Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Massachusetts Amherst
CEE Faculty Meeting Minutes
02/07/2014
1:30PM-2:30PM
Kellogg Room
In attendance: Sanjay Arwade, Sergio Brena, Casey Brown, Guoping Zhang, Carl Ho, Scott Civjan, Daiheng Ni, Alan Lutenegger, Alice Alipour, Eric Gonzales, Behrouz Shafei, Mi-Hyun Park, Caitlyn Butler, Eleni Christofa, David Ahlfeld, David Ostendorf, C.S Chang, Boris Lau, John Tobiason, David Reckhow, Mike Knodler, and Rick Palmer (presiding).
Rick starts the meeting at 1:30pm.
Richard Palmer—Department Head
o Calendar:
January 17: Faculty Retreat
Feb 7: Faculty Meeting
Feb 20: Career Fair
March 7: Graduate students visit (faculty meeting will be moved)
March 26: Pre-registration
April 4: Faculty Meeting
April 5: Engineering Open House
May 1: CEE Picnic
May 9: Faculty Meeting
o Pre-registration:
§ Some faculty might not be able to attend.
§ If you plan not be at the pre-registration you can meet with your advisees earlier.
o CEE Picnic:
§ This year we cannot have the ballroom for May 1.
§ We need to consider if we can have the picnic the week before (last week of classes) so we can have the ballroom.
International Graduate Student Tuition Waiver—Sanjay Arwade (Graduate Program Director)
o Graduate school waives tuition for some foreign international students.
o We have applied for those on a case-by-case basis.
o This is not for students with RAs or TAs.
o It is also not the curriculum fee they have to pay.
o From now on departments should ask for an allotment of waivers that they need once a year.
o We got permission to submit the request for the waivers late, but only for a few of them.
o Is there any other student that needs a tuition waiver for this semester? If so, let Sanjay know today.
o Sanjay will try to figure out how many to ask for the next year for our department.
o He will ask us by email how many we are aware that might need the waiver.
Questions/Discussion:
o How soon do they make the decisions for that?
§ We should be able to offer them to students we admit now.
o $1,320 per semester tuition for full time student.
Graduate Student Admission—Rick Palmer
o Some programs are a little ahead of others in making their decisions and sending the letters.
o It is very important to get this done quickly.
o Communication between the program member taking the lead and others is very important.
o Jodi indicates that the process is moving well ahead of last year.
o Jodi prefers to get all decisions at once.
o Jodi can move students apply late from Spring 2015 back to Fall of 2014.
o Jodi has sent out a number of acceptance letters to the students and invitations for the March 7 event.
o Travel Expenses:
§ EWRE: $3000
§ Transportation $2,000
§ Geotech: $1,500
§ Structures: $1,500
o Rick encourages the programs to see what approach they want to take with regards to the accommodations of the students.
o If a program feels that we need more resources they should let Rick know.
o Issues to be considered:
§ Housing
§ Likelihood of attending
§ Coming on other days
§ Use of RFT to contribute to travel.
o We want to accommodate students that cannot come on March 7. However, we want to encourage them to come on March 7.
Questions/Discussion:
o Current students also think that the recruiting event is very important. Meeting fellow graduate students is also important.
Space-RCM-Dean—Rick Palmer
o Program coordinators have been asked to work with Kelley to begin the monetization process.
o Identify lab space and “bull pen areas” space, link faculty and students that are associated with that space over time, and expenditures, and then justify space.
o Metrics are not clear bus sponsored research is high on the list, scholarly production should also be considered.
o Dean Anderson anticipates that space will not be constrained when RCM is implemented.
o They will ask how much is happening in the space we have.
Questions/Discussion:
o If we start paying for space, there are two options:
- Space is attached to a grant: overhead would pay for it.
- Space is attached to a grant: it is included as an item in the budget?
§ It is not clear yet. It may be charged to departments. The departments might have to come up with funds to pay for space. Provost owns all space. The college does not own any space. This will be a 3-year process.
§ A concern is that if our projects are small, whether we will be able to afford the space.
§ It will probably be coming from the overhead. Some funding agencies do not allow space items to be included in the budget.
o Did productivity increase after they did the RCM in Florida?
§ We do not know.
§ A lot of the questions we have will be answered once the models are developed.
§ We want to be ready when this process starts.
o Is there a ranking of quality of space?
§ There must be but we do not know the metrics exactly.
o How far do they track?
§ Down to the departments.
o There will be a market for space and competition. Do you have any sense how we compare with the other departments?
§ Engineering schools have high relative salaries and high student education costs. Nursing and engineering are the two most expensive colleges per students on campus.
o What does that mean about the future of engineering at UMass?
§ The Dean has made an agreement that engineering will be protected.
§ Provost and Chancellor are committed to maintaining outstanding COE during this process.
§ Likely 3 years phase in, with little change over the next year, estimates of impacts during the second, and full implementation the third.
§ There are current skirmishes related to space.
o At other universities faculty had to pay for their offices as well.
§ We will start using space as an example on how we will do it when the RCM project is in place.
o We need to make sure that our publications are counted correctly. Document who is using what.
o If other people outside of UMass need to use our equipment it should be put on the grants.
§ For the simulator there is a $125 fee per hour.
§ How the RTF money is split can be used as how the responsibility is split.
o Another issue is that nobody is championing for new space for engineering in general.
o Is it better to show that we are efficient or ask for more space?
§ We want to have a good justification about how we use the space.
Awards Committee—Rick Palmer
o Anybody that would like to be engaged in helping with awards? Let Rick know.
Questions/Discussion:
o Awards to whom?
§ Alumni and faculty
§ Junior alumni awards
§ Senior alumni awards
ABET—D. Ahlfeld (Associate Department Head)
o CPIs for ABET:
§ We voted at the faculty retreat last month that we will limit the CPIs to the 14 core courses.
§ All faculty that teach the same course (from one of those 14 courses) need to come up with CPIs that should remain the same for the next 5 years and identify a lead person for that course.
Rick adjourns the meeting at 2:34pm.
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