Faculty Retreat By AWE, CSUA, HKN, IEEE, UPE

Agenda EE/CS Balance Curriculum o Flipped classes Student Health Action Items Survey results, graphs, summary, and presentation available at: bit.ly/eecs2012

Introduction 701 responses 13.3% transfer, 86.7% freshman entry 65.5% EECS, 23.5% L&S CS 74.9% male and 25.0% female

EE/CS Balance Traditionally, the CS focus dominates undergraduates 20.3% of respondents identify as "close to" Options I and II - less than ~30% expectation This could be a cultural difference, but interest in CS is overall disproportionate This could also be a lack of connection in the EECS community, as most of the survey advertising was through student orgs 2 Questions: o If students don't want to be EE, why? o If these students are not engaged in the community, how do we fix this?

EE/CS Balance Which of the following is closest to your EECS focus? Electronics Communications networks and systems Computer systems Computer Science Other

Why Aren't Students EE? CS industry boom could be to blame, but student responses indicate another problem Many students view EE40/42/100 as "very" or "somewhat ineffective," 44% vs. 41% effective Student comments include: o Lectures can lag labs, "students teach themselves" - Spring 2012 o "Make a CS10 for Electrical Engineers" o "Order/pacing weird/slow" - Spring 2012 o "[EE40 and CS61C] made me do the switch to pure CS" - Fall 2011 Some comments about EE20 as well, many wanted better 20/120 material distribution, a book directly referred to class, and "better/more useful labs"

Why Aren't Students EE? EE40/42 by Year

Why Aren't EE Students Connected? Somewhat lower EE response could be due to lower involvement of EE students in clubs IEEE and HKN, for example, have very low EE officer representation EE students out of Partially due to CS industry/cultural boom, many events are available to CS students - hackathons, infosessions... Very few similar events available to EEs, outside of class-based events and activities Presence of a "hacker culture" seems to be revitalizing CS students, perhaps we can do the same for the EE community - this also brings them to organizations More EE presence at the Startup Fair is also necessary

Curriculum A comparison of o CS 61A  60% positive opinion of change from Scheme to Python o CS 169 o CS 161 o CS 162

CS169 Effectiveness How effective did you feel CS169 was? Spring 12 Fall 11 Spring 11 Fall 10 Spring 10

CS161 "Flipped" Class Effectiveness Harder for students to take online courses seriously Difficult to set aside time to watch lectures Projects not well structured Errors in video lectures How effective did you feel CS161 was? Spring 12 Fall 2011 Spring 2011

CS162 Effectiveness How effective did you feel CS162 was? Sp12 Fall11 Sp11 Before Sp11

CS162 Effectiveness PAST 162 o Students felt course was unstructured o Industry reputation went down b/c students were not actually learning OS topics CURRENT 162 o Evolution of course away from OS and now back to OS concepts is viewed as very positive Takeaway message: Professors and students need to have a clear understanding of what concepts are being taught o structure and spec of projects should be consistently correct and require little to no change o projects should be related to course material

CS 162: Expectation Mismatch Students Expect well-planned, bug-free projects Clear vision for what kind of content will be covered Professors Should have better knowledge of projects Need more communication with GSI's

Student Health/CS Community On a scale of 1 to 5, rate the amount of free or recreational time you have in general. 76.7% feel they do not have enough spare time 40.5% have experienced depression Need more guidance when selecting classes o no more than 2 technical classes per semester o self-paced classes should not be used as filler for last unit or two

Junior Transfers Transfer free time: 85.9% not enough spare time o 33.8% no spare time Non-transfer: 75.4% not enough o 18.9% no spare time 29% spend more than 50 hours per week on class-related activities o only 11% of non-transfer students 59.1% experienced depression o 38% of non-transfer students

Depression Responses "Feeling hopeless in a successful career at Cal in CS due to a huge amount of work, sometimes unfair grading, too competitive, sometimes even discrimination in groups formation, underestimation from other students" "Sometimes I felt like no matter how hard I tried, I was not going to get the grades I wanted. I'm not a great exam taker." "...I have no time to myself, and I feel like I'm drowning in reading, with no possibility of catching up."

Actionable Items More EE related fun activities and industry events EE equivalent of CS10 More preparation needed when changing courses Clear expectations of professors for students, and vice versa Consistent peer guidance Better publicity of support systems for transfer students

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