program self-study report - Lamar University Electrical Engineering

The typical teaching load in the EE Department is twelve load units per semester. In addition to teachingin the classroom, most faculty members supervise graduate and undergraduate students in such courses asindividual studies, research, thesis and dissertation, and seminar. Teaching load varies from two to fourclassroom lecture courses per semester depending on activity in research and graduate supervision.New faculty members do not teach more than two courses per semester to give them time to establish theirresearch programs and adapt themselves to the department. Faculty have the option to buy-out from acourse during each semester to a minimum of one course. In the last five years we have used about threeadjunct professors to cover all our courses. New faculty are given start-up funds, space for their laboratory,and reduced teaching loads. They are also given preference for summer support.Faculty performance evaluation is conducted every calendar year. The evaluation is a critical element inthe assessment of the success of the program in meeting its educational objectives and in thedetermination of future objectives. The primary purpose of faculty evaluation is to assess contributions offaculty members to the program, and more broadly, to the mission of the college and university. Theprocess is vitally important for tenure-track faculty. The performance evaluation constitutes oneconsideration in the determination of salary increases should they be authorized, but other factors such asalleviating salary compression and relative inequity and departmental effectiveness, may also contributeto the determination of merit increases.The program has between forty to fifty students in the upper division at any time and this is where EEfaculty begin primary interaction with them. In the lower division, faculty have an initial encounter in theengineering introductory course (ELEN1200 & INEN1101), in ELEN1301 Introduction to Computers andProgramming and in ELEN2311 Circuits I. This interaction is minimal since this is only three coursesacross four semesters. Also, some sections of ELEN1301 are taught by instructors in ChemicalEngineering and this also limits interaction. In both introductory courses, however, students areencouraged to attend and join the student section of the IEEE and participate in other departmentactivities. Each faculty member makes themselves available to students as needed. At the end of eachsemester, the university conducts student evaluations for every course using a 3 rd -party online system.The evaluations play a major role in determining salary increases and promotions.After students get to the upper division, they begin to interact with the faculty more frequently and for therest of their time at the university. It is during this stage that the students establish very strong rapportwith the faculty. Formal advising is done by the entire faculty and is easily accommodated due to thesmall number of students. This process is discussed in Section 1.3 of this report.The faculty are very active in the IEEE (see Table I-4) and involve students in the society activities asmuch as possible. The Beaumont Section allows the student section chair to sit as a non-voting member ofthe executive committee. The program also has a active chapter of Eta Kappa Nu (Delta Beta) that thefaculty participate in. These interactions serve to enhance the professional awareness of the students andto enforce team-bonds outside of normal classroom and school day activities. This sort of bonding carriesover into the professional lives of our students after graduation and many alumni maintain contact with usregularly for this reason. This also establishes contact with industry for our faculty and is an importantelement of our program assessment in terms of our employer survey process (see Section 2).EE Program Self-Study Report-2006 31