This page contains news related to the ECE department of the current week. Specifically it includes current information about seminars, exams, travel, research grants, professional news, personal news scheduled for this week.
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In this issue I wish to discuss a very important activity that will be undertaken by the ECE department throughout this academic year. Every seven years, each department in the university goes through a program review which involves a serious look at where the department strengths and weaknesses are in terms of faculty, students, staff, undergraduate and graduate curricula, instructional labs, research and administration, and where the department is headed in the future. The last review for the department was in 1993-94 when we were a combined Electrical Engineering/Computer Science department. During 2000-2001, we will be going through a very detailed review.
In view of that, the ECE faculty are in the process of preparing a short description of the status of our department by Oct. 20, 2000; a much longer report will be generated by Jan. 5, 2001. Subsequently, we will be reviewed by a university-appointed internal review committee and an external review committee during the months of April and May, 2001. The committee will interview faculty, staff, and students, look at our curricula and labs, and make some recommendations for improving the department.
While our department has come a long way in terms of improved rankings, from the 30s and 40s in the 1990s to a rank of 19 in the US News and World Report this year, we have significant scope for improvement. The Program Review is an opportunity for all of us to participate in this process. I look forward to working with faculty, staff, and students in this program review.
-Prith Banerjee
Chairman
Faculty Candidate Seminar
DATE: Thursday, October 19, 2000
TIME: 11:00 - 12:30
PLACE: L324
TITLE: "Perceptually Motivated Approaches to Audio Signal Enhancement
in a Bayesian Framework"
SPEAKER: Patrick J. Wolfe, University of Cambridge (Churchill College)
Prof. Jorge Nocedal traveled to Washington, DC, Oct 11-14, to give a seminar entitled, "Feasibility Control in Optimization," at the Dept. of Systems Engineering and Operations Research, George Mason University.
Valerie Taylor is traveling to Boston, MA, Oct 15-16, to attend the Grid Forum 5GF-5 Conference as Working group co-chair. Paper or session title: "Grid Performance."
You can look at news from previous weeks in Old News .