B.5 Faculty (Criterion 5)

The Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering has 19 faculty members or the equivalence of 17.83 FTEs. All faculty members are tenured, have continuing appointment, or on tenure track. Eighteen have Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering or closely related fields. One faculty member holds a Ph.D. in education although her B.S. and M.S. degrees are from industrial engineering.

The 19 faculty members include Drs. Alvin Day, Roger Berger, Steve Vardeman, Max Morris, and Douglas Gemmill that have less than 100% responsibilities in the department. Dr. Day has no teaching and research responsibilities in the department since his primary duties are in freshman engineering and engineering distance education. Dr. Roger Berger is on phased retirement and therefore has only half time responsibility to the department. Drs. Steve Vardeman and Max Morris each hold a joint appointment with the Department of Statistics. They hold a one quarter and one third appointment in IMSE, respectively. Dr. Douglas Gemmill is the Director of the college-wide Systems Engineering Program and has a quarter time appointment on this responsibility and a three fourth appointment in IMSE.

Of the 19 faculty members, five (4.08 FTE) are full Professors including the Department Chair. There are eight (7.75 FTE) Associate Professors, five (5.0 FTE) Assistant Professors, and one Adjunct Professor (1.0 FTE) with continuing full time appointment. Job responsibilities for all faculty members include teaching, research, and outreach. During the 1999/2000 academic year, Dr. Carolyn Heising was on sabbatical and spent the entire year at the Department of Energy in Washington, DC. She is expected to return from her sabbatical in August, 2000. Both Dr. Day and Dr. Moller-Wong took leave of absence without pay during the spring semester of 2000.

The typical faculty workload is two courses per semester, usually one undergraduate and one graduate course. Exceptions are made for new faculty members, faculty with special projects, and those without full time appointments. For example, new Assistant Professors and Associate Professors without tenure are assigned one course per semester in their first year of appointment. Faculty members with one-third or less appointment teach one course per year. In general, for each quarter time appointment, a faculty member is assigned one course. As mentioned above, variation to this rule also occurs when courses are cancelled for low enrollment or a faculty member has other responsibilities considered sufficiently time consuming to justify release from teaching a course. Such additional responsibilities include funded research, professional services, and committee work. The department also hires temporary instructors in some cases to cover some courses when faculty buyouts and other duties make it impossible to cover all classes with the faculty. The hiring of temporary instructors has been limited to those with engineering degrees and having considerable industrial experience. Table A3 in Appendix I provides a summary of the faculty workload.

With the exception of Engr 101, some summer course offerings, and occasionally IE 304, the faculty teaches all courses in the department. However, the department also feels it is important to provide opportunities for our PhD students to develop the teaching skills they will need in their careers. Such students may be assigned a course to teach under the guidance of a senior faculty mentor. Courses with enrollment of twelve or more students are, typically, assigned graduate teaching assistants. Engr 101 is a college course with zero credit and serves as an orientation for engineering freshmen. A student only needs to enroll for one semester to satisfy the requirement. Even though the course has an Engr. designation, during fall semester, individual departments are responsible for providing instruction to students in their majors. The Undergraduate Advisor in IMSE Department normally teaches this course. Undeclared students and those who could not enroll in the course during fall semester take the course in spring. In spring semester, the Engineering College Student Services program manages the course. This strategy is used because the enrollment is usually too low in spring for individual departments to necessitate a split into individual majors. IE 304 is a two-credit service course offered every semester. Occasionally, a Ph.D. student in IE is recruited to teach a section.

The faculty is composed of individuals with diverse academic interests that encompass all of the areas typically found in a typical industrial engineering curriculum. The faculty composition is also driven by the department’s mission and perceived trends in the educational requirements for industrial engineers for the 21^st century. Scholarly pursuit that includes research, publications and service to technical organizations are expected of all faculty. Table A4 in Appendix I provides an analysis of the faculty.