Meeting Minutes – Advisory Board Fall Meeting
Department of Chemical Engineering – New Mexico Tech
December 10, 2010
Present:
Faculty: Leclerc, Riley, Tartis, Price, Bretz
IAB: Honnell, Carnes, Traeger, Harper, Boneau, Hooper
Students: ~12 students at lunch with IAB
The 2010 Fall Advisory Board Meeting was held on Friday December 10, 2010 in MSEC 384. Leclerc
prepared a slide show that brought up talking points for the meeting. The presentation can roughly be
broken down into a status of the department, a discussion of departmental improvement actions, and a
discussion on assessment. A lunch session mixing board members with students was followed by a
closed student meeting with the IAB.
DEPARTMENT STATUS
The enrollment for Tech has trended upwards with most of the growth occurring in engineering. The
enrollment for chemical engineering has increased by about 20 students to ~110 in the past year
outpaced only by mechanical engineering. The student to faculty ratio also remains quite high
compared to the tech average. Leclerc noted that the ABET self study shows that Chemical Engineering
actually has the highest student to faculty ratio when part time helpers are included.
In terms of resources, the department greatly increased its FTE return in the past year thanks to an
increase in graduate course credits. (The FTE return is the amount of money generated by the
department for teaching courses divided by the department budget.) The budget for the department
remained flat pushing the FTE to budget ratio up to about 1.6. The department did benefit from ~$30k
in funding from the President’s equipment wish list purchasing a gas chromatograph and temperature
control box.
The number of publications and presentation from faculty research has increased slightly and research
funding is about the same as last year.
The department also swept the undergraduate awards at the 2010 graduation ceremony and a
prestigious national scholarship was won by a chemical engineering senior. Of the 11 May graduates, 7
have confirmed jobs or graduate school appointments and the other 4 could not be accounted for.
DEPARTMENT IMPROVEMENT ACTION ITEMS
Of the 4 action items from last year, only the first one was met (all safety related items were updated
for ABET). Items 2-4 were not fully met with Leclerc taking responsibility. Solicitations for donations
were made by e-mail with limited success.
A potential board member has not yet been identified. Leclerc would like to meet alumni and industry
leaders in the state before moving ahead.
Only one alumnus (that Leclerc was aware of) attended the AIchE meeting and the m mountain run was
not the 100th as previously thought, leading to no alumni events.
A fifth action item was added as an addendum. The faculty did hold an all day event to evaluate prerequisites and those are currently moving through the process to update the catalog.
Four items were discussed for 2011.
A solicitation for donations will go out with the next newsletter. The faculty will brainstorm some goals
for the fundraising.
The chair, Leclerc, will connect with 5 companies/alumni in the state to begin the process of identifying
more board members. The faculty will discuss holding an alumni event at the m mountain run, which is
the 100th anniversary this year. Finally, a fourth item was added, which is to identify potential part time
instructors to alleviate our teaching load.
ASSESSMENT
Leclerc summarized the results of the ABET review and discussed how things will move forward. The
action items for assessment were discussed. The first three action items (long term assessment plan,
self study, and addition of a lab to unit ops) were completed. The fourth was not completed as it was
discovered that ABET will be addressing safety soon in the assessment process eliminating the need for
the department to include safety in the assessment.
ABET ACTIONS
New goals for 2011 address the issues that came out of the ABET visit. The surveys will be updated to
include more descriptive answers rather than the 1-10 range. Benchmarks will be added to help
evaluate the numerical data we obtain for FE exams and surveys for assessment. The meeting minutes
procedure will be updated to include confirmation of the typed minutes within weeks of the meeting.
Finally, the educational objectives will be updated per ABET and distributed amongst the constituents
for approval.
LUNCH WITH STUDENTS
Lunchtime Student Feedback:
We posed the questions: What works? What do you like? What don’t you like? What classes are good or
need improvement? Faculty feedback? Overall value of the program?
Thermo classes: Dr. McCoy writes his own books for the thermo classes. Strong opinions on this one:
love it or dread it. One student expressed that if you paid attention that the class content was good.
Another said that you definitely have to read the book. “It’s thermo, it takes work.” Another
commented on style of the class, that Dr. McCoy teaches 25% on the math and 75% on concepts. But
that the tests are 75% math and 25% history; didn’t feel like the exams were supportive of the material
presented in class.
Instrumentation lab: equipment bugs; lab material pretty rugged, a work in progress. Last fall it was felt
that more application oriented labs might have been a good goal; more thermocouple
ES110 -> ES189 : popular. Really liked the guest speakers on topics like future prospects for chemical
engineers and would like to see more. Good perspective/overview, and enabled good integration into
the Tech environment due to the enforced group (vs. solo) project work. The class had applied learnings
to actual problems with open ended experimentation. The pace was felt to be good. Felt that those who
didn’t like the format were uncomfortable in groups.
Quality of Teaching: Satisfied customers. The students indicated that the PE exam had shown them that
they were more knowledgeable than they had thought; that they had learned more than they had
thought.
Faculty Access: Faculty access at NMTech is a perennial highlight. The students indicated that faculty
was open to talk, willing to find time to chat, good collaborative environment. Liked that the faculty
conveyed a grasp of what makes sense.
What seems broken: Statics class is taught by a Materials adjunct, new to teaching the class. It seems
there is a different adjunct each time teaching the class. The pace and presentation felt awkward; had a
hard time presenting the material and kept trying different approaches. “Statics is a wreck.”
Chem110 helped to crystallize the focus of ChemE by providing a great presentation of the basics and
providing a framework for the coursework and theory. They don’t resent it as much now as in prior
years. They really liked the mentorship in this class; having upperclassmen help the freshmen. Helped to
bring the entire group together . Good program.
AIChE chapter activity: seems active. Twelve students across all classes went to the Salt Lake City
conference and felt the conference provided very good exposure to chemical engineering opportunities.
The timing of the regular AIChE meeting conflicts with some classes and makes it difficult to attend for
some students. It was felt to be a good organization that could be improved by adding more guest
speakers.
Heat and Mass Transfer: class was felt to have been morphing lately. The material is good, containing
useful practical information. The downside was that lots of good material appeared to have been
shoehorned in at the end.
Unit Ops: Can’t wait to move into the new lab !
What I like best about tech:
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Faculty
Programs
Opportunities
Close access to faculty
Campus has a close knit community feel
“I feel like they care.”
Department email list; makes all part of the department activities regardless of class
<an observation arising from comparing comments to the test scores suggested that improving the
statics class presentation and format may result in an improvement in the PE test statics scores>