Echeverria discusses the future of engineering dept.
Students say they are against merger with mathematics department
By JACKIE WOMACK
Provost Jeri Echeverria sought to build trust with alarmed engineering
students during a meeting Friday.
The engineering students were upset their college may be merged with the
college of mathematics and science and possibly lose accreditation.
“It’s terrible,” civil engineering major Charlotte Anderson
said before the meeting. “It’s going to ruin my career.”
Echeverria said that as soon as she heard the rumor mill was saying she
was going to close the college, she arranged to hold a meeting with students.
“Here’s where we are right now: a decision [to merge the engineering
college with the college of math and science] has not been reached,”
she said.
About 300 engineering students overflowed a small auditorium in the Engineering
East building to listen to Echeverria speak about the future of their
college.
She said the rumors seemed to stem from the decision to let the computer
science department return to the College of Science and Mathematics, something
that most of the faculty involved agreed to.
The merger proposal was only one possibility and not the one Echeverria
currently favors, she said.
“The other option is a trial period where engineering remains a
college but makes improvements,” Echeverria said. “Have the
faculty create a plan for these improvements. If it’s successful,
we keep the college of engineering as a college.”
She said the areas that need improvement are student retention, the amount
of grant money and private donations the engineering college gets and
increasing student work in the Fresno community.
“Two years from now, I want to see the engineering college in better
condition than it is now,” Echeverria said.
She said, as of Friday, the engineering faculty was still working on the
plan, but it would be submitted this week and a decision would be made
by spring break, which begins March 21.
The engineering college will not be getting a permanent replacement for
former engineering and computer science dean Karl Longley until the college’s
future is settled, Echeverria said.
At one point in the meeting, a student chided Echeverria for being autocratic.
“You’re making these decisions for us and you keep saying
‘I know what’s best for you’ and you haven’t said
[anything about] us,” construction management major Carolyn Capps
said.
Echeverria said she would make a decision based on students’ best
interests and faculty and community members’ suggestions. She said
she was already making plans for another meeting with engineering students.
One student wondered why a merger is a prospect.
“What I don’t understand is why a merger will solve these
problems?” computer engineering major Abdullah Almezaire said.
Echeverria said a merger won’t solve all the problems.
“But the College of Science and Mathematics is better at getting
grants and better at managing resources,” she said. “And with
a larger faculty (in one college), you get more flexibility.”
The engineering program is “one of the highest-cost majors on campus,”
Echeverria said.
Mechanical engineering major Keith Matthews was very concerned about the
possibility of the college losing accreditation with the Accreditation
Board of Engineering and Technology.
“It could potentially delay our careers if [the college] doesn’t
pick up accreditation,” Mathews said before the meeting. “When
you graduate from an accredited college you only have to work two years
under a professional engineer. Without accreditation, you have to work
four years.”
When asked about this possibility during the meeting, Echeverria said
that was something she wasn’t going to let happen.
“I have no intention of losing ABET accreditation, damaging your
major or changing the degree,” she said. “[But] ABET doesn’t
care whether or not you’re in a school or college. They care if
it is a quality program.”
Davidson Chanda, secretary of the American Society of Civil Engineers
at Fresno State, said they are planning to petition Fresno State president
John Welty to intervene on the matter.
“The meeting went fine, but she was vague on specifics,” Chanda
said.
Echeverria said it was “a very good meeting.”
“It’s important for me to hear from students in the program,”
she said.
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