SUMMARY of ENGINEERING LIAISON COUNCIL Meeting

SUMMARY of ENGINEERING LIAISON COUNCIL Meeting

Attended by Keith Level, Engineering Instructor, Las PositasCollege

March 13, 2008

DeVry Institute, Long BeachCA

I have attend Engineering Liaison Council (or ELC) meetings for over 20 years now, and continue to find them valuable and pertinent to my teaching of engineering at the community college level. Some of the committee meetings that I attended include (a) Lower Division Requirements, which discusses the on-going challenges of defining and articulating lower division engineering courses for transfer students, (b) Teaching Techniques, a committee that I actually started in the early 1990s and continue to attend and participate in sharing techniques appropriate for lower division engineering courses, and (c) the Community College segment, where many engineering faculty and counselors meet to discuss issues specific to engineering education at the community college level.

Some specific issues included the following (and I’ve already shared them with my dean, Dr. Ely)

1.I’ve found that many of my students in Statics & Circuits have TI 83/84 calculators, and I feel that they are inadequate for some of the types of calculations used frequently in both classes (e.g., dot and cross products). I’ve strongly encouraged sophomore students to upgrade to more powerful calculators (and to learn how to use them effectively before they transfer), but most seem intent on staying with the TI 83/84. I surveyed other CC engineering teachers to see if they have similar issues, but most of their students had already upgraded (to TI 89 or 92). The Engineering professor at BakersfieldCollege had encountered a similar issue and she wrote some custom code for use in the TI 83/84, and has agreed to share that code with me.

2. I also surveyed other CC engineering teachers about the prerequisites for ENGR 44, Electrical Circuits. Most CCs had a PHYS 8B prereq (as opposed to our PHYS 8A prereq). Most said that the big issue regarding this is articulation with transfer universities. I checked SJSU (PHYS 51 prereq for EE 98), UCD (PHYS 9C prereq for ENGR 17), CPSLO (PHYS 133 for EE 112), and all three have a PHYS 8B equivalent type of course as a prereq. Although I'm concerned that this may cut enrollment further in this course, I'm also concerned about its articulation.

3. There were several MESA ( program representatives at the meeting, and I spoke with Lucy Casale, the community college director for MESA, about what might be involved with establishing a MESA center at LPC. Her first response was that, if we established a center, she would be its director, as she lives in Modesto. She also added that there currently is no money for expansion of MESA centers in California, though that would likely change sometime in the future. She also mentioned that funding from other sources could be used to establish a center (e.g., Lawrence Nat’l Labs).

4. There was some discussion about Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan to increase the number of new Engineers in California by about 20000, esp in civil engineering. Renee Bacchini is the state contact for this (some description is found at

Apparently they want to pair up with 1-2 CCs that have strong local ties to employers of civil engineers, and are targeting the program to serve veterans returning from the middle east to work as interns at civil engineering companies while completing courses at a CC. Any large CE employers nearby?

5. The new buzz word for increasing transfers is “Streamlining,” and the UC system has a mandate from their Master Plan to increase CC transfers. I’m not sure how / when this might affect us.

I also got some course materials from other attending teachers that I'll be using in ENGR 10 and possibly ENGR 46. The next ELC meeting will be held at San JoseState in the fall, and I'm planning on attending.