerns and issues produced more items for the list:
   • Our classes and curricula may be too specialized.
   • There may be a conflict between training specialists and educating leaders (Chang)
   • Our curriculum and advising all encourage students to specialize. (Seth)
   • Do the top third, middle third, and bottom third of our students have different needs? (Bruce)
   • Our CompE grads are not perceived in industry as having sufficient software breadth. (Matt)
   • Lab courses worth only two credit hours often take the majority of students' hours per week. (Brian)
   • Our labs are often very inefficient in terms of learning. (Brian)
   • Is cheating on homework a systemic problem? (reported by Brian as concern of colleagues)
   • The partition of material between ECE 329 and ECE 450 may not be optimal. (Erhan)
   • The Committee agreed that we should examine the material in our required courses as part of any revision.
   • Should we think of the undergraduate degree as a general education, and treat the MS as the professional degree? (Steve L, Michael Loui)
   • Many other schools delay students' choice of major.
   • There's a lack of courses that crystallize the basic principles at a somewhat higher level; we jump straight to high-level. (Chang)
   • Pressure from instructors of subsequent courses to cover various things means that the students learn less and less about more and more in the required courses.
5. The Committee adjourned at 11:58 AM. (Sorry!)