Standards Committee ******************** AY : 2007-2008 Meeting: First Date : Nov 12, 2007 Time : 11:30-12:50 Place : Large Conf Room GITC 441x. *********************************************** Minutes of Standards Commitee Meeting (STC). by Alex Gerbessiotis *********************************************** ----------------------------------------------- 1. Meeting started at 11:45am. 2. Present: Vincent Oria Andrew Sohn Alex Gerbessiotis (chairing the meeting). Absent: B.Cohen (Conference Travel) 3. Agenda Items: a. Report of Past Activities (Grading Standards). b. Teaching of graduate courses [VOTE] c. Course Listing on the Web. 4. Report of Past Activities. The Chair of the committee (aka Chair) reported that this semester would be the second and final semester for the application of the grading standards per Departmental vote in Jan 2007. The Chair informed the members of the IS Department's use of our grading standard for IS courses offered in Summer 2007 and Fall 2007. Based on this activity the following plan of actions was discussed. 1. At the end of this semester the Chair will ask Institute Research and Planning (IRP) through the CS Department Chair to provide an audit of course grades for CS courses for Spring 2007 and Fall 2007. Such an audit will be discussed in a CS Standard Committee meeting in Jan 08. 2. At that meeting we will evaluate the audit data and decide on further actions which can include a. Updating the grading standard guidelines. b. Asking the Department to vote for the updated document to become permanent. c. Coordination of similar activities with the IS Department and possibly jointly approving of the grading guidelines to become a CCS-wide standard. 5. The following motion was put forward by Vincent Oria and unanimously voted in favor and approved by the committee who were present in the meeting. "600- and 700-level CS courses should be taught by faculty members (TTF,Special Lecturers or Adjuncts) who have a terminal (i.e. PhD) degree in CS or a related computing field." The item is expected to be put to vote by the CS Department in the next faculty meeting scheduled for Wed Nov 21. 6. Andrew Sohn brought forward for discussion an item related to the writeup of the CS Department By Laws. He proposed that some standards of conduct for faculty participating in Departmental committees be established. Such standards should/could include a. a description of the charge of each committee, b. the obligations of its members (eg. to attend its meetings), c. scheduling of meetings, d. reporting of activities. It was suggested that if Andrew could come up with one or two paragraphs describing these items these could be inserted into the draft By Law document being compiled by J. Leung and put to vote by the Department. 7. Web-course listing Discussion started on the issue of listing course information on the Web. The Chair proposed that useful to students information could include the following. a. Course List of all active courses with UCRC-approved or Graduate Council-approved Syllabus. For undergraduate courses, the ABET Syllabus of the recently completed accreditation review could also be added. EFFECT: NJIT approved course information will become readily available and permanently archived in electronic form. No new information will be generated. UPDATE FREQUENCY: Rare ; every time a course is created or officially updated. b. Current course list that supplements the existing one available at the Departmental Web-page that includes the electronic version of the syllabus handed out in Class (per Provost guideline). EFFECT: The syllabus document handed out in class will be permanently stored in electronic form. No new information will be generated. UPDATE FREQUENCY: Once a semester; Each faculty will upload the relevant information and the list can be generated automatically (say one every day). c. Guidance course materials (eg. exams) for students. It was proposed that for at least required courses a sample final exam be made available. Vincent Oria proposed that all exams of the past 5 years should become available. The logistics of this will have to be further investigated. EFFECT: Faculty will need to provide one exam paper for every unique course they taught. Although no new information will be generated/authored faculty will need to spend some time to collect archived information. UPDATE FREQUENCY: An one-off event. If there is a need to keep this material up-to-date, then an once a year update suffices. d. List of Common Exams It was proposed that a page on the Departmental Web-page lists the schedules of all common exams. Andrew Sohn observed that the Registrar's office already provides this information, and thus a link to that page suffices for all purposes. The committee agreed with that. EFFECT: A link will be created to the Registrar's web-page. UPDATE FREQUENCY: none; a link will be created. LOGISTICS: 1. For itemd a-d above space in the Departmental web-page needs to be allocated. This might involve Wen. 2. Vincent will use a student in an MS project or an Independent Study course who will implement the system that will support a-d. 3. If final editing is required for the system, Angel might get involved. But if her effort is required she will have to stop working on the current Course-Listing web-page. 8. Meeting was adjourned at 12:45. Minutes compiled by Alex. Gerbessiotis.