Curriculum Committee ("CC") Minutes for 14 February 1996

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Attending:  Arora, Chiang, Fujimura, Goyal, Kerr, Mamrak, Michaylov, Ogden,
	    Quinlan, Raghavan, Supowit, Weide, Yeack
	    
* Report on 221/222 plan

  Bruce reported that he and Tim are working with Stu to come up with
  a compromise plan and will be back for CC endorsement of a revised
  recommendation before the end of this quarter.  Faculty action will
  be sought before the end of April.
  
* Report on Engineering College Committee on Academic Affairs developments

  Bruce reported that potentially troublesome proposals regarding
  EG 167 and the Gateway program in Engineering have been tabled in CCAA.
  But these issues will be back on the floor by next quarter for sure.
  CIS will work with EG to try to get to the bottom of the EG 167 syllabus
  that was proposed by EG for CCAA approval.  As mentioned in the minutes
  of the January 31 meeting, that syllabus is far too ambitious to be
  realistic.

* Discussion of possible changes to CIS 201

  CC discussed several issues regarding CIS 201 and its potential role as
  the only really introductory programming course taught by CIS.  Issues:    
    - CIS 201 and 211 are very similar for the first 7 weeks.  Then CIS 211
      covers spreadsheets, where 201 covers functions, procedures,
      and scopes of identifiers.  When 211 is withdrawn, the 201
      approach will be appropriate since spreadsheets were introduced
      into 211 for the business school and their students will be taking
      CIS 200.
    - CIS 201 should have labs that are moderately challenging in order
      to satisfy the (implicit) "problem solving" objective.  First, CC
      agreed that this objective should be made explicit in the 201
      title and description.  But there was some question about the nature
      of the lab assignments in 201 vs. 211.  The 211 lab assignments
      apparently are more challenging than in 201; but it was argued
      that the 211 instructors also give students more detailed
      guidance about how to do these labs.
    - CC agreed that 201 should have "math placement level R or Math 075
      or equivalent" as a prerequisite -- which is the minimum math required
      for graduation anyway -- and that this change (from no prerequisite
      now) could permit a slight increase in the difficulty of 201 labs.
    - CC agreed the general information statement for 201 should be fixed.
      The description needs to be changed, too, so it does not emphasize
      social science applications.  (It seems the current 201 has not
      much more social science emphasis in the labs than 211, anyway.)

  Jason, Bill, and Bruce will try to hammer out a description and set of
  objectives suitable for the revised 201, and then return to CC for
  a recommendation to the faculty.
  
  
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Next meeting: 28 February 1996, 3:30 PM, in DL 698.


Respectfully submitted,

	Bruce W. Weide, CC Chair