Present: Jim Oliver, ChiuShui Chan, Doug Gentile, Jeremiah Still, Pam Shill. Absent: Julie Dickerson, and Steven Herrnstadt
Jeremiah reported that the participation in the student group meetings has faded as we approach the end of the semester. With Kevin’s help, the students will have a new look to their website, including a link to an internal wiki. The wiki is linked to The Lab wiki and should allow students to easily comment on courses or the program. The new site will be up and available on Friday, 12/7/2007.
HCI Faculty retreat will take place on Friday, December 7, starting with a luncheon for faculty and students to celebrate the 5 year anniversary of the HCI program, followed by the retreat from 1:30-4:30 pm. ChuiShui Chan discussed the agenda, which is attached to these minutes. It is expected that about 100 will attend the luncheon and 19 faculty will attend the retreat. Jim Oliver will talk at the luncheon about the history of the HCI program, past accomplishments and future goals, including introducing this year’s graduates and new faculty, and talking about the large number of graduates expected this spring.
Brian Mennecke presented the report from the Curriculum Committee. The report is attached. The committee recommends aligning the curriculum with the ACM definition of HCI, using the four areas of Design, Implementation, Phenomena, and Evaluation. Discussion followed with concerns expressed about the ability to include undergraduate programming courses on a POS and that courses under the evaluation umbrella should be required for MS students as well as PhD students. Options to insure that students have the required programming knowledge were also discussed, including modifying the HCI Seminar to include two tracks, one for the computer side and the other for the human side. Another item that was discussed was requiring the HCI 591 Seminar for all students. The question was asked, “Should our program concentrate on a certain area of HCI and if so, what should that be?” Action on the report was not taken at the meeting and further discussion of the report will take place at the faculty retreat on Friday.
The next meeting will be on Wednesday, January 9 at 9 am in the VRAC Conference Room.
Link to PDF of the full minutes with additional information.
Submitted by Pam Shill