Minutes for CEE Faculty Meeting October 26, 2009

Minutes for CEE Faculty Meeting October 26, 2009

Minutes for CEE faculty meeting October 26, 2009

Attending: Rosenfeldt (recording), Palmer (presiding),Knodler, Gao, M.H. Park, Ostendorf, Brown, Lardner, Arwade, Tobiason, Ho, DeGroot, Chang, Ahlfeld, Brena, Civjan, Reckhow, Collura, Lutenegger

Palmer: Welcome and agenda

Knodler: Honors program:

1)Handouts – commonwealth college checklist, Blueprint (+ addendum).

Palmer: Important Dates:

Thursday. Oct. 29, 1PM: AEESP lecture

Thursday, Nov. 5, Pre-Registration

Friday, Nov. 6. Applications of sabbatical leave for 2010 – 2011

Holidays

AFRs

Palmer: Engineering Open House (Saturday, October 17, 2009) – Presentations need some updating.

Palmer: Meeting with Advisory Committee. Very productive meeting.

Members: (Dirk, Brack, Michalski, Whalen, Bonsignore, Bedard, Fontaine, Dietrich, Harney)

Future meetings: full day meeting (not on same day as college), afternoon with faculty in program areas

Agenda available upon request

Discussion of new members – a list of names was developed.

Lutenegger: Looking for Junior people? Palmer (not necessarily)

Lardner: Pre-registration

No more RACs: Students NEED to show up, or there will be a hold on their accounts. If they do not show up for registration, they will NOT be able to register until December.

Faculty need to contact our advisees so they all show up.

Palmer: Changes to class offerings

  1. Setting –

1)successful in providing excellent u-grad teaching

2)Facing budget reductions

3)8 untenured – want to provide environment for success

4)Do not anticipate ability to expand in next 2 years (open to other opportunities)

  1. Undergraduate enrollment – Enrollments going up dramatically – teaching load not dropping.
  2. 5 changes in class offerings

Looking ahead to:

1)Reductions in Teaching capacity

2)Ergas – minus 3

3)Chages – minus 2

4)Lardner – minus 1

5)Highter – minus 4 (Total is loss of 10 “sections”)

  1. Short term solutions – Spring 2010

1)CEE260 to MIE

2)CEE 121 – Reorganized as team approach (upcoming spring) – 3 pieces (lab measurements, surveying, computational)

  1. Going forward – solutions

1)Offer courses in larger classes, less frequently

  1. Already teach ENG 111 and CEE121 once annually

2)Teach 200 level once a year (240, 241, 260, 270, 296A, 290T)

  1. Working with other departments to offer their courses in other semesters

3)CEE241 will be covered in Fall 2010

4)Investigating specific 300 level courses to offer once a year

  1. 331 Structural Analysis
  2. 310 Transportation
  1. Concerns

1)Larger class size changes atmosphere of class

2)Lack of individual attention

3)Reduced teaching satisfaction

4)Situation Is lamentable due to lack of resources

  1. Expectations

1)Every faculty member will contribute to our three missions, attempt to promote equity

2)Some resources will flow toward departments with heaviest teaching loads.

  1. Comments:

Ahlfeld: Scheme assumes untenured continue with 2 courses per year? As folks promoted, will this become easier to handle?Palmer – yes. Promised – 2 courses per year up to TDY. Programmatic demands might require more. Keeping Graduate program viable is important.

Ahlfeld: Resources – Teaching assistants? What does the budget look like (will we have graders, TAs?) Palmer – ¼ time TA is much more $$$ than undergraduate grader. Total # of TAs shouldn’t change – should be able to devote same number of TAs per class – If we go to teaching 300 level classes once per year – will have graders, not TAs. We cannot pay TAs out of Engineering Fees.

Lutenegger: What is the philosophy? Should untenured be teaching 2 small classes per year, or 1 large, 1 small per year? Palmer Untenured need to show improvement in teaching one large undergrad class, and then have a graduate class.

Ostendorf: Thermo and Prob/Stats being taught across disciplines – we cannot teach everything 2x per year. Big change will be 150 student courses – no personal attention until senior year. Cannot continue the way it is happening Palmer – Part of this is reallocating numbers of students taught by each faculty.

Ostendorf: What is goal? Palmer – Teach all our courses with 10 spots out, and with a move to 2 per untenured?

Ho: We need to teach our shared courses when it is most available to our students.

Lutteneger – We should have courses on campus that should fit for prob/stats – it Math, stats, etc. Need to have ability to have a list of appropriate courses. We need to be flexible with students.

Ho How do we get credit for FTEs. Palmer Formula is used.

Ahlfeld – Have we thought through whether we will be hurting any students. Lardner – We are working to do this, but we will not let outliers control system.

Luteneger– Course sharing: We’ll do one semester to help you out, if you do one semester to help us out. Palmer – Challenge is to keep a balance in the courses.

Palmer – Need a minimum of 8 slots. How many sections can we provide? We can provide 51 sections a year (26/semester)? Current – is that allocations among the groups. We have over 30 sections per semester to teach.

Ostendorf Other options – More offering classes among departments, offer classes more efficiently. If we want to move away from the strength, we can do some things.

Tobiason Don’t “want” to move away, but things are what they are – the numbers are there. Can gain 5 with 200 levels, what are the alternatives. Palmer - not a lot of slack in the system – this creates “slack” but painful. We don’t have the resources to “hire-out” courses any more. Will update as soon as we can.

Draft of 2010 courses handed out on the way out the door.

Goal – we need to have a decision about what courses need to be taught.

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