Curriculum Committee ("CC") Minutes for 25 April 1995

______________________________________________________________________________


Attending:  Fujimura, Kerr, Perlman, Soundararajan, Weide, Yagel, Yeack, Zhao

  Last week's minutes neglected to mention that Kikuo volunteered to
  be the department's expert on the advanced CS GRE exam, so that we
  can better keep track of our courses' relationship to that test.

* Recommendation to faculty on three proposed pilots (694s):
  *  Capstone design course for CIS hardware/software option in engineering
  *  Object-oriented programming
  *  Object-oriented design and analysis
  
  All three were approved unanimously for recommendation to the faculty
  at the May 15 faculty meeting.
  
  We briefly discussed where the students for these courses would come
  from, and concluded that:
  - Capstone design course would probably reduce demand for CIS 778,
    perhaps resulting in offering of 778 just once per year, not twice.
  - OO analysis and design, and OO programming, together would probably
    draw mostly students now taking CIS 516 and 770, and possibly also
    a few now taking CIS 630, 677, 681/781, and a few other tech
    electives.  Gary pointed out that "people choose electives based
    largely on their schedules", which seemed generally true in our
    experience, suggesting that careful scheduling of both old and new
    courses could heavily influence relative demand.
    
* Discussion of proposed ethics course for CIS majors (Bruce)
  
  Ken reported (through Bruce) that the pilot of the ethics course
  as a 2-hr course went well, because it served also as the third writing
  course.  However, as a 1-hr course, it was unsatisfactory.  We discussed
  several options, including:
  - Check on how 560 is doing in serving as the third writing course;
    perhaps we should reconsider that decision unless it's working well.
    (Bruce will talk with Tom and Mukesh about their experience in 560.)
  - Check on the net for information about how others teach an ethics
    course.  (Gary checked and obtained information about MIT courses,
    which was passed on to Ken for his comment.)
  We determined that we need to consider several scenarios in order to
  determine the appropriate format, objectives, costs and benefits of
  various approaches.  There is a need to do something on this front
  quickly, however, since this is an important cog in the accreditation
  picture.
  
  Question: If we continue to pilot this course as a 694, will
  graduates who have the 694 be deemed to have met the accreditation
  requirements?  If so, perhaps a careful and deliberate approach will
  be the best one, since the pilot did not demonstrate that we have
  a satisfactory approach now.  We will surely have a permanent version
  in place before there is any accreditation visit (well, likely... :-).
        
 _____________________________________________________________________________


Next meeting: Tuesday, May 9, 1995, 10:30-11:30 AM, in DL 698.


Respectfully submitted,

	Bruce W. Weide, CC Chair