Rationale for Proposed 2002-2004 BS ECE Curriculums

Prof. Brian L. Evans, Dept. of ECE, UT Austin

The proposed catalog changes represent a significant reform of both curriculums. The structural changes are summarized below:

ECE course abstracts: 60 out of 90 have been changed
number of ECE specialization areas expanded from 9 to 15
number of ECE specialization electives increased from 5-6 to 8
access to ECE specialization courses moved from first semester senior year to first semester junior year
longest pre-requisite chain to graduate shortened from 6 courses to 5 courses
total number of hours reduced from 128 to 123

One impact of these structural changes is that a student entering UT from high school (without AP credits) can realistically finish in eight long semesters. In addition, a student transferring four semesters of coursework could realistically finish in four long semesters plus one summer semester. About 20% of the new students each year in ECE are transfer students.

These changes are the first attempt to overhaul the ECE curriculums in more than 20 years. By the late 1970s, electrical engineering was still closely tied to physics, and was primarily concerned with the design and test of analog circuits, which involved semiconductor devices, radio frequency circuits, and power electronics. That has changed radically over the last 20 years with the widespread use of PCs and dial-up modems starting in the early 1980s, audio CD players in the late 1980s, digital cell phones in the early 1990s, and DVD and MP3 players, and cable and ADSL modems in the late 1990s. The consumer products over the last 20 years have been a mixture of analog and digital, with the amount of digital subsystems increasing over time to the point that these products are now more digital than analog. A similar phenomenon has occurred in military electronic equipment. As a consequence, the ECE field in the late 1990s was far less tied to physics and far more tied to digital computing than it was in the late 1970s.

Despite the rapid progress in industry, the 60 ECE credit hours in the 2000-2002 EE curriculum were 50% analog, 20% digital, and 18% student's choice. (The 66 ECE hours of the computer engineering curriculum in 2000-2002 were 41% analog, 32% digital, and 17% student's choice.) The 70 ECE credit hours in the 2002-2004 ECE curriculums are 33% analog, 25% digital, and 28% student's choice. The 2002-2004 ECE curriculums give students more freedom in that they can pursue two areas of specialization instead of just one. The 2002-2004 ECE curriculums are also better matched to the motivations of students to study ECE and better tuned to the state of industry and graduate research in ECE.

These content and structural changes are a result of two years of discussions involving students, staff, and faculty in the Dept. of ECE, as chronicled on the ECE reform Web site at

http://www.ece.utexas.edu/~bevans/eereform/index.html

Last updated 02/15/02. Mail comments about this page to bevans@ece.utexas.edu.