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Faculty Meeting
Notes - Winter 2008-2009
3/11/09
Attendees: Greg Kremer; Ken Halliday,
Frank Kraft, Rudy Pasic, Khairul
Alam, John Cotton, Dave Bayless,
Carole Womeldorf,
Jun Choi, Jay Gunasekera,
Esteban Hincapie, Stephanie Walker
Reminder
Calendar
> Student Award Nominations? (Outstanding
Senior and Senior Leader)
> No meetings 3/18 and 3/25 – next
meeting April 1st.
Dean Irwin will meet with us April 29th – we get to
set the agenda, so let me know if you have any discussion topics.
For Information:
Budget: Not
settled for 09-10, but getting close.
Quarterly meeting of chairs with
Deans and the Provost office
>
Lack of trust and respect and communication identified as issues separating
upper administration from faculty/departments
> Brown Bag lunches (with Provost’s office, and maybe the
president) offered as a step towards better communication
SAB/GSAB – No report
Grad Program – No new business
For Discussion:
UGRAD Q2S working session
> Area of Expertise Group updates on proposed curriculum
changes:
* Mechanical Systems – Propose to teach an
ME Mechanics 2 course sequence that is an integral treatment of Statics and Dynamics and includes an Introduction to
Strengths. Part of the
justification is that the ‘outcomes’ are not currently being met
based on prerequisite inventories.
>
Need a more detailed proposal with full justification
* Thermal Systems – in discussion, will report
later
> Physics – Rudy led a discussion about
what students currently get from Physics. Key points seem to be the high value
of the labs and the questionable value of the basic Physics courses. Are the students helped by solving the
simplified Physics problems are does it build poor problem solving habits (I’ve
got an equation and I’m looking for numbers to plug in…). Rudy is circulating the Physics I (Mechanics)
textbook to all faculty for review.
This discussion will continue.
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3/4/09
Attendees: Greg Kremer; Ken Halliday,
Frank Kraft, Rudy Pasic, Khairul
Alam, John Cotton, Dave Bayless,
Carole Womeldorf,
Jun Choi, Jay Gunasekera,
David Jones, Esteban Hincapie, Stephanie Walker
Reminder
Calendar
> Student Award Nominations? (Outstanding
Senior and Senior Leader)
For Information:
We will do a pilot study this year on using
CTE-moderated Focus Groups of
students for formative assessment of pre-tenure faculty teaching
effectiveness. We will then
decide how to proceed.
SAB/GSAB? No
items
Grad Program
> Grad program Q2S quick overview
For Discussion:
UGRAD Q2S working session
> Area of Expertise Groups to discuss
curriculum changes in their areas working towards a final recommendation that
includes
1. Details of the recommended
change (using the converted semester curriculum based on Q2S guidelines as a
baseline)
2. Reason for the change
(efficiency / # of courses, previous outcomes assessment data, etc.) and the
need to deviate from Q2S guidelines (if applicable)
3. Discussion of likely impact
on student achievement of program outcomes (must be neutral or have some
positive impact)
4. Discussion of impact on other
programs (if service course)
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2/25/09
Attendees: Greg Kremer; Ken Halliday,
Frank Kraft, Rudy Pasic, Khairul
Alam, John Cotton, Dave Bayless,
Carole Womeldorf,
Jun Choi, Jay Gunasekera,
David Jones, Esteban Hincapie, Stephanie Walker
Reminder
Calendar
> March 1st -
application deadline for White teaching and Research awards
Teaching Committee: Izzi (2008, chair), Bob (2007), Dave (2006). Teaching
Application
Research Committee: Bob (2008, chair), Rudy (2007), Frank (2006). Research
Application
> Feb 23rd - Russ Best
Paper Applications due to Department.
1 submitted so far.
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For Information:
Update on Proposed Statement about
Focus Groups for Departmental P&T guidelines:
> Tim Vickers of The Center for Teaching and
Learning will conduct the focus group discussions, compile the assessment
information and work with the faculty members to help them improve their
teaching effectiveness. Meeting
scheduled with Carole, John, Jun Tim and Greg for Monday March 2nd
to continue the discussion.
Possible Revised Statement:
Starting during the second academic
year of a pre-tenure faculty member's appointment and continuing through the
year when the tenure dossier is submitted, the department will invite
personnel from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) to conduct a focus
group interview with students in one of the required undergraduate classes
that the pre-tenure faculty member is teaching. The CTL personnel will compile the assessment
information, work with the faculty members to help them improve their
teaching effectiveness, and provide assessment information to the department
chair and the P&T committee to supplement the standard instructor
evaluations for evaluating teaching effectiveness.
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For Discussion:
Coordination
of Workload Policy with P&T and yearly evaluation procedures
> We have been directed to make sure our P&T and
yearly evaluation policies are consistent with the workload
policy by the end of Winter Quarter 2009. Greg has drafted a Metric+Workload-Based Evaluation Table that combines
the metrics we must report on each year along with items that address the new
workload policy and the items from our historical yearly evaluations. The goal (I think) is to get a single
simple to use template that takes care of all of our yearly
reporting/evaluation/planning and meets the new college policies.
* The
P&T Committee will be checking over the document to make sure it is
consistent with our P&T guidelines.
> A key point of discussion for
the workload is how to handle non-course activities. One possibility is to have a guideline
like: “For all non-course related activities, ~35
hours of effort is equivalent to 1 credit hour. Components of workload that
individually amount to less than 16 hours should be aggregated into blocks of at least ½ credit
hour.”
* The
35 hour number is based on 9 month contract and 36 quarter credit hours as a
full load if all a faculty member did was teach.
***This policy was approved at this
meeting***
Q2S
Courses that involve other departments
> EE series (313,314, 304, 305) is now planned
to be 6 semester hours – 2 for EE313, 3 for EE314, 1for EE304/5
> CHE 231 is planned for 3 semester
hours, but we get to include some activities from 418.
Select 1 or 2 from: Cold Work / Annealing, Age
Hardening, Heat treat with polish/etch, hardness test, tensile test.
Frank (and Jay) will
work with CHE to finalize this.
> IT117 –
IT may support a modified version, 1 or 2 semester
credits. Frank will work with IT to get more info.
> MATH is moving to a 3 hours lecture plus 1
hour recitation model for the CALC series.
> The new Freshman “Numerical Math”
MATLAB lab course which would include some linear algebra would be 1 credit
hour (2 hrs lab, CALC II prereq or concurrent) and
would be a prereq for Differential Equations. It is meant to replace part of
MATH344, but they appear interested in teaching a discipline-specific
follow-on applications course if we want them to. There were
many concerns related to this course, especially about there being enough
time for the students to learn MATLAB and Numerical MATH. We need more info before agreeing to
this change.
> 1 year of Math and Basic
Sciences: ISE/CS have used
engineering courses with heavy math content to count towards the 1 year of
Math and Basic Sciences. Do we
want to try that for the 3 hours we need, or work with MATH to get a version
of 344 that meets our needs? Faculty have concerns
about ABET reviewers not accepting engineering courses in the MATH and BS
category.
Course sequences limited to our department
Ken had a hand out with some questions we
need to resolve for our curriculum, and a very tentative semester curriculum
assuming we create a number of combined course sequences. We discussed
concerns about Physics and whether we should consider other PHYS courses
besides 251-253. There are many
issues that need more discussion by the faculty in lab, thermal systems,
mechanical systems, design, manufacturing, computers and other areas. We will continue the discussion in
future group meetings and faculty meetings.
> ME288/388/488 –
488 could be 1 semester hour in Spring Semester as is, or could go to 2
semester hours and take on more outcomes. What about 288 and 388, and can we
still make a decision on 455 before the end of this academic year?
> 351/451 as a 3-semester hour course in Fall
semester Sr. year?
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2/11/09
Attendees: Greg Kremer; Ken Halliday, Izzi Urieli, Frank Kraft, Rudy Pasic, Khairul Alam, John Cotton, Bob Williams, Dave Bayless,
Carole Womeldorf, Jun Choi,
Jay Gunasekera, David Jones, Esteban Hincapie, Stephanie Walker
Reminder
Calendar
> March 1st -
application deadline for White teaching and Research awards
Teaching Committee: Izzi (2008, chair), Bob (2007), Dave (2006). Teaching
Application
Research Committee: Bob (2008, chair), Rudy (2007), Frank (2006). Research
Application
> Feb 23rd - Russ
Best Paper Applications due to Department
Application form distributed by Steph via
email
Engineering Ambassadors
Need 4
nominations. So far we have Lorelle Paulozzi and Michael DiBenedetto.
ME Webpage
> New curriculum flowchart online
(http://www.ohio.edu/mechanical/undergraduate/Curriculum0809/upload/ME-Curriculum-2008-09.pdf)
– Using Dr. Iz’s flowchart as a model,
Jesus has created an updatable and linkable flowchart.
* Some syllabi still needed…
* We will make a direct link from ME homepage
* Send suggestions and corrections to Jesus
> Announcements from the Academic Council
meeting
* Yield Activities
recommended – ME department is doing letters/brochures, targeted
personal emails including invitations to on-campus activities, and targeted
personal contacts to certain groups of applicants ( for example female
students)
* Standardized on-line department
chairperson evaluations will be started to supplement the current
departmental processes
* Dept. accomplishments wrt metrics due March 2nd
* Dean Irwin wants to join us for a
faculty meeting
* Reminder about PE licensure
incentive
* Classroom scheduling priority will
be given to classes that fit into standard scheduling model from Spring
quarter forward. The new building
will give us more rooms but about the same number of schedulable seats as
currently – all 1st floor classrooms except 103 will be
decommissioned once the room in the new building are available. There will be a move to centralized
room scheduling sometime soon.
*
College will be hiring a Group2 faculty member to teach/tutor MATH.
> SAB: suggestions
for how to spend $500 for equipment (to help students) from a little-known
endowment fund.
* new dynamometer for the big blue pump we
use in ME 388.
* force gages, tachometers, etc. for students to “check
out” for use on projects
> Budget –
*
Investment income shortfall is a major issue, regardless of impact of State
budget. We are currently planning
for a $500K shortfall in the college.
We will know more by Feb 15.
* Dept. impact
likely to be equivalent of ½ FTE (~$60K) - we are expected to make it
up from buyouts and research contracts.
All “research active” departments are being impacted in
similar ways.
More info on University Budget available at the
budget summits
·
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 – 2 to 4 p.m. – Baker Center 2
·
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 – 7 to 8 p.m. –Walter Hall 235
·
Thursday, February 19, 2009 – 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. – Baker Center 240
For Discussion:
Proposed Statement to be added to
Departmental P&T guidelines:
Starting during the
second academic year of a pre-tenure faculty member's appointment and
continuing through the year when the tenure dossier is submitted, the
department will arrange a focus group interview with a representative group
of students from classes that pre-tenure faculty have taught. The focus groups will be facilitated
by student advisory board members and/or others who the students are likely
to be open and honest with. The
results of these interviews will be used as a supplement to the standard
instructor evaluations in evaluating teaching effectiveness.
* Developed by Greg and the P&T Committee, endorsed by the SAB.
* Discussion
centered on the concern that it be done well and fairly, and that it would be
hard for students to pull it off.
Greg will investigate University resources to run the focus groups and
will return with an updated proposal
Coordination
of Workload Policy with P&T and yearly evaluation procedures
> We have been directed to make sure our P&T and
yearly evaluation policies are consistent with the workload
policy by the end of Winter Quarter 2009. Greg has drafted a Metric+Workload-Based Evaluation Table that combines
the metrics we must report on each year along with items that address the new
workload policy and the items from our historical yearly evaluations. The goal (I think) is to get a single
simple to use template that takes care of all of our yearly
reporting/evaluation/planning and meets the new college policies.
* The
P&T Committee will be checking over the document to make sure it is
consistent with our P&T guidelines.
> A key point of discussion for
the workload is how to handle non-course activities. One possibility is to have a guideline
like: “For all non-course related activities, ~35 hours of effort is
equivalent to 1 credit hour.
Components of workload that individually amount to less than 16 hours
should be aggregated into blocks of at least ½
credit hour.”
* The
35 hour number is based on 9 month contract and 36 quarter credit hours as a
full load if all a faculty member did was teach.
Q2S
> MATH is moving to a 3 hours lecture plus 1
hour recitation model for the CALC series.
> The new Freshman “Numerical Math”
MATLAB lab course which would include some linear algebra would be 1 credit
hour (2 hrs lab, CALC II prereq or
concurrent). This is meant to
replace part of MATH344, but they appear interested in teaching a
discipline-specific follow applications course. They would like to add it as a prereq for Differential Equations.
ABET –
Some Fall 08-09 assessment reports still needed
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2/4/09 – ME
Student/Prof social at noon in Stocker 103
Notes below were sent to faculty via email
Q2S
> Clarification on 3-credit course issue.
The "penalty" for not having 3 hour
courses comes at the time of room scheduling – Room scheduling priority
to be given for 3 credit courses, or for block-scheduled 2 and 4 hour course
combinations. Any courses that do
not require a classroom (such as labs without lecture hours) do not have any
restrictions. Any courses
arranged in a way that they need 3 hours of classroom time are OK.
* comment: This rule seems to
promote separately scheduled labs associated with 3 hour courses rather than
independent labs with lecture sessions.
> With 10 hours of Physics, 14-15 hours of MATH
(CALCABCD and DiffEq), and 5 hours of CHEM, we have
29-30 semester hours of MATH and Basic Sciences, and we only need 32. All students who start with MATH 115
will have 4 more hours of MATH and will therefore meet the ABET required
number of hours without any additional courses, so we may want to just use a
DARS requirement and require students who do not need MATH 115 to take a MATH
course as a tech elective.
Alternatively, we could use MATH344 to get the required hours, or look
for another 2 or 3 credit semester course to add as a requirement. But the
good news is we do not need the second CHEM course for ABET, and we can
probably make it work without MATH344 if we want to integrate that course
into our department teaching load.
> English 151 doing a survey to determine if a
3 hour or 4 hour course is better for the University. I voted for 3.
> Coordination
of Workload Policy with P&T and yearly evaluation procedures
> We
have been directed to make sure our P&T and yearly evaluation policies
are consistent with the workload
policy by the end of Winter Quarter 2009. Greg has drafted a Metric+Workload-Based Evaluation Table that combines
the metrics we must report on each year along with items that address the new
workload policy and the items from our historical yearly evaluations. The goal (I think) is to get a single
simple to use template that takes care of all of our yearly
reporting/evaluation/planning and meets the new college policies. The P&T Committee is also checking
over the document to make sure it is consistent with our P&T
guidelines.
> A
key point of discussion for the workload are all
non-course activities. One
possibility is to have a guideline like: “For all non-course related
activities, ~35 hours of effort is equivalent to 1 credit hour” (This
number is based on 9 month contract and 36 quarter credit hours as a full
load if all you did was teach)
> Professional
Engineers CPD hours for conferences: Ben Stuart called the State Board
and asked about CPD hours at conferences that did not specifically offer
certification. I asked to talk to
a Board representative that could address my question and was told that the
person I should talk to was not in the office today. However, the woman answering the phone
suggested that she could try to answer my question.
My
question was phrased something like "If I develop an attendance
certificate for a conference that does not offer one, and have individual
session chairs sign it to confirm my attendance in their session, would the
Board accept that document as a certified Qualifying Activity?" The answer was yes, that would qualify
as acceptable CPD units. I was
told that there was no need to call back and speak to anyone else.
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1/28/08 – University
Closed due to ice storm
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1/21/08
Attendees: Greg Kremer; Izzi Urieli, Frank Kraft, Rudy Pasic,
Khairul Alam, John
Cotton, Bob Williams, Dave Bayless, Carole Womeldorf, Jun Choi, Jay Gunasekera, David Jones, Stephanie Walker
Reminder
Schedule
> ME student / faculty social, at noon on Wed. Feb 4th
> 1804 – preliminary discussions with Rox (research) or David Descutner
(UGRAD) by March 15th, applications by April 15
For Discussion:
SAB/GSAB – Getting registered as a student
organization
Grad Program –
Frank discussed the need to write contracts soon for this year or else risk
losing access to the tuition waivers. He also asked for input on graduate
student admittance and funding, since we have had some recent problems
matching students with faculty, especially finding second year funding.
ABET –
Assessment status
Reminder - All assessment
reports are being collected by Stephanie and converted to pdf
form for storage online via a linked flowchart.
Status of Fall 08-09 Assessment Reports
ME101 - ?
ME224 - submitted
ME288 – Khairul is working with Jesus and
will submit a joint one before the end of the quarter
ME301 - submitted
ME314 - submitted
ME321 – Promised by next week
ME388 - submitted
ME412 - in process
ME470 – submitted
Q2S – review spreadsheet
> the credit hour creep caused by 4 quarter
hour to 3 semester hour transitions causes our base curriculum to be 3-10
semester hours over our target, depending on whether we take 2 semesters of Chemistry
and the decisions on the number of credit hours for some of the service
courses. We starting talking
about how can we deal with this, keeping in mind the
“ideal semester curriculum” we have been planning.
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1/14/08
Attendees: Greg Kremer; Rudy Pasic, Khairul Alam, John Cotton, Bob
Williams, Dave Bayless, Carole Womeldorf,
Jun Choi, Jay Gunasekera,
Stephanie Walker
Reminder
Schedule
For Info:
Q2S
Update: Jeff Giesey and Gary Nieman are the
transition facilitators, all signs indicate we are moving forward despite
budget woes, Transition Procedures still being defined, working on ways to
get all departments to publish a “memo of intent” for their
courses that impact other departments…
Faculty
Senate update –
Rudy talked about tensions at the faculty senate meeting, issues with the
provost search committee, and a brief update on the unionization
“movement”
Budget
info – It
looks like next fiscal year will be rough. The college is looking for sources of
“soft money” to cover salary temporarily. The department has a concern that if
we show we can cover costs temporarily will we be expected to cover them
permanently.
Grad
Program
>
Dennis got a positive response concerning a proposal to “rename”
the IE PhD program to “Mechanical and Systems Engineering PhD”,
so we will proceed in this direction.
A “rationale” for the name change is due to the college by
the end of the quarter.
CAD
Lab – TJ’s office hours are 8-11AM, contact him directly or through
John if you have computer issues you’d like him to deal with.
PCARD
/ CONCUR info
>
PCARD change necessary since American Express bought out GE Corporate
Services.
> PARIS will go away and the new CONCUR
system will handle everything from reservations through reimbursements in the
one system. There will be
training sessions for all employees soon – it will be self-scheduled
with many options. More info to
follow.
Free
Solar Cells -
Boxes of 50 silicon solar cells and cover glass that were left over from a
Mars Orbiter satellite are available for a $5 donation to cover the cost of
shipping. They are about 14% efficient. I do not have any interconnects.
If
interested, contact Bob Twiggs, Microshare Co., Sunnyvale, CA , RJTwiggs@gmail.com
For Discussion:
Winter
Quarter Class issues? None
Faculty
Evaluations this year? No, unless the budget issues are resolved and merit pay is available
SAB/GSAB
– No report
Next Week:
>
Assessment data review for Fall 2008-2009,
in Area of Expertise meetings
Area of Expertise Group 1: Thermal Systems, Lab /
Experimental Methods, and Service Courses [Members as of September
2008: Jun Choi, Izzi Urieli, Dave Bayless, Carole Womeldorf, Khairul Alam, Jesus Pagan]
Area of Expertise Group 2:
Mechanical Systems, Materials & Manufacturing, Design, and
Computers/Simulation [Members as of September 2008: Bob
Williams, Rudy Pasic, Frank Kraft, Jay Gunasekera, Greg Kremer, Ken Halliday,
John Cotton]
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Open items:
> Technical Writing Committee: (John, Greg, Frank,...)
> Develop standard Technical Writing guidelines for the
department (common expectations for reports).
> Define a standard citation format for all
departmental undergraduate (lab and design reports) and graduate (project and
thesis) reports.
> Other Items
> SAB Suggestion: Create a suggested tech electives sheet for the ME program (Ken
offered to work on this)
> Address issue with transfer students and total # of
hours of Math and BS (in catalogue, DARS, and by assigning a "transfer
advisor"?)
> Address issue of the lack of courses for students
early in the program (if they do not start in MATH263A)
> Promote tech elective "concentrations" such
as Energy, Biomedical, Robotics, Automotive, Manufacturing, ...
> Develop department-level understanding of an
appropriate scope and level of difficulty for a graduate project (vs. a
thesis).
> Need more SAB members (personal invitations to
freshmen, sophomores and juniors) and GSAB members
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