Figure 1: Current Computer Science Organizational
Chart
Figure 2: Current Electrical & Computer
Engineering Organizational Chart
Category
I Transmittal Sheet
__X__Abbreviated
_____Extended
_____New
Major/Degree
_____New
Certificate Program
_____Establishment
of New College or Department
_____Joint-Campus
Programs
_____Establishment
of New Center or Institute
__X__Reorganization
of College, Department, Center, or Institute
_____Renaming
a Degree, Certificate, or Administrative Unit
_____Elimination
of a Major, Degree, or Certificate Program
_____Existing
Degree Program Extended to New-Off-Campus Location
________________________________________________________________________
Title
of Proposal
Creation of a School of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
College
College of Engineering
___________________________ ___________________________
Cherri
Pancake Terri
Fiez
Department
Head, Computer Science Department
Head, Electrical &
Computer Engineering
________________________________________________________________________
Ronald
L. Adams Date
Dean,
College of Engineering
Oregon State University
A Category I Proposal to
Create a School of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
CIP #: 141001
Names
of Current Units
Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department
of Computer Science
Proposed
Name of Consolidated Unit
School
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Reasons
for Reorganization
The College of Engineering is working toward the
goal of achieving top-25 ranking in the U.S News and World Report and has
received State and Private funding needed to help make this happen. Of this funding requested over the next
decade, 70% will be invested in the proposed School of EECS. By making this move to a merged School, the
College creates a very visible and powerful unit that will be nationally
recognized. Both the CS and ECE
departments have relatively small faculty numbers (approximately 40 at this
time), especially given there are 1400 undergraduate and 300 graduate
students. It should also be noted that
the College of Engineering is the 21st largest in the nation. Merging into a School will allow us to unify
into a very strong and successful unit.
There are several past examples of this among top engineering
schools. One that has been studied in
detail is the University of California, Berkeley. Dave Hodges, the former Dean of Engineering at UCB, visited this
past year and spent 1.5 days providing the college with feedback that will help
lead to an upward movement in the national ranking. He reviewed both the CS and ECE research activities and met with
faculty and graduate students. During
the visit, he explicitly described the impact that merging had on UCB’s
departments of CS and EE. At the time
of their merger, EE was one of the top nationally, but CS was not. One of the most significant outcomes of the
merger was that the CS program moved up to be one of the top in the
nation. We see the proposed merger as
an opportunity to advance the national rankings of both programs.
Positive
and Negative Impacts within the Unit
Currently, the two departments offer several
undergraduate and graduate degrees including:
§ B.S in Electrical and
Electronics Engineering
§ B.S. in Computer Engineering
§ B.A. & B.S. in Computer Science
§ M.A., M.S. and Ph.D. in
Computer Science
§ M.S.E. (Master in Software
Engineering) as part of an OUS collaboration
§ M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical
and Computer Engineering
These degree offerings will
not change, and at least initially, there will be very little impact on these
programs. However, over time we expect
that the new School of EECS will be able to deliver the programs with higher
quality and in a more efficient fashion by potentially reconfiguring these
degrees. For example, although we
currently have overlapping expertise in the two departments, certain courses
are taught in just one, so merger will present opportunities to enhance the
quality of our programs.
The proposed merger will have immediate and
significant impact on research. By
consolidating, the College of Engineering will create core research strengths
within the new School. The faculty is
in the process of identifying these research strengths (as part of the merger
planning described below), and we plan to align our graduate programs with
these strengths. As an example,
consider the area of graphics/imaging/vision.
Currently, faculty straddle the two units and research efforts are
somewhat dispersed and require multiple laboratories with overlapping
capabilities. As a single unit, we can
unite these efforts to compete more effectively in the global research arena.
The College of Engineering views this
proposed merger as a very positive step forward for both of the
departments. We anticipate that a very
strong unit will emerge, one that creates a compelling learning environment as
well as an enhancement of research impacts through collaboration.
Impact to other OSU units and other constituencies
outside of OSU
The merger
should have minimal impact on other OSU units and/or constituencies. Computer Science offers several service
courses to the university community (CS 101, CS 151, CS 195, CS 295, CS 391, CS
395, and CS 495) and our plans are to continue these offerings. CS is also a major player in the multimedia
minor programs and will support a New Media Communication undergraduate major
that is currently being proposed.
One side benefit of creating the School of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is that it will differentiate our
Computer Science program from those at the Oregon Health and Science
University, Portland State University, and the University of Oregon. In addition, as we differentiate our program
from other higher education institutions in the state, it may contribute to
raising the national prominence of OSU’s engineering and computer science
programs.
Organizational Chart (before and after)
The organizational charts for the current Department
of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
are shown in Figures 1 and 2, respectively.
The organizational chart after merging into a School of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science is shown in Figure 3. The School will be headed by a Director
(approximately 0.5 to 0.75 FTE administration) who will be responsible for
setting the strategic directions in research and teaching and will serve as the
external liaison[1]. Our plans are to have two Associate
Directors (one at 0.25 FTE and one at 0.5 FTE). With the new organization, we expect that the Director will spend
more time building external relationships with industry and government agencies
in support of research and teaching.
The Director will have ultimate responsibility for
the School’s budget and promotion and tenure.
The Director will also represent the School externally and lead the
corporate relations activity, development of the strategic research directions,
and development of curriculum innovation.
The two Associate Directors will collaborate with the Director on annual
performance reviews, merit raise distributions, and curriculum
development/changes. They will also
work with the Director to ensure that each of the academic programs are
delivering quality undergraduate and graduate curricula. Initially, one Associate Director will be
primarily responsible for faculty and staff workload assignments and functions
related to the education mission. The
other Associate Director will be responsible for departmental infrastructure
and the research mission. Faculty,
instructors and professional faculty will be evaluated by the Associate
Directors in conjunction with the Director.
Classified staff members will report to the Operations Manager, as shown
in Figure 3. As one of our pilot
trials, we consolidated accounting from both departments into a single
person. Although both departments have
positions for accounting, ECE had not filled theirs, so the CS accounting
technician has worked half time for each department over the past 4
months. The arrangement has worked very
well for both departments, and led to several improvements in departmental
processes. Additionally, Tina Batten,
who is the corporate relations person in ECE has served both departments
throughout the summer. We expect this
position to expand to help increase the visibility of Computer Science at
OSU.
Our plan is to merge all support operations as soon
as possible. On September 5, we
conducted a joint staff retreat, where staff members from both departments
developed plans for sharing our infrastructure. A summary of the results from this retreat are given in
Attachment D. The staff broke up into
functional groups to discuss existing procedures and to design new ones that
would better serve the students and faculty and/or be more cost-effective. Together, we found that by investing in a
more structured base infrastructure,
staff time could be freed up to focus on higher level tasks and thus provide
better customer service. For example,
we will be enhancing the database currently used by the CS graduate coordinator
so that it can effectively and efficiently track all of the graduate students
and generate key statistics automatically (currently, most statistics must be
calculated manually when requested by the College, University, accreditation
agencies, etc.). We also decided to
develop on-line progress reports for all undergraduate students, recognizing
that approximately 90% of current email correspondence with the head advisors
and undergraduate coordinators can be eliminated. The computing and networking infrastructure is being merged as
well, which will result in cost savings (through volume discounts on software
licenses, desktop systems, and supplies) as well as more uniform levels of
support across a wider number of computing platforms and improved reliability
(since support staff will be able to cover for each other and it will be
feasible to invest in some backup systems to cover anticipated problems). We will also be investing in a major web
page development to attract graduate students and funding sources. Finally, we will be developing tools to aid
the accounting, payroll and personnel functions. These levels of new infrastructure development would not be
possible for either department if it were acting on its own, nor would the
payoffs be as great. The process of
consolidation and enhancement has already begun, and we are finding that all
involved are excited about the improvements in our operations. It is also absolutely critical to note that
both ECE and CS have taken 8.5% cuts in the last two years while our graduate
programs have grown 40%, our undergraduate student population has nearly
doubled in the last four years, and our research grants have nearly
doubled. We will not survive without
radically changing the way we operate.
We are currently doing a pilot project to see if we
can improve research accounting within the College. Currently, there is a centralized research accounting office, but
it is separated physically from the researchers and other department
operations. By deploying the research
accounting person who supports ECE and CS grants within the department offices,
we have already seen great gains in productivity. The pilot is being monitored carefully; if it is determined to be
an effective way to improve the quality of service (as initial experiences
indicates), it will be expanded to other departments in the College of
Engineering.
In college leadership meetings, the proposed School
of EECS will have a voice similar to that of other departments. No votes are taken in these meetings, so not
having enough representation will not be a major issue. However, for promotion and tenure decisions
at the College level, the proposed School will have 2 votes: one for the
Director and one for one of the Associate Directors (to be selected by the
Director as appropriate; this is part of the shared promotion and tenure
procedures established by CS and ECE faculty over the summer; see Attachment
F).
Personnel Changes
Over the first year of operation following approval
of the proposal, the two departments will merge into a single unit. In an attempt to realize as many economies
of scale as possible, many functions will be shared – and streamlined. We are already sharing an accounting
technician, computing support staff (which have now been centralized in the
college), and the corporate relations person who previously served only
ECE. The receptionist in ECE will
retire in June and we will be exploring ways to reduce to one receptionist in
preparation for locating in the new building with a single shared office. Additionally, we will be eliminating a
fixed-term office manager position, replacing it with a classified payroll
technician who will handle all payroll for the School.
In the new building, we will have opportunities to
combine other functions in order to better serve the students. There will be a central advising area,
central accounting, corporate relations, and all administration will be
co-located. Until that time, we are
considering co-locating all undergraduate services in one office and all
accounting/payroll activities in another office. These plans are still preliminary at this point.
Support for Change
The two departments have evaluated and discussed
this change over the last several months.
An overwhelming majority of ECE and CS faculty support merging the two
departments. As typical in any academic
environment, the faculty are not unanimous about this proposed merger. To address these concerns, a process was
initiated in June to arrive at consensus on the policies and operations used in
the merged unit. Over the summer,
faculty leaders from both departments (including representation at all levels
of seniority) developed strawman proposals for tenure and promotion procedures
and graduate studies procedures. These
faculty held a series of focus group meetings (facilitated by Cherri Pancake
and always including representation from both departments) to gather input from
all faculty and iteratively improve the proposals based on that input (the
procedure for arriving at consensus is described in a faculty memo; see
Attachment E). A new promotion and
tenure process has been developed for the combined School and a nearly final
version of this is shown in Aattachment F.
There are still some focus meetings being held on the graduate studies
procedures, but a draft version is shown in Attachment G. The iterative consensus process has been
very effective at getting the two departments together so that they begin to
think as one.
Further,
the process has resulted in written documents that clearly define departmental
policies. This is a breakthrough, since
both departments previously relied exclusively on oral tradition for
maintaining policies and procedures -- a mechanism which made it difficult to
integrate new faculty and staff. Many
faculty have commented on the positive impact of this outcome on departmental
culture.
Budget Impact
The budget impact will be minimal. In fact, the proposed merger will help us to
deal with the continuing budget cuts while having increased expectations. The proposed School will operate within the
current budgets of CS and ECE. We will
share all operations and also invest in automating much of what is currently
done manually in the two departments.
This will free up staff time to help with our growing research
operation. The cuts taken last year and
those expected this year will require that we make some radical changes to
continue working toward our goal of top-25.
Incidentals, such as letterhead changes, signage, advertising, etc.,
will be covered by the existing budgets.
This merger will not result in overall cost savings but it refocuses our
current resources in order to increase our impact and improve national and
regional recognition. The cost of
administration will remain approximately the same since the total FTE assigned
to administration will not change.
Adequate Staffing after Change
By combining our existing bases of faculty, staff, and instructors, the proposed School of EECS will have more opportunities to serve students’ needs in a more effective manner. For example, we will centralize undergraduate advising so that if one head advisor is out, the other can serve the student’s needs. Additionally, some efficiency will be gained by combining our accounting, payroll, and computing support functions. As described above, we will also be freeing up staff time by investing in software for each functional area in the office. Our hope is that we will be able to share these developments with other departments across the university to help them also make gains in efficiencies. Our course offerings will also result in some staffing changes, since some courses can be shared and consolidated, thereby freeing up faculty time for research or in order to offer additional, strategic graduate courses.
Impact on Course Offerings
The merger will have little impact initially on
course offerings, since ECE and CS have coordinated many course offerings over
the years. However, the new School will
explore ways to utilize faculty strengths more effectively. Because the fields of electrical
engineering, computer engineering, and computer science overlap, some courses
that are taught by one department could be better taught by the other. The merger will provide an opportunity to
rethink the delivery of some course offerings in the future. One example is that both departments
currently teach computer architectures; we may be able to consolidate this
effort in order to teach more graduate courses in this area, or others. These opportunities will become more
apparent as the two departments come together.
Course designators will not change with this merger, although we may
consider this at some point in the distant future.
Impact on Advising
Advising will remain the same for the three
undergraduate degrees. There will
continue to be a head advisor supporting the Computer Science majors and a head
advisor for the Electrical and Computer Engineering majors, although they will
coordinate their activities so that they can serve as backup for one
another. Separate graduate advisors
will also be maintained for each of the degree programs.
Impact on Educational Experience
The primary impact of the merger on the student
experience will be at the graduate level.
The proposed School will create interdisciplinary research clusters
including both CS and ECE faculty, as well as clusters within each field. These clusters will identify core course
offerings that will be strengthened by the joint effort. As a result, it is expected that our graduate
programs will be more nationally competitive in the future.
Impact on Current and Future Accreditation
This merger will not impact either ABET
accreditation (EE and CE degrees) or CSAB accreditation (CS degree). The undergraduate programs in both CS and
ECE went through accreditation simultaneously in October 2002, and we intend to
continue synchronizing the accreditation visits in the future in order to
reduce the level of effort involved in gathering representative student
materials.
Liaison
Before moving forward with this proposal, we
discussed many of the advantages and disadvantages. Attachments A, B, and C, respectively, summarizes these
discussions for ECE faculty/staff, CS faculty/staff, and the college leadership
team. The discussions have been very
useful in thinking through the opportunities and challenges the School will
encounter. In addition to soliciting
input from those on campus, we have also checked in with several of our
industry supporters. The ECE advisory
board (about 35 representatives) was very positive about this change. Although the CS advisory committee has not
met during the period of discussion, informal discussions with key members
indicated very favorable responses. The
College of Engineering advisory board was also very supportive and believes
this is another right step to becoming top-25.
Once input had been received from a range of sources, the Dean evaluated
the comments and determined that this was an important step to move the College
of Engineering forward. He then
contacted the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, the Provost, and the President
to let them know we wished to propose the merger. They have been supportive in moving this proposal forward.
Over the summer, the faculty and staff have had
additional opportunity to discuss the merger and how it might impact them and
our progress to date. This has been
very helpful in giving people time to adjust to some of the changes we are
experiencing. The staff developed plans
for merging operations as previously described and the faculty began defining
how the merged school might operate.
This process is helping to define the new operation and eliminating some
of the uncertainty associated with merging ECE and CS departments into a new
School of EECS.
The Dean of the College of Engineering also
contacted all of the OSU dean’s. None
expressed any concern or issues related to the merger.
Figure 1: Current Computer Science Organizational
Chart
Figure 2: Current Electrical & Computer
Engineering Organizational Chart
Attachment A:
When: April 17, 2002
Who: ECE Faculty/Staff
Where: ECE 320
Why: To Discuss Pros and Cons if Merger
Attendees: Terri Fiez, Jimmy Eggerton, Mario Magana, Un-Ku Moon, Karti Mayaram, Ben Lee, Alex Tenca, Cetin Koc, Annette von Jouanne, Huaping Liu, Wen-Tsong Shiue, Luca Lucchesse, Gabor Temes, Mani Subramanian, Molly Shor, Tina Batten, Gale Sumida, Sarah O’Leary, April Melton, Ferne Simendinger, Manfred Dittrich, Tom Plant, Raghu Settaluri, John Wager(sent regrets to Terri),Andreas Weisshaar (sent regrets-conference call)
Pro’s:
Con’s:
Attachment B
Computer Science Faculty
Discussion Summary on Merger
May 21, 2002
Arguments For Merger:
The two departments have different strengths. Merging departments will allow each group to benefit from the strengths of the other group.
Computer Science strengths:
Many research-active full professors
Cherri Pancake has good government agency contacts
Electrical and Computer Engineering strengths:
Terri Fiez is a strong, innovative leader
Good industry contacts
Merging will create research synergy where there are natural affinities. This includes “crossover” areas like computer architecture and networking, as well as emerging fields like application of machine learning to controls.
Merging will create a larger, more visible unit. It will help create a critical mass that will improve national and regional visibility. It improves competitiveness for large grants.
It will be easier to recruit faculty in crossover areas such as computer networking.
We can focus on hiring new research-oriented faculty rather than an administrator (CS head).
This is a critical time in the top-25 push. We cannot afford to have a “lame duck” as Head of Computer Science until a new CS Head can be brought on board. If we lose momentum, three top CS faculty members may leave.
CS and ECE faculty will cohabitate the new building, beginning summer 2004. The new building design shows a common CS/ECE administrative office.
Other universities, including some top-10 schools) have successfully created departments that combine Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
***** These were additional Benefits contributed by a couple of the CS faculty that proposed the merger originally
Benefits of Merging with ECE
* Combines strengths
- CS: senior faculty, good government agency contacts
- ECE: innovative leadership, good industry contacts
- Both: strong new faculty
* Creates research synergy where there are natural affinities
- "crossover" areas like computer architecture, networking, Internet-based systems, graphics & image processing
- emerging fields like application of machine learning to controls
* Creates larger, more visible unit
- Critical mass to improve national and regional visibility
- Improves competitiveness for large grant programs
* Attractive for reruiting faculty in crossover areas
- Both departments have failed to attract networking candidates because they did not want to have to choose between
CS and ECE
* Means new hires can focus on faculty rather than administrators
* Eliminates "lame-duck" time during search for new head
- This is a critical time in top-25 push
- 3 top CS faculty have received strong offers in last couple of months, and indicated their unwillingness to stay through lag period
* We're going to be sharing a building and administrative offices in 2 years, anyway
* Other universities (including many top-10 schools) have done it effectively
Arguments Against Merger:
This is an uncommon organization. 94% of the 66 computer science graduate programs ranked above Oregon State by U.S. News & World Report are independent of electrical engineering: (However, 3 of the top 10 are merged)
There are many departments ranked below Oregon State that have this organization. (Washington State University and the University of Portland are two examples from the Pacific Northwest.) Several are ranked significantly above OSU which include UC Berkeley and University of Michigan.
Combining ECE and CS can be seen as a sign of weakness, rather than strength especially if one unit is much smaller than the other. For example, CS (6 faculty) was folded into EE (25 faculty) at Washington State University for this reason. OSU ECE is 22 faculty and CS is 18 faculty. Some potential faculty members will not apply to a School of EECS, but would apply to an independent Department of Computer Science.
An unscientific Web survey of faculty members (mostly at University of California, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University) showed that a high percentage of them were skeptical of the benefits of merging. (See http://www.cs.orst.edu/merge/admin.pip) University of Michigan recently considered dividing back into two separate departments and concluded that being combined was better. UC Berkeley recently came up with a single EECS curriculum (the first that we know of in the country).
The new organization adds a layer of administration. It will increase the isolation of the Dean of Engineering from faculty and staff in the new school. The Dean will be a third level manager for EECS faculty and staff. He will remain a second level manager for the other faculty and staff in the College of Engineering. (NOTE: This is not true with the organization we have defined.)
The cultures of the two departments are different. CS was voting on everything at weekly faculty meetings. ECE has a different model for decision-making.
Currently there are very few collaborations between ECE and CS faculty. In contrast, we have many active research collaborations with other departments on campus. You do not have to be in the same department to collaborate successfully.
If budgets are kept isolated and CS picks up half of the Director’s salary and half the corporate relations person’s salary, CS loses the equivalent of an assistant professor’s salary. (ECE picks up half of accounting person’s salary, all of office manager, etc.)
CS faculty and staff currently have the best computer support in the College. It can only get weaker if CS merges with ECE, which has had poor computer support.
Attachment C
Discussion among Leadership Team (Engineering Department Heads, Associate Deans and Dean) on April 18, 2002
Pro's and Cons of Merging CS and ECE
Pro's:
1) Accelerator for top 25 goal
a) Increase
visibility
b) Recruiting (clarity on where)
c) External enthusiasm towards dollars
2) Retention of top people/mentoring of new
junior faculty
3) No time lost searching for new head
4) Consolidation of admin staff
5) Bold move toward changing culture
6) Search may fail
Con's:
1) Too large for OSU
2) Disruptive to COE admin
3) CS identity lost and loss of alumni (another
move away from science) name is important
4) Loss of identity for office staff attached to
culture
5) Administrative structure
6) Decrease visibility due to lead spread too
thin
7) Negative impact on P&T
8) Not part of the plan to create more schools
9) Feels like acquisition
10)What does succession look like
Attachment D
ECE/CS Staff Retreat Summary
September
6, 2002
Purpose: Identify
opportunities for enhancing our overall operations so that they will allow for
the rapid enhancement and growth of activities.
Results: Each working group
identified what is needed to leverage the strengths of each department to
create a merged school that will help lead the college to the top 25.
Facilitator
Comments: The retreat highlighted many examples of how
bringing together these two units creates a school that is much greater than
the sum of the two. In each of the
functional teams, activities were identified where one unit will share
something they have developed with the other and vice versa. Together they then identified what was
needed to bring our operations to a new level of efficiency and
capability. In each case, this will
require an investment in data base or web page development. The facilitators (Terri Fiez and Cherri
Pancake) feel that the investments we will be making in the next year will represent
breakthroughs in our ability to better serve the students and faculty. We also hope that this investment in the
infrastructure will provide our staff with unique professional opportunities.
Action Plan Summary
Undergraduate
group (Mike, Molly, Janice, Lavon)
|
Activity |
|