A-Senate approves new engineering majors

• Tweet
• 

The Academic Senate approved new majors in mechanical and electrical engineering during its meeting Tuesday.

“It will provide a lot of opportunities of students that want to come to Central and for our graduates to interact with businesses,” said Robert Kohrman, interim provost and executive vice president.

The implementation of the two majors would not take many resources, Kohrman said. The main resource implementations are two tenure-track positions.

With state budgets cuts approaching Thursday, the university is in the planning process.

“We are anticipating cuts from (Gov. John) Engler and also from (Gov.-elect Jennifer) Granholm,” Kohrman said. “We are worried and obviously concerned but we are going to be ready.”

He said there could be Charles V. Park Library and lab needs, but it would not be much more than university facilities.

“I don’t want to say it is without cost, but we have much of the infra-structure in place,” Kohrman said.

Richard St. Andre, interim dean of science and technology, said there were many reasons the engineering program would be good for Central.

Reasons included students transferring to different schools that have an engineering program, students not coming to Central because of the lack of an engineering program, funding and companies recruiting on-campus.

The College of Science and Technology is looking to meet the requirements for accreditation.

“The department had seven engineers on its staff, but it lost two and we are looking to replace them. We are looking to add two more next year,” St. Andre said. “That will give us nine engineers which is the minimum for accreditation.”

St. Andre said it will probably appear before the A-Senate in February or March at the latest.

“We wouldn’t implement it if it was not going to be a quality program,” he said.

The A-Senate also approved changes to the bachelor of music in theory composition, piano, orchestral instruments and common core.

A placement exam was added to theory composition.

Both piano and orchestral instruments removed MUS 382: Instrumental Conducting and Materials from the majors, and the common core for all music bachelor majors removed MUS 502: Form Analysis.

During the provost report, Kohrman said a collection of the master syllabuses would be in one location by mid-May.

The Dec. 10 Academic Senate meeting and Dec. 6 Senate Executive Board Meeting are canceled.