Minutes from 10/14/05

One topic of this meeting was the potential for hiring from a line funded by a proposal to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The proposal is being submitted by Dave Swofford from SCS and it asks for support for undergraduate fellowships for students who wish to study computational biology. Dave is asking for funds to support a faculty member who would have a line in CS, but would teach courses to support these students. The idea is that we would look to hire someone on a CS line to teach these courses that would also have research interests in databases and also has some background in biology or at least has investigated problems in computational biology. The suggestion was that the startup for the position could be paid by the HHMI grant if it is funded.

Another topic discussed in the meeting was the possibility of having a computational biology major. The general idea is to have the courses in the major be formulated between Biology, SCS, and Computer Science and taught by faculty in Biology and Computer Science. It was suggested that Computer Science will look into allowing CS undergraduates to take Biology as an alternative to Physics to satisfy the science requirement.

The faculty in general agreed with the idea of supporting this position. One concern raised was whether this faculty line would come from our normal hires or if it would be separate. Another concern was if Biology would be an acceptable alternative for Physics for our accreditation.

P.S. As a followup to the meeting more information was obtained.

It was stated by Joe Travis that the new faculty position was mostly dependent on the HHMI grant being funded, so recruitment for this position could not begin until the '06-'07 academic year. Joe Travis also stated that the new line would be in addition to the two faculty lines on which we will be able to recruit during the '06-'07 academic year. We also investigated the idea of using Biology to replace Physics as the science requirement for Computer Science majors. It was found that this would not cause any problems since Biology, like Physics, also has a lab. However, the first Biology course does have Chemistry as a co-requisite.