CPACE Meeting Minutes

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

Location: MichiganState University,East LansingMI

Participants listed by group:

• MichiganStateUniversity (MSU): Mark Urban-Lurain, Jon Sticklen, Daina Briedis, Neeraj Buch, Claudia Vergara.
• Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW): Cindee Dresen, Kysha Frazier, Lisa Katz, Tammy Coxen. 

1)     Review Minutes May 22, 2008

Facilitate/promote contact with K. Cooley (director of the department of labor and economic growth). Cindee will take care of this.

2)     Pilot interview update

Mark: The most important thing that we got out of this is that the interview protocol needs to change a lot. We need to have a protocol that is like a flow chart (Mark showed the flow chart that we designed). The interview needs to extract two or three big ideas/themes that set the company apart. From those themes we can work through the protocol derive different questions like challenges, computational tools to meet the challenges.

Jon: It is a very good question to ask whether the tool that they are using is the best tool.

Daina: Are the people that do the interviews always the same people?

Mark: Yes there is a group of people.

Daina: Is it better to have an eng in the interviews or not?

Jon: Some things might not be understood but by and eng.

Mark: The interviews are recorded.

Cindee: Remember that we can follow up on the interviews if we need to. I am more concerned that if we have more people (during the interview) that will interfere with the interview. This is our first pilot and we need to decide what to change or not in our protocol.

Jon: The process question is that the raw tape should be analyzed by the EGR faculty.

Mark: It is a good idea to review the interviews as soon as possible. My main concern is that the interview flows.

Jon: We need to assign who to review the interviews in a timely manner.

NOTE: There was a discussion and clarification about the demographics portion of the interview. That part is sent ahead of time so that they can complete it. The interview questions are also send ahead of time. During the interview we ask for clarifications on the demographics if needed.

Mark: Since we have three shots at Cascade with different people at different levels, we want to explore the more flexible protocol (flow chart) and see how that goes and use it to refine and or iterate.

Note: There was a discussion about Cascade and their products and recruitment and retention strategies.

Mark: The idea of this new protocol is to give the interviewer some flexibility and include in each of the topics a set of questions (from the original linear protocol).

Lisa: Did the interview take one hour?

Kysha: It took longer that's other thing we need to fix it can not be that long.

Neeraj: The protocol in general has to work for other types of companies different from Cascade for example a government agency, so we need to pilot this with other types of companies. I will ask J. Polasek for a pilot interview.

Daina: With Cascade I heard that they draw people from Ferris state and it might be interesting to ask what institutions do they go for their quote engs, because for example Ferris State don't have engs they have technology so that says something about the kind of person they are recruiting, we need to find out who their constituencies are.

Mark: The initial survey portion of this has the different categories (four, two year engs degrees).

Daina: Technology is a four year degree.

Mark: So do we need to re-structure this to include a four year technology. We used the O*Net classification which is a two or four year classification.

Daina: But if somebody does not know the difference they may not be able to distinguish between a BSc in eng and a BSc in technology which to us is a difference.

Tammy: If we look at the survey we define an eng as someone who holds a four year degree in eng. We define an eng technician as some one who has an associate or two year degree in eng technology.

Mark: So the question is do we need to have a third category of a four year eng technology degree?

Tammy: We need to pilot this and see what we get; we knew there would be challenges about the way people use the term eng that are different from academia.

Mark: We star hearing all of these job titles and I had no clue what the degrees of these titles were. That is probably going to be different in every company.

Neeraj: For civil eng if you are not licensed you can not designed so there is a clear demarcation for civil engs.

Jon: Yes, but this is around functionality isn't the problem that these companies have their own categorization for jobs.

Mark: The other thing that is true is the cross functionality as we saw at Cascade. We are trying to see what the mix of disciplines is and be able to translate this to the curriculum (cvl, electric, chem. Etc) and how does computation fits in.

Jon: One dimension is what function they play which is connected to their function and the code name might be different from company to company; the other dimension is what degree backs these people so that we can fold it back to the curriculum

Cindee: We have not had the opportunity to test the demographic piece yet because not all of them have it. We need to test it and then see how to change it if we need to.

Mark: I agree so we need to wait and see how this piece plays out. Now we are focusing on the interview piece.

Neeraj: Are we going back to them with our findings and perhaps the ways in which the project addresses the needs of the companies.

Mark: At Cascade for example they were taking about big picture things and very important seemed to be office people don't know how to handle office.

Neeraj, the feedback is to come back and tell them our findings, the big things that we concluded and the ideas that we came up to address them.

Tammy, Kysha and Claudia will meet and incorporate the two protocols for the next pilot interview. 3)      NSF Annual Report. Claudia will complete

4)      CPACE employer engagement AB activities. Sent to the AB

5)      AB taking points. Sent to the AB

6)      CPACE Employer recruitment brochure

Mark: Linda was trying to get updated images based on the comments that people send. The pictures will be changed, one of the titles will be picked, and we will put only Tom's Wolf contact here because he is the PI. One of the questions is whether Tammy's name as a contact along with Tom's is confusing?

Jon: The flow is that Jamie (Tom's secretary) gets the call and she directs to Tammy.

Summary

Pilot interview update

-        The interview protocol needs to change. We need to have a protocol that is like a flow chart. The idea of this new protocol is to give the interviewer some flexibility and include in each of the topics a set of questions (from the original linear protocol). The interview needs to extract two or three big ideas/themes that set the company apart. From those themes we can work through the protocol and derive different questions like challenges, computational tools to meet the challenges.

-        The raw tape should be analyzed by the EGR faculty. It is a good idea to review the interviews as soon as possible.

-        The protocol has to work for other types of companies different from Cascade for example a government agency. We need to pilot the protocol in other companies like MDOT

-        Regarding the issue of job title vs eng discipline, there is the question about the need to have a third category of a four year eng technology degree in the demographics survey. We need to pilot more interviews and revise the demographic portion accordingly.

-        More importantly we need to be able to relate it back to curriculum. One dimension is functionality which is connected to their function and the job title might be different from company to company; the other dimension is what degree backs these people so that we can fold it back to the curriculum.

-        We are giving the companies feedback on our findings, the big things that we concluded and the ideas that we came up to address them.

Action Items

CSW

Cindee: Facilitate/promote contact with K. Cooley (director of the department of labor and economic growth).

Lisa: Bring up with the WIRE people the issue about minority representation.

Kysha, Tammy: Prepare new protocol for interview

MSU

Claudia: Prepare new protocol for interview. NSF progress report.