Metro Area Meeting
Saturday, March 1, 2003
Pasadena (Pasadena Sheraton Hotel)

The Engineering Discipline Meeting was called to order by Lead Faculty Member Jim Shackelford of UC Davis. Attendees were:

LaRue, John: UC Irvine (jclarue@uci.edu)
Metaxas, Linda: Allan Hancock College (lmetaxas@hancock.cc.ca.us)
Shackelford, James: UC Davis (jfshackelford@ucdavis.edu)
Sutton, Art: Cal Poly Pomona (awsutton@csupomona.edu)
Van Horn-Landre, Denise: Las Positas College (dvanhorn@clpccd.cc.ca.us)

The following topics were discussed:

Background on IMPAC/ELC and a Transfer A.S. Degree: We discussed the ongoing debate about a SCIGETC document similar to IGETC. The Engineering group continues to be opposed to this effort, given a) the similarity to IGETC that is discouraged for engineering students and b) the difficulty in producing a single set of common courses for the wide range of majors involved. For engineering transfers, we continue to prefer advisory guidelines provided by the IMPAC-Engineering set of courses based on the Engineering Liaison Council's (ELC) long-standing "Summit Agreement." Both IMPAC-Engineering and the "Summit Agreement" were given in the 2001-02 IMPAC Annual Report for Engineering. (It should be noted that the concept of at least two tracks for IMPAC - Engineering, as expressed in the Annual Report, for a) mechanical/civil engineering and b) electrical/computer engineering is the focus of ongoing debate within IMPAC and the ELC.)

At the Oakland IMPAC meeting on October 26, 2002, a creative alternative was suggested by Denise Van Horn-Landre, Articulation Officer at Las Positas College in Livermore. Ms. Van Horn-Landre also serves as the Articulation Officer for the IMPAC Engineering Discipline. Denise suggested and the overall group developed a limited set of science/math core courses proposed for a Transfer A.S. Degree that might be attractive to community colleges. We felt the proposed set of courses would not have the problems described above for SCIGETC and could be useful to the community college segment, possibly increasing the number of students who complete a degree at the community college. The Transfer A.S. Degree was discussed further at the Long Beach Meeting on November 16, 2002. For example, it was thought that differential equations would not be universal. Also, physics and chemistry might not apply for computer scientists. Also, several majors might not require chemistry.

CAN Courses for Engineering: A number of CAN courses for Engineering already exist covering many of the basic courses in the ELC "Summit Agreement." Two additional course descriptions would be useful: CAN ENGR 1 for an introductory course and CAN ENGR 9 for dynamics. We feel that this effort should be referred to the appropriate ELC Sub-committee.

Prerequisites for Engineering Materials: At the request of Denise Van Horn-Landre, we reviewed our individual experience with prerequisites for the engineering materials course, CAN ENGR 4.

A Master Grid of Lower Division Requirements in Engineering: At the November 16, 2002 Long Beach meeting, it was suggested that developing a master grid of the lower-division requirements in Engineering at all UC and CSU schools might not be too labor intensive. It is difficult for the IMPAC office to support such studies for individual programs without doing so for all areas. Denise Van Horn-Landre agreed to make an initial effort at such a grid for engineering.

Engineering Articulation: We agreed that engineering articulation is most successful when focused on primary feeder schools.

Legislative Bill 550: We felt the Bill was vague and did not indicate the necessary funding to achieve such goals.

Cross-Discipline Discussion: We sat in with Chemistry and Biology discussing the latest effort to produce a SCIGETC plan. Engineering continues to be concerned about its utility for the highly-specified process of engineering articulation.

Respectfully submitted,

James F. Shackelford
Lead Faculty Member for Engineering