Some Areas of Concern for discussion:

• Number of EE Majors (see attached for details)

• Fall/Spring EE Course Imbalance (see attached email from Gene Bialczak)

Of our EE courses for majors, this year there are 7 in the Fall (226, 227L, 310, 320, 348, 436, 445) and 15 (!) in the Spring (228, 229L, 321, 322, 325,350, 352, 397, 415, 421, 425, 449, 455, 459, 475)

• Note that for the 400-level courses, 2 are in the Fall, 7 in the Spring !

• This causes structural problems with student schedules, as Gene explains. This must be remedied.

• Course Time Conflicts (see attached email from Gene Bialczak)

In item 2. Of the attached email Gene Bialczak addresses course time conflicts, just among the EE courses. The real problem is rather worse, because there are also numerous conflicts with CS and ME courses commonly taken as electives by EE majors.

In preparation of the materials for the next Blue Book (and Orange Book) I am going to do my best to suggest ways to resolve these conflicts. Not everyone is going to be able to teach at the time they most like. Otherwise we are going to have even fewer EE majors. (Stan Eisenstat's CS major is very carefully tuned to avoid common time conflicts, one of the ways in which he makes the major attractive.)

• Undergraduate Enrollment in 400-level EE Courses (I'll have tabulations for all EE courses at the meeting)

• Undergraduate enrollment is very small.
• They are also mezzanine courses for grad. students, yet the undergrad./grad. purposes may have significant 'orthogonality'.
• Should the number and kinds of 400-level courses be reviewed?

Electrical Engineering Majors (October 2000)

____________________________________________

Nomenclature:

EE(ABET) speaks for itself

EE = either BS or BA Engineering Sciences--Electrical

EE/Music means a double major

EECS is our joint major with CS, with rising enrollment.

___________________________________________________________

EE SENIORS - 2001

David.Anjelly@Yale.Edu EE

Gautam.Bahl@Yale.Edu EE/BME

Eugene.Bialczak@Yale.Edu EE(ABET)

Chizuruoke.Chikwendu@Yale.Edu EECS

Samuel.Elder@Yale.Edu EE(ABET)

Michael.Feinberg@Yale.Edu EE

Sudarshan.Gururaj@Yale.Edu EECS

Elisha.Hack@Yale.Edu EE (on leave)

Swaminathan.Kumaresan@Yale.Edu EE(ABET)/Math, will finish Dec.'00

Gina.LaRossa@Yale.Edu EE(ABET)

Pablo.Leon@Yale.Edu EECS

Won-Hwan.Nam@Yale.Edu EE(ABET) Pre-Med

Anne.Platt@Yale.Edu EE/EPE

Kimberly.Stanford@Yale.Edu EE/Music

Philip.Sternhell@Yale.Edu EE

Elene.Terry@Yale.Edu EECS

----------------------

EE(ABET) = 5 (one on leave)

EE(+EE/?) = 7

EECS = 4

___________________________________________________________

EE JUNIORS - 2002

(the last class to graduate before ABET comes in the Fall of 2002. Compared to last year's sophomore records we lost 4 students - one seems to have left Yale, the other three I emailed to find out their present major)

Michelle.Brady@Yale.Edu EE(ABET?)

Ethan.Bregman@Yale.Edu EE

Henri.Chen@Yale.Edu EECS

Kimberley.Chen@Yale.Edu EECS

An.Doan@Yale.Edu EE

Alan.Ghelberg@Yale.Edu EE/Econ

Michael.Liu@Yale.Edu EECS

Andrew.R.Graham@Yale.Edu EECS

Abigail.Lubow@Yale.Edu EE/Internat.Studies

Samuel.Luckenbill@Yale.Edu EECS

Jonathan.Malkin@Yale.Edu EECS

Andrew.Mazurek@Yale.Edu EE

Rameez.Saleh@Yale.Edu EE

York.Yu@Yale.Edu EECS

----------------------

EE(ABET) = 1?

EE(+EE/?) = 6

EECS = 7

___________________________________________________________

EE SOPHOMORES - 2003

(tentative choice of major, incomplete name list. Many sophomores have not officially declared a major. But when they do so later, they are unlikely to be ABET, and by present trends more likely to be EECS than EE.)

Brook.Abdu@yale.edu EE

Adam.Feinstein@yale.edu EECS

Benjamin.Lin@yale.edu EECS

Thomas.Ni@yale.edu EE

Jane.Pak@yale.edu EECS

Maria.Pacana@yale.edu EE

Konstantinos.Rokas@yale.edu EE

Raul.Ruiz@yale.edu EECS

Eric.Stern@yale.edu EE(ABET)

Edward.Stewart@yale.edu EECS

Boting.Zhang@yale.edu EECS

==================================================

Comments by Gene Bialczak ('01 EE ABET) about Fall/Spring course offerings imbalance and time conflicts.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 7/17/00 2:42 PM

To: pjk

From: eugene.bialczak@yale.edu

Professor Kindlmann,

I'm writing to you about a few things in the ee department that Gina, Sam, and I were talking about with you one day towards the end of class. I know a lot of this has to do with how individual professors decide to do things, but they're just some suggestions and observations. Any semblance of harshness is completely unintentional.

1. There are currently (at least in last year's blue book) 7 ee courses in the fall (226, 310, 320, 348, 426, 436, 445) and about 14 in the spring (228, 321, 322, 325, 352, 397, 415, 418, 425, 449, 450, 455, 459, 475). This does not include Professor Kuc's new course, which I think you had said would take place in the spring, or senior projects (but aren't most of those done in the spring as well?)

Of these 7 in the fall, 4 of them can be considered somewhat of a 'core curriculum' (226, 310, 320, 348óall required for the accredited degree, and they're the pre-requisites to nearly all the upper level courses). Most majors have these completed by spring term of junior year.

The other three are 426, which won't be offered next year, 436, which wasn't offered last year, and 445. It's also of note that 2 of these 3 courses seem to fall into the signals and systems track. For a senior year ee major more interested in computer engineering or microelectronics, they'd have to look outside of the major for courses of interest to their major (most likely to CS and applied physics, respectively.) For those who have taken 310, 320, or 348 before their junior year (I know Gina, Sudarshan, and Ethan did), the situation is even worse. All in all, I think it would be good if some of the courses taught in the spring were taught in the fall. There's no reason for what appears to be a senior-year, fall-term dearth of classes.

2. In the spring, 322, 450, and 475 all meet at the same time. 425 meets at an overlapping time, which also happens to overlap with 415. With not that many courses (14, with 228 presumably taken before any of the others, making it more like 13), this much overlapping seems extreme. There's at least a good ten different possible 'time slots' during which courses can meet.

Furthermore, in the spring a mere 3 classes (321, 325, & 449) don't meet on Tuesday and Thursday. This clogs up those two days, causing the overlapping and making it hard for ee students to take many non-ee courses on those days. This situation is somewhat, but not completely, alleviated by taking 322 in the sophomore year. I did it, and would recommend it to any other ee major (again, most of whom have the requisite physics and calculus for the course by then.)

I realize that almost anything and everything I've said here might be rendered completely untrue by how classes are scheduled next year, but quite a few changes would have to take place in order for it to be so. [which have not yet happened. --pjk]

So thanks for listening. See you in the fall.

Gene