Curriculum Committee ("CC") Minutes for 7 February 1995 ______________________________________________________________________________ Attending: Fujimura, Kerr, Ogden, Perlman, Weide, Yeack, Zhao 1. Course withdrawals CC agreed to propose to the faculty that the following courses should be officially withdrawn, so as not to give prospective students a patently false impression of what courses CIS actually teaches. CC decided not to withdraw four other courses which have not been taught recently (CIS 548, 615, 732, and 765), where some CIS faculty member expressed an interest in retaining the course, or where potential reinstatement problems (e.g., "turf" problems) might remotely be anticipated if we hired someone in the area. CIS 459.11: Programming in PL/1 -- This course has not been offered since SP 1989 (apparently the only offering) and it was cancelled due to low enrollment. There is apparently no faculty member interested in reviving it, and little apparent audience for it. CIS 715, 716, 717: Algebraic Algorithms I, II, III -- This sequence has not been offered or taught since the 1989-90 academic year. There is apparently no faculty member interested in reviving it, and little apparent audience for it. CIS 726: Introduction to Automata and Language Theory -- This course has not been taught since WI 1989. The material in the official course description is now covered in CIS 625, 655, and 725. There is apparently no faculty member interested in reviving it, and little apparent audience for it. CIS 886: Introduction to Doctoral Studies -- This course has not been taught since AU 1992 and is no longer part of the CIS Ph.D. program. We have heard no clamor for its return. There is apparently no faculty member interested in reviving it, and little apparent audience for it. CC agreed that CIS 548: Computer Science for High School Teachers, last taught SU 1987, should be put in "limbo" (which means it will not appear in the course offerings bulletin but will remain "on the books" as a CIS course). This should have happened automatically, but apparently Office of Academic Affairs has failed to act on it. We simply propose to remind them. These recommendations will be presented for a faculty vote at the next CIS faculty meeting. 2. Proposed software spine (221, 222, 321, 560, 680) changes Four issues were raised regarding the written responses Tim Long offered in response to CC's general and specific questions about this proposal: * We should know the connection to the CS advanced GRE. * We should think more about plans for what to do if no external funding is obtained, and about phase-in and/or fallback plans if funding is obtained but it is insufficient to do the whole job properly. * We should know how many students take CIS 221 and no more CIS, so we can determine whether to worry much about such students (presumably mostly non-majors and those who decide not to major in CIS after 221). Cheryl offered to get numbers on this. * We should first have general department agreement on the "philosophy" of a first CIS course for majors. There seem to be three basic approaches: (1) "Breadth" approach [e.g., Denning committee suggestions] (2) "Procedural epistemology (a.k.a. Abelson/Sussman)" approach [Scheme] (3) "First-of-software-sequence" approach [e.g., current CIS curriculum, and proposal for software spine changes now under consideration] The last issue was deemed central to a decision on how to proceed with detailed discussion of the proposed software spine changes. Anyone with comments who cannot attend the next CC meeting on Tues Feb 14 at 10:30 AM should send their remarks to cis.committee.curriculum by 14 Feb early AM. _____________________________________________________________________________ Next meeting: Tuesday, 14 February 1995, 10:30-11:20 AM, in DL 698. Respectfully submitted, Bruce W. Weide, CC Chair