CS Faculty Meeting Agenda:

– Announcements, new initiatives, and recent good news: – Presentation by Denis Dean, Head GIS– Presentation by Robert Robb, AVP Research– Presentation by Ed Esposito, ECS– Presentation by Chris Davis, President of CSGS– Survey of Grad Students

– Preliminary discussion on the T/T CS teaching load policy

Good News Kevin: new NSF grant Murat: new NIH grant jointly with Vanderbilt U Murat’s research on Facebook receives coverage by

popular media University received 16.8 Million donation as part of the

Tier One initiative

Family news: Jason Jue: father of a new baby boy

Teaching Load Policy

Objective:

Senior Design Pre-requisite Issue CS 4485 Computer Science Project (4 semester hours) This course is

intended to complement theory and to provide an in-depth, hands-on experience in all aspects of a software development project. Students will work in teams on projects of interest to industry and will be involved in specifying the problem and its solution, designing and analyzing the solution, developing the software architecture, along with implementation and testing plans. The deliverables will include reports that document these steps as well as a final project report and a user manual of the developed system. Teams will also make presentations during the class as well as demonstrate their software. Prerequisite: CS/SE 3345, CE/CS/SE 3354, at least three CS 43XX classes including at least one elective. (4-0) S

Enrollment Stats (ca. 8/21)

Major FR SPH JR SR MS Ph.D Total SCH

CE 84 45 42 23 58 11 263 1,323

CS 129 83 152 193 412 112 1,081 11,382

EE 68 95 154 244 198 118 877 7,162

EE Microelec.         37 27 64 1,071

EE Telecom         44   44 101

MSEN         13 28 41 372

Mech. Eng. 73 28 23 12 5   141 362

SE 46 28 49 64 77 7 271 776

TE 4 6 8 15 36 12 81 302

Total School 404 285 428 551 880 315 2,898 22,887

Total CS/SE 175 111 201 257 489 119 1,352 12,158

Gopal Gupta

Views on Future Directions of the CS

Department

CS@UT: Special Challenges We are a large department

– A large BS program (700 students)– A large MS program (450 students)– A large Ph.D. program (150 students)

We have a special location– Surrounded by high-tech industry second only to

silicon valley

We have unique challenges– Maintain excellence in all 3 programs– Serve the surrounding high-tech industry

We need to innovate and lead in every aspect

BS Program Goal:

– Be the best program at a public univ. in Texas– Achieved: when top N. Texas students prefer to go to

UTD rather than to UT Austin

Steps to achieve the goal:– Ensure that students can program well by the time

they finish the CS 1-2 sequence• Tutoring program already in place: expand it

– Strengthen the senior design course:• Participate in Dean Spong’s funded project initiative

• Recruit industry people to act as mentors to senior design teams

– Start a mentoring program for BS students

Graduate Programs Recognize that we have two types of graduate

populations:– Ph.D./MS students (interested in knowledge for the sake of

knowledge)– Professional M.S. students (interested in knowledge for the sake

of money) The classes for these two populations need to be separate Professional MS students tend to negatively affect the

learning experience of Ph.D. students Ties nicely to the teaching load policy (see later) Allows us to drop admission standards for M.S. students

a notch to: – increase our numbers (to increase university revenues)– fulfill industry needs

Teaching Load Policy Ideal teaching load:

– T/T: 2+1 (includes 1 Ph.D. level course) if graduating 0.5 Ph.D. student per year

– SLs: 3+3 with prof. development & service Issues:

– more research oriented courses for Ph.D. students (+)

– difficult to fill seminar classes as Ph.D. students are not required to take many organized classes (-)

– May make it difficult to cover classes, unless MS classes become large (-)

Student Organizations Aspire to have strong student organizations

– Vital to the health of the department Student organizations already exist:

– SACM very active– CS GSA dormant, but being revived

Student presidents of these two organization will sit in faculty meetings

The two presidents will serve as two way communication channel between faculty and the two student populations (undergrad and grad)

Strong student organizations and their close interaction with faculty will help in developing a feeling of community.

Invest Efforts in Fundraising Writing more/varied grant proposals:

– Focus on interdisciplinary research• Incentive program to be announced soon including funds to travel to Washington

– Non-traditional programs (ADVANCE, IGERT, GK-12)– Set up a program to provide internal feedbacks (We need to increase our success rate)

Entrepreneurial efforts (next slide) Teach certificate courses

– Learn from business school– Courses on: i-Phone programing, Semantic web, o-o design, IA

Set up high-school summer camps (plans under way) Raise funds from cos that hire our co-ops

– Local companies derive significant economic benefit– Ask them to contribute; Need to work with Jerry Alexander

Encourage Entrepreneurship

North Texas has ingredients similar to Silicon Valley:– Large no. of high-tech companies– A Univ. (UTD) with a large CS dept– (Now) avenues for raising capital [ETF]

No reason why we can’t be just as successful as Stanford!

Need to inculcate a culture of entrepreneurship among our students (with faculty helping them)

Can also be a source of research funding: – Texas ETF is expressly designed to bring University

technology to the marketplace

Faculty Hiring

Upper administration’s plan is to not grow CS further significantly

However, some strategic areas need to be expanded upon with senior hires

The undergraduate degree hours have increased by about 5% (senior design)

5% increase in faculty size So perhaps 4-5 hires in the next few years

to compensate for losses and new needs

Towards Tier I Need to work on all fronts:

– Continue our quest towards excellence in research/teaching (quality vs quantity)

• Incentive program for publishing in top conferences– Continue our quest to become the best BS CS/SE program in a

public university in Texas– Separate the professional MS program from the Ph.D. program;

increase number of MS students – Invest effort in fundraising through all means available (federal,

state, industry, courses, camps)– Encourage entrepreneurship among students– Build a strong feeling of community within the department– Demonstrate leadership in everything we do

CONSTANTLY KEEP REINVENTING OURSELVES

What is needed:

More ideas to reinvent ourselves: – I’ll get together with each one of you in the

near future to hear your ideas

Volunteers:– To implement some of these ideas

A half day retreat in September to chalk up department’s strategic plan

Committee Reports    a. Bylaws committee

b. Equipment Committee     c. Ph.D. Committee     d. Search Committee     e. Grad Curriculum Committee     f. UG Curriculum Committee     g. Annual Review Committee     h. Scholarship Committee     i. Grad Admissions Committee     j. Colloquium Committee     k. Publicity Committee     l. TA selection committee     m. TA Assignment committee

n. Library Committee