An Coiste Feabhais Acadúil
The Committee on Academic Quality Improvement
The Academic Quality Assurance Programme 2004 - 2005
REVIEW OF
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING HYDROLOGY
Final Report
2nd March 2005
Review Report: Engineering Hydrology 2004-05
This is the Report of the Review Group to the Department of Engineering Hydrology
(DEH) on Tuesday 1st February, 2005. The Department had already prepared and
submitted a 'Self Assessment Report' that, with other documentation, was made
available to the review team in advance of the visit.
The Review Group consisted of: Mr Tony Smyth, Director of Engineering
Services, Office of Public Works, Dublin (Chairman); Dr Michael Bruen, Senior
Lecturer, Department of Civil Engineering, University College Dublin; and Dr Pieter
de Laat, Associate Professor in Land and Water Development, UNESCO-IHE
Institute for Water Education, The Netherlands; and Dr Kathryn Moore, Lecturer in
the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences acting as Rapporteur.
The report is structured to cover the following main topics:
1. Aims and Objectives
2. Organization and Management
3. Programmes and Instruction
4. Scholarship and Research
5. Community Service
6. The Wider Context
7. Summary and Concluding Remarks
1.
Aims and Objectives
The Review Group agrees that the department’s aims and objectives in its Strategic
Plan are worthy and clear. However, the Self-Assessment Report of the Department
has fewer aims than its own Strategic Plan (2000-2005). The additional aims of the
strategic plan should be included in the self-assessment report, to bring the two
documents into line. The Department should consider including the additional aims
when preparing a revised Strategic Plan, which we assume will be during 2005.
2.
Organization and Management
There has been a change from a systematic management system to an informal
management system, precipitated by a reduction in the staffing levels of the
Department in 2000. Management on a personal level has been successful in
developing a congenial, familial atmosphere and has enabled technical staff to avail of
career development opportunities. It is evident to the Review Group that technical
and administrative staff, in particular, have a high level of job satisfaction.
Workloads are distributed according to the preferences of, and agreed by, the staff.
Contact hours with students are very high but this has been willingly undertaken by
the Department as a service to the University and to maintain the profile of Hydrology
in the University. Moreover, this is the result of the facilitating nature of the
Department in agreeing to requests for service teaching from other departments,
highlighting the need for Engineering Hydrology teaching in both the Faculties of
Science and Engineering. The commitment in terms of contact hours is not reflected
in the FTEs earned by the Department: It does not have its own degree programmes
and this is a disadvantage in terms of earning FTEs. The commitment in terms of
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Review Report: Engineering Hydrology 2004-05
contact hours also limits the time available for members of staff to undertake research
and to develop research proposals.
The relationship between the Head of the Engineering Hydrology Department
and the Heads of Departments for which teaching is provided is excellent and allows
timetable and curriculum matters to be readily resolved. The Department and its
constituent staff are tremendously well respected by their colleagues in the Faculties
of Science and Engineering, as well as their students and graduates, both nationally
and internationally. The department has a student feedback mechanism of course
evaluation questionnaires in operation. Not all courses are systematically evaluated
and the range of questions asked is inadequate. No information is obtained on how
well the student was enabled to achieve the learning outcomes, on whether the student
considered the study load was reasonable, the balance between lecture and
exercise/laboratory/workshop was right and whether the course was
assessed/examined in an appropriate way. The Department has initiated discussions
with CELT. It is the opinion of the Review Group that the quality of all educational
activities should continue to be evaluated and that more searching evaluation
procedures are developed further, in cooperation with CELT.
3.
Programmes and Instruction
The Department of Engineering Hydrology has no degree programme but provides
important service teaching to departments in the Faculties of Science and
Engineering. It is accepted by Civil Engineering that the subjects of hydraulics and
hydrology are essential planks of its Civil and Environmental degree programme. In
the view of this Review Group, the Department of Engineering Hydrology should
have a direct input into the quality assessment and curriculum review process of the
Civil and Environmental Engineering degree programmes.
Most of the courses delivered by the Department combine lectures with
laboratory practical and/or tutorial assignments. It was unanimously agreed by both
students and staff that the problem-based assignments were extremely beneficial, and
facilitated student understanding of the theoretical material. The spreadsheet format
of some of the assignments facilitated development of transferable skills. The
students especially appreciated the hands-on nature of the laboratory practicals and
the requirement for a written report and oral test or examination, for which credit was
given, because it built confidence and alleviated some of the examination pressure.
The Review Group advises the staff to continue developing assignments for EXCEL
workshops and to find assistance from postgraduate students (within the Department
or other departments), for example, to allow the undergraduates to work individually
on their worksheets. Undergraduate students also noted that delivery of some tutorials
by staff other than the lecturers would help to obtain alternative approaches to
problems. The scarcity of postgraduate researchers available for this is a function of
the small size of the department but consideration should be given to utilizing
postgraduates with relevant expertise in the Departments of Civil Engineering and
Earth and Ocean Science.
The consequence of large class sizes on the provision of laboratory practicals
is an increase in contact hours for minimal increase in FTEs. Field-teaching was
provided in the past to those students taking the MSc programme but there is a lack of
fieldwork in the undergraduate hydrology courses, though appropriate field
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equipment is available within the department for small numbers of students.
Introducing field-teaching should be given consideration, perhaps in collaboration
with staff from other departments, though it is appreciated that large class sizes will
limit field-teaching opportunities in the compulsory courses. For instance, it might
become a component of EH407, which generally has fewer numbers than EH406.
From interviews with students it appeared that all of them found the courses
on Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering relevant for the programme they had
chosen. However, the Review Group were concerned that, although all Civil
Engineering students took EH406 because it is compulsory, far fewer were choosing
to take the optional follow-on EH407 course. This indicates they did not see
hydrology as an integral part of a Civil Engineer’s skills. Interviews with a small
number of students did not identify any major reason for this. Given the importance of
hydrology, the Review Group suggests that the Department, in conjunction with the
Department of Civil Engineering, make efforts to address this issue. The review
group noted that the student questionnaires, in contrast to the student interviews,
revealed their perception that the hydraulics and hydrology courses were difficult in
comparison to other courses. Reasons for this were explored in the interviews with
students. It seems that the high level of mathematics in these courses is, per se, NOT a
major problem, but the students emphasised that their difficulty was with the number
of formulae involved. They acknowledged that these were provided on handouts (and
in exams) so that remembering them was also not an issue, but remembering how to
use them was. The Review Group acknowledge that these courses, by their nature,
require large numbers of formulae and perceptions of difficulty are unavoidable.
Despite the perception of difficulty, examination results for hydrology/hydraulics
were reported NOT to be out of line with the students’ grades for other subjects. The
students perceived that the teaching objectives for some individual lectures were not
always clear and this lead to some difficulty in their following the logical thread of
that particular lecture. This was not apparent from the summary of the student
feedback questionnaires in the Department’s self-assessment report.
4.
Scholarship and Research
The academic staff of this department are internationally recognised for the quality of
their research. This is reflected in invitations to act as editors for the highest rated
journals in their field and to sit on expert advisory groups, at both national and
international level. The department has a good research publication rate for its size.
Three postgraduate (PhD) students are in the process of completing their theses, there
is a ready supply of good international postgraduate students willing to come to study
in Galway, if financial support were available, and there is one project ready to
commence. Although many of their large-scale research proposals have not been
successful to date, the staff should not be discouraged from the increasingly
competitive quest for research funding. In the experience of the Review Group, the
number of applications that have been unsuccessful is not unusual. Moreover, the
department has some inter-disciplinary research projects with cognate disciplines
within the University and other institutions in progress. NUI Galway has identified
Environmental Change as a strategic research direction of the University and the
Department of Engineering Hydrology should explore the development of further
interfaculty collaborations within this framework. The discipline of hydrology is
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ideally placed to link the Faculties of Science and Engineering in this research
activity. The University should support this venture.
5.
Community Service
The Head of Department is important to many of the University management
initiatives and is regularly requested to sit on a variety of committees and boards
across the disciplines. He undertakes this work enthusiastically and altruistically.
There is an impressive list of external activities listed in the Self-Assessment
Report. The Department’s contribution to international and national specialised
committees is a reflection of, and enhances, the Department’s reputation, and
consequently the reputation of the University. The specialised assistance provided by
the Department to State Agencies, Local Authorities and Consulting Engineers is an
appropriate service to the Engineering Profession. In addition to generating a small
amount of income for the Department, it maintains their public profile and that of the
University as experts in hydrology. Much of this income is used to subsidise students
without funding and to hire specialist teaching assistance.
6.
The Wider Context
Since the last review of the Department, significant changes have taken place in the
department. The funding of the postgraduate programme on Hydrology by the
Department for Foreign Affairs terminated after 21 years while the number of
academic staff members has reduced to two. Since the year 2000 there is no
University in Ireland that offers a postgraduate programme in Hydrology.
In the light of the age profile of the academic staff in the department and the
emerging policy of the University to generate larger academic units, the dominant
concern of the Review Group is the future of the Department and of the discipline of
engineering hydrology at NUI Galway. The continuation of hydraulics and hydrology
as disciplines within the University has been stated to the Review Group as essential
to the academic integrity of the Civil Engineering degree programmes. It is the
opinion of the Review Group, following consultation, that it is also of major
importance to the Environmental Science, Environmental Engineering and Earth and
Ocean Science degree programmes. It is now urgent to plan for the continuation in
NUI Galway of this internationally renowned resource. It is the preferred approach to
change in this University that the initiative for such proposals should be generated
from the Department concerned rather than imposed from the centre. Therefore, it is
the recommendation of the Review Group that the Department should make planning
for the future of the discipline its highest priority and, bearing in mind the heavy
teaching workload of the staff, that some resources be made available for the
production and pursuit of appropriate initiatives.
The Review Group noted that, in the 1999 Review of the Department, there
was a perception of difficulty in communicating with the University Administration
and of consequent difficulty in furthering initiatives. This was not raised during this
review, so we presume it is not now an issue. This should be a further encouragement
for the Department to seek the resources to produce a strategic plan for the future of
hydrology/hydraulics. It is our impression that such a plan would be welcomed by the
University.
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7.
Summary and Concluding Remarks
Since the support of the Department for Foreign Affairs ceased in 2000, the
Department no longer organizes a postgraduate programme and the staff is reduced to
two professors and three supporting staff. Despite this reduction, the atmosphere in
the department is excellent and the commitment and dedication of all the staff to
carrying out their duties is very obvious. The Department of Hydrology provides a
large number of service lectures to various undergraduate programmes in the
University. The courses are considered important or essential by the academic staff
of the Faculties of Science and Engineering, and are generally well appreciated by the
students. With the growing number of students the workload for providing service
lectures and laboratory workshops is extremely high.
The Review Group found the Self-Assessment Report and the additional
material, provided prior to the start of the visit, informative and of great assistance for
critical evaluation. Missing data were supplied during the day upon request. The
report signals various small and larger problems, but it does not always indicate the
way in which they could be solved. The Review Group suggests the following
actions to be taken by the Department:
•
It is urgent that a new strategic plan for the future of hydrology/hydraulics in
NUIG is drafted in consultation with other departments and this plan be
forwarded to the Academic Planning and resource Committee for
consideration as to its implementation.
•
More time should be spent in the pursuit of research funding at the cost of
service lectures in order to maintain the international reputation of the
department.
•
The department should consider including field teaching as part of the
hydrology courses.
•
The questionnaires for the evaluation of the service courses should be
reformulated in consultation with CELT.
The Review Group suggests the following actions to be taken by other sectors of the
University:
•
The Curriculum Review Committee of the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering must involve the Department of Engineering
Hydrology in any quality assessment and curriculum change of all
programmes to which DEH contributes.
•
The Research Office and the University Management support the research
initiatives and applications of the Department.
•
The University management should support the Department in its drafting of a
Strategic Plan for the future of the discipline and help to formulate ways in
which the Plan may be implemented.
Comments on The Methodology of the Review Process
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1. A one-day review was just about adequate for this small Department, where there
were no internal issues or conflicts or differences. Extra time could be made available
by holding the general staff meeting on the first evening before the dinner.
2. The meeting with the Assistant Secretary in the Registrar’s Office would have been
better placed early in the review to inform the Review Group of University policy and
strategies.
Mr Tony Smyth (Chair)
Dr Michael BrueN
Dr Pieter de Laat
Dr Kathryn Moore (Rapporteur)
2nd March 2005
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