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.