ECE Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes for October 12, 2007

1. The Minutes of the October 5, 2007 meeting were approved with corrections.
2. The Committee reviewed the resolution from last year on revising and repositioning the advanced core courses at the 300 level. Various ideas were discussed regarding a process for implementing this resolution. Various suggestions included
   • Focus on the current "3 of 5" list and ECE 440 (Kudeki)
   • Go course by course through the required curriculum
   • Refer each course to the relevant area committee(s)
   • Form joint area/curriculum committee subcommittees to review each course
   • Create a sophomore-level "electrical physics" course comprising roughly half electromagnetics and half semiconductor device physics (Kudeki)
   • Rethink the current partition of materials into courses (Levinson)
   After much discussion, the Committee decided to review and refine the list of essential topics for most students, with an eye toward finding synergies or new groupings that might lead to a different course structure.
3. K.-C. Hsieh informed the Curriculum Committee that the Microelectronics and Quantum Electronics Area Committee has already met to discuss how to implement the plan with respect to ECE 440 or an alternate course. He mentioned several general approaches that have been discussed, such as revising and repositioning the ECE 440 course or developing a new ECE 340 course (which might serve as either a prerequisite for the advanced courses in the area, a prerequisite for ECE 440, or a "1 of 2" choice in parallel with ECE 440). K.-C. pointed out that all alternatives involve substantial modification of subsequent courses in the area; Erhan said that this is inevitable and that a similar process occurred when the E/M sequence was altered, but that the effort of revision eventually improved the curriculum in the area. Further discussion was postponed for a future meeting.
4. The Committee adjourned at 11:51 AM.