CPACE Meeting Minutes

Date: May 6, 2008                               Time: 10:30 p.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Location: MichiganState University,East LansingMI

Participants listed by group:

• MichiganStateUniversity (MSU): Mark Urban-Lurain, Neeraj Buch, Jon Sticklen, Claudia Vergara.
• LansingCommunity College (LCC): Louise Paquette
• Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW): Cindee Dresen, Tammy Coxen.
  

1)     Minutes June 12

Note: We went through the minutes from June 12. Cindee has already made the connection to K. Cooley. We should link Theo Coldwell, the diversity program coordinator at MSU.

Claudia went through the interview pages explaining the structure of the pages and how to add pages to them. In terms of the contact cards Claudia will keep them and we will have them available as needed.

There was a discussion about granting Garth permission to look at the raw interview data on the wiki. Because he is the person in the college with a direct interest and contact with the industries.

These posses an IRB issue. Everybody that looks at the data needs IRB training.

Claudia will verify at the IRB status for every one on the project.

We agreed that he (Garth) should have access as needed and to the detailed level that he needs if he wants it but not to the raw data on the wiki.

We will keep a list of the people that we have interviewed so that people know. Claudia will create the list and put it in our space and the AB space.

2)     Pilot interviews update

Jon: EGR review will work better if we have that as an assignment.

Mark: I want to make sure that we are not short changing the LCC component so it is important that Louise or Clint look at the interviews

Louise: Clint should be involved in the fall hope

Note: There was a discussion about CAD being an example of a repeating theme from the interviews, and the college is not going to include a specific course on CAD

Cindee: The employers are saying their needs and how to reconcile this to the curriculum and it can be direct curricular change or indirect.

Jon: There are ways that the curriculum can deal with this not necessarily a new course.

Mark: Yes and we need to have this discussion when we are in the implementation part after we have more of these interviews. We need to make sure that the eng faculty is listening to the interviews I want to make sure that we are covering LCC's perspective

Note: In terms of the demographic part of the employer interviews we still need to analyze these more before we make changes/revisions.

Mark will send the consent form that goes with the demographics part of the employer interview.

Jon: To the engineering folk, what is your reflection about the interviews so far?

Neeraj: I reviewed Cascade and sat in the DEQ and they are significantly different because they are significantly different operations. The Cascade and to a certain extent the DEQ were looking for people that could think critically rather that have a certain set of skills because they can teach the skills but not to think. They want people that are able to look at the big picture.

Jon: Was there a sense that's that what they are not getting?

Neeraj: I don't think either one said that, and the way the interview is set up we need to look between the lines to get that they were looking for new hires that can think on their feet vs knowing a piece of software because software changes.

Cindee: And this is a recurring theme in the interviews and we also heard during the first AB meeting.

Neeraj: Everyone writes their own little algorithm to do what they are doing.

Mark: Specifically around excel that came up in several interviews f.ex. Cascade was doing some heavy lifting with excel they are getting in the macro and programming.

Cindee: For the Bordener example they outsource some of the work in terms of the eng technical staff and then the data that they get back they put in excel that they use to manipulate the information and data and their challenge is that they need people that are able to do something with the data.

Mark: This is a theme that I saw in other interviews and it is that the engineers now tend to be project based and the projects change and the technology per se is not the main thing but the information flow is not computation is communication we need to be able to use all the software packages that the costumer has. The theme is that it's bigger than computing per se but it's about how the tools are being used to facilitate this information/communication flow.

Claudia: We need to be able to relate this back to the curriculum. We need to identify the tools that they are using and feed it back to the curriculum. It also points towards how we are going to teach that curriculum in a way that the students are capable of using the tools to problem solve around a particular project.

Jon: That's a good point if we design the curriculum from scratch but these curriculum discussion are later. I think that we need to identify in some exemplar curriculum in our college where are the opportunities to use the tools and then find somebody to work in a little module. This is going to be an interesting challenge once we get there.

Neeraj: (Claudia) That's what ABET have moved from to an outcome based curriculum and we have the capstone courses in which they need to design something and how to get there that's their problem.

Jon: But they don't have the skills when they get to the capstone course

Neeraj: They do struggle but they figure it out. Teaching them a specific computer skill or software tool is counterproductive because by the time they graduate a particular tool might be obsolete

Jon: It is not counterproductive if the tool is integrated vertically into the curriculum and if the students don't get good in some higher level computational skills. We are really getting ahead of ourselves

Mark: The concern that Claudia is raising is that we want to make sure that we get enough information on the computational side of this but I am pleased that we are not hearing that they want specific software lessons in this and that so I think that we are in good shape.

Claudia: In terms of the interviews we need to get to the computing skills

Mark: We need to let them talk

Claudia: But f.ex. with Bordener I did not see that

Cindee: I disagree. They went through and identified that technologies that they used they did not talked about the specific engineering tools that you were hoping to hear, but the talked about how they use the specific engineering technology because of their size they contract this tools outside and then they use excel and other things that are their technology tools that they use to inform their engineering-related practices. I was using the original table were we have the eng-related tools. And my suggestion is that the interviewer should have the table of tools that we had in the original protocol and use it to probe for specific technologies.

Mark: Any other ideas about the revised protocol?

Cinde I don't think there are questions that are missing. I don't think we need major changes. Based on our pilot interviews we do need to see what changes we need to do to the survey.

Note: we will organize a subgroup meeting to talk about the employee survey.

Claudia explained the changes in the WIKI interview pages and pointed out were the final version of the interview is and that all changes should be done in that document.

We also went through how to add pages to the interview pages f.ex. to add the reviews from people.

3) EGR interview-review protocol

Note: We went through the EGR reviewing protocol. It was decided that as we go along in the interview process if there are more questions they will be added.

4) Next set of interviews

Cindee: We reached out to the AB members to get a set of contacts and we have 500 plus names and we are in the process to cleaning that list and looking for gaps in industries and or disciplines not being covered. Over the next two weeks Tammy and Taryn will work through that list and have a top 50 recommended firms that we can reach out to do the interviews.

Mark: Claudia had a good point that we should be scheduling interviews with some of the AB members companies.

Claudia: We did a good research when picking the AB members in term of having a good representation of the sample in terms of discipline and industry. I also think that this will help us to sift through the list in terms of are there any obvious gaps in our sample? Is CSW sending the invitation letters?

Cindee: Yes to the list that we are going to construct. To the AB members because we already have a relationship with them we don't need to be so official.

Mark: Perhaps a quick e-mail telling them we are ready to go with the interviews and if we can go to their company.

Cindee: I think we need to have just one person to do the contact

Neeraj: Wouldn't it be easier to put a calendar on the wiki and have them filled up?

Cindee: We need to look at who is left on the AB list. Some of them have done pilot interviews and some others gave us the contacts.The AB members that we are going to contact for interviews are:

Baker

Cross

Angie

Mathes

McDonald

Richie

Tammy and Taryn will contact them.

5) CPACE information brochure

6) NSF report

Mark: Working in it we need to assemble the pieces and then send it.

Summary

Pilot interviews update        

• Access to the raw data on the wiki will be granted as needed provided adequate IRB documentation. For example Garth should have access as needed and to the detailed level that he needs it.

• We need to make sure that the eng faculty is listening to the interviews and that we are covering the LCC component so it is important that Louise or Clint look at the interviews.

• About the interviews so far companies are looking for people that could think critically rather that have a specific set of skills. They want people that are able to look at the big picture. This is a recurring theme in the interviews and we also heard it during the first AB meeting.

• Engineers now tend to be project based and the projects change; the technology per se is not the main thing but the information flow. The theme is that the picture is bigger than computing per se; it is about how the tools are being used to facilitate the information/communication flow.

Interview protocol 

• We decided that the protocol is OK as it is. The interviewer should have the table of engineering-related tools that we had in the original protocol and use it to probe for specific technologies.

• We went through the EGR reviewing protocol. It was decided that as we go along in the interview process if there are more questions they will be added. 

Next set of interviews      

• We have a set of contacts with 500 plus names. Over the next two weeks Tammy and Taryn will work through that list and have a top 50 recommended firms that we can reach out to do the interviews.
• The AB members that we are going to contact for interviews are:

    Baker

    Cross

    Angie

    Mathes

    McDonald

    Richie Tammy and Taryn will contact them.  

Action Items

MSU:

• Claudia will verify at the IRB status for every one on the project.

• Claudia will create a list of the firms that we have interviewed and put it in our space and the AB space.

• Mark will send the consent form that goes with the demographics part of the employer interview.

CSW

• Tammy and Taryn will work through the contact list for interview purposes.

• Taryn to schedule the next subgroup meeting to discuss employee survey.

• Tammy and Taryn will contact AB members to do interviews.

Next meting July 24, 2008