Excerpts from the 21 Nov Faculty meeting that are (a) suitable for public disclosure and (b) perhaps of interest to the broad student community follow.
Unlike meeting minutes, which are official and approved by faculty vote, this summary is mine alone and has not been vetted or approved by the faculty.
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Approval of the Minutes
Minues of faculty meeting Oct 17th were approved as distributed to the faculty
Remarks, announcements from Director Campbell
Updates on renovation of Kimball and Upson were provided. A strategic agreement with JPL was signed 8 Nov, leading to new opportunities for collaboration with JPL. The college budget committee is currently addressing issues related to the new budget model.
Report from Wolfgang Sachse, Assoc Director for UG Affairs
Midterm evaluations were discussed. The town hall meeting was summarizes with attention to requests that came from the UG students. The class of 2014 had 152 students; the class of 2015 165, and the class of 2016 is projected as 169. The CCGB meeting was discussed related to physics instruction. Final grades are due Dec 23.
Report from Brian Kirby, Assoc Director for Grad Affairs
SGRS will happen Mar 6/7. Todd Humpreys is keynote. Survey of TAs indicates no clear deviation from grad school policies but some points of concern. Three key areas that correlated with students concerns about excessive time spent include (1) designing problem sets (2) disorganized professors (3) imbalanced efforts for classes with multiple TAs. Admissions and recruiting will be similar in 2014 as in 2013. Kirby will send info to faculty by 7 Jan.
Reports from School/college committees
A report on Skorton’s address to the Faculty Senate was given an discussion ensued regarding a committee informing undergraduate advising.
Motions
A motion to approve changes to the syllabet for MAE2030 was made by J Burns and passed unanimously.
J Burns adjourned the meeting at 2:06pm.