Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

University of Massachusetts Amherst

CEE Faculty Meeting Minutes

11/10/2014

9:00PM-10:00PM

Kellogg Room

In attendance: Sanjay Arwade, Carl Ho, Eric Gonzales, Behrouz Shafei, Alice Alipour, Dave Reckhow, Eleni Christofa, Don De Groot, John Tobiason, Michael Knodler, Ethan Yang, Boris Lau, Caitlyn Butler, Daiheng, Ni, Scott Civjan, Guoping Zhang, David Ostendorf, Mi-Hyun Park, Sergio Brena, and Rick Palmer (presiding).

Rick starts the meeting at 9:00am.

Richard Palmer—Department Head

Agenda

· Calendar of Events

· COE Strategic Planning Process

· Comments on ABET

· Discussion on Research Assistant Professors

· Discussion on DPC

COE Strategic Planning Process

· The new Provost seems to be very interested in this.

· The Dean uses this to highlight our priorities and set the goals for the College.

· The goal is to do a plan on how to make the University a destination of choice.

· During the first part of the discussions the emphasis was on undergraduate education, next they will move on to graduate education issues.

· Goals:

Develop new programs that are well aligned with student demand, state economy, diversity, life science initiative, faculty strengths, and are interdisciplinary:
Biomedical Engineering (BS, MS, PhD)
Materials science program (PhD)
Increase the visibility of the College to support destination of choice and improve reputational rankings such as US News and World Report.
Improve diversity of faculty and students.
Invest in faculty to keep pace with the growth in student numbers.
Facilitate undergraduate student success by providing an exciting first year experience that prepares new students and integrates an active experiential learning component in our programs.
1-credit introductory course (taught by PhD students)
Build world-class facilities- including a new engineering building, clean room space and IALS investment- which enable state-of-the-art research and education.
Focus development efforts by generating interest in faculty scholarship and facilities.
Engage more fully with the campus mission in interdisciplinary research and curriculum.

· We have developed a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for the department with input from the different groups.

· There will be four departmental plans that will come out of this process, one for each group.

Scott Civjan—ABET

· The exit survey shows that undergraduates are not as happy as they used to be.

· FE changes:

o Jan 1, 2014: new FE exam format (not twice a year anymore; they can take it every other month on multiple days)

· A year before this change 50 students took the exam

· There are very few senior students this year that have already taken it or are taking it soon.

· The Chi Epsilon review exam did not take place last year.

· We should bring it up as of its importance when we teach senior classes or junior classes next semester.

Discussion/Questions:

· Since they can take it any time, they tend to postpone it.

· It makes them feel like there is no hurry to take it.

· They think it is easier because the general portion of the exam is not in.

· 25% of the Universities require taking and passing the EIT to graduate.

· There is a direct correlation between the number of students in class and their experience.

· We should think about:

o Picking a target date (or a month) and do review sessions.

o Maybe have a one credit course to prepare them.

· The student groups should encourage the students to participate in the review sessions and take the FE exam.

· We need to think what our goal is: to take it before they leave, to be successful in general.

· Those that are teaching senior classes should make a point about the importance of the exam.

· In addition, we should ask the people at the career fair to tell them about its importance.

· The review sessions will be more successful if they are student driven.

Research Professors

· This type of faculty has typically been in the EWRE program and there are a few others that have requested to become and the personnel committee has moved on with that.

· If we need research professors to grow the programs we should bring more of them. They are very valuable in the department.

Rick adjourns the faculty meeting at 9:32am.