<p> Minutes of the Annual Mechanical Engineering Staff Meeting held at The Royal Scots Club, Edinburgh on 6 September 2010</p><p>In attendance: Stephen Houston (SDH); Bryce Richards (BSR); Daniel Iurchenko (DI); Andrew Moore (AJM); Jonathan Shephard (JDS); Baixin Chen (BC); Richard Fu (RF); Theo Lim (TL); Teaw Chu Lee (YCL); Xichun Luo (XL); Peter Cumber (PSC); Tadhg O’Donovan (TSO’D); Peter Kew (PAK); Ian Black (IB); Will Shu (WS); Wei Wang (WW); Dave McNeil (DAMcN); Wolf Fruh (WGF)</p><p>Apologies: Doug Greenhalgh (DG); Carmen Torres (CT); Tapas Mallick (TKM); Bob Reuben (RLR); Xianwen Kong (XK)</p><p>1. Welcome and Introduction (PAK) PAK outlined the day’s programme and events.</p><p>2. Minutes of Previous Meeting Actions from the meeting of 11 September 2009 were reviewed by PAK and the following noted:</p><p> Students need to be made aware of electronic links [Action: WS]  Web board issues now raised to University level. There are transition issues with IT that are holding up progress.  No progress has been made on the MSc in Automotive Engineering  The year 3 – 4 meeting day will be run again this academic year  Current Dubai staff will be advised to Riccarton staff [Action: PAK]  Sample marking of Dubai material may be required  Repository to be progressed [Action: SAZ/PAK]  Accreditation ongoing [Action: DAMcN]  Only final journal papers can be put up for REF</p><p>The minutes were than approved.</p><p>3. Teaching</p><p>3.1 Administration [IB/PAK] PAK requested that dates for the academic year calendar 2010-2011 are required. Staff should submit notable dates to PAK [Action: All]. Some initial key dates were advised, namely</p><p> RF indicated that University Open Days will be held on 29 September 2010 and 23 October 2010. All staff are required to be available for tour/desk duties. Information will be issued [Action: RF].  JDS expressed concern that Exam boards and CAB’s to be ascertained in advance [Action: PAK].</p><p>3.2 Budget [IB/PAK] PAK reported that the basic budget for 2010-2011 is as follows:</p><p>£30k for PG Assistance £25k for UG Project work £15k for general consumables £20k for Formula Student 1 £6.5k for Recruitment £2k for Staff Travel (Teaching and Learning related)</p><p>3.3 SAS Update IB reported that SAS is not yet available for academic use – secretaries have access to Administrative functions. The SAS project team had indicated that 10 September was the deadline for making Faculty Self Service (FSS) available to staff.</p><p>3.4 NSS PAK reported the NSS return as being positive and a good improvement on previous results. A continued effort was required to improve on the next year results. DAMcN asked what are we successful at in NSS? Better communication with students and a wide participation strategy through a ground up approach seemed to be working. The EPS student survey is to be revised.</p><p>3.5 Formula Student IB reported on Formula Student (FS) and the success of the team in its first year of competition, given that it had not built a car before. Staff thanked Bruce Davies and IB on their efforts.</p><p>3.6 Directors of Studies Reports Progression/graduation statistics for UG students were presented for each year by TSO’D, WS, JDS, PSC and DAMcN (see table below).</p><p>UG Nos at Stage Pass/Prog Transfer WD TSS/MC Fail Graduate Totals 1/12/09 1 111 89 1 4 17 111 2 98 80 9 3 6 98 3 116 65 5 4 1 9 32 116 4 98 32 2 64 98 5 22 22 22 6 0 Totals 445 280 1 12 5 31 116 445</p><p>TSO’D reported that the meet your mentor session was scheduled for 15 September 2010 at 14.15 in Room NS1.37. Mentor groups will consist of 4-6 students. Also, groups will remain the same for all project and Praxis work.</p><p>PG statistics were reported by WGF: 60-70 campus based, 20-30 distance learning and 50-60 off-campus. MSc energy students comprise nearly half the PG student population in EPS. Staff will be required to supervise 3-4 projects.</p><p>3.7 UG programme Leader Reports</p><p>Robotics and Cybertronics [Submitted by XK in absentia] Starting from this academic year, the transition of the R&C programme structure has completed. Actions need to be taken to ensure that the Robotics students, especially Year 3 students, take the corrected courses, which have been modified based on the change of EE courses made in the summer. There are 7(8) 5th year MEng Robotics students in 2010/2011 (compared with 5 in 2008/2009 and 3 in 2009/2010). One of the eight students has planned to graduate as BEng in November. </p><p>Contacts have been made for Robotics students’ summer placement. Italy Institute of Technology hosted two YR4 MEng Robotics students for summer placement this summer and may host future Robotics students. Feedback from these two students will be summarized within two weeks [Action: XK]. R&C programme structure may be revised in order to have common YR1/YR2 structure with EE Robotics Course (DAMcN is coordinating discussions between ME and EE).</p><p>Energy BSR had nothing further to report in addition to the progression data.</p><p>Automotive BC reported that there were 32 students in all years of the BEng Automotive degree. Visits to Nissan/Millbrook (for year 4) and Knockhill were to be arranged. It would be worth pursuing sponsorship form Knockhill [Action: BC].</p><p>IPD/EAM IB reported that the IPD course may finish this academic year with the last student graduating with an Ordinary degree. 1 student is expected on the EAM course in Year 4.</p><p>3.8 Industrial Advisory Board XL reported that one new member (National Instruments) had been added to the Board. The next meeting is scheduled for the end of November/beginning of December [Action: XL].</p><p>3.9 Year 4 Projects BC reported that all year 4 students had been allocated a project. Following on from the experience of last academic year, those students modifying or building experimental equipment it was recommended that submissions should be made to the workshop by end of Week 13 of Semester 1. The project handbook should also contain a timetable of key dates. Confirmation of the supervisor/student will be made within the first two months. Poster will be displayed in the project website [Action: BC].</p><p>3.10 Laboratory Programme WW stated that a new system for assessing labs had been instigated whereby long and short written reports would be submitted by the students. Instant feedback would be given on the short reports. The format of long report was still open for amendments – the handbook wil be updated by Week 3 to include a checklist. There will also be named members of staff against specific labs who will act as contacts for the students [Action: WW].</p><p>3.11 Accreditation DAMcN reported that a date for the accreditation visit had been asked for and this could be the end of January 2011. The required paperwork has to be submitted up to 8 weeks before the visit. Information for Mechanical Engineering is on target, but R&C is well behind. The required information will be placed on the O-drive and there will also be a CD submission. Overall there are 1 or 2 outstanding items, with most nearly finished.</p><p>3.12 Dubai PAK gave a presentation to the meeting that had been generated by CT from her visit to Dubai. This summarised the key issues, in particular:</p><p> Technician support now available for labs and project work so more hands-on activities expected  Dubai students increasingly wish to come to Edinburgh to study (increasing trend). Numbers of students for each year in 2010-2011 are Year 1 - 45; Year 2 - 30-35; Year 3 - 25-30; Year 4 - 18-20.  Course development at Dubai is something which requires to be addressed.</p><p>4. Break Out Session 1</p><p>Reports from this session will be given at the next weekly meeting on 13 September 2010.</p><p>5. Course Development for External Delivery</p><p>3 PSC gave a presentation which summarised the thinking behind the delivery of the ordinary degree within an ALP (go to O:\web\staff\mecib\ALP1.pptx). A general discussion then ensued on issues such as provision of hands-on activities, workshop related activities, what do competitors produce, exam process and marking. DAMcN stressed the importance of being ambitious so that the material produced for any ALP would be of as high quality as possible so that it would have the added benefit for students on Edinburgh and Dubai Campus programmes. Ruth Moir is to be consulted on a list of possible partners for short-listing. It was agreed that a business plan would be generated by end of December 2010 [Action: PSC].</p><p>6. Break Out Session 2</p><p>Reports by each subject group were made at the end of the session. In general, each group outlined the changes and developments they would make to courses within programmes to assist the student experience in Mechanical Engineering.</p><p>SDH reported on the developments being made to Praxis for next academic year. Essentially there will be 4 assignments on VISION covering professionalism, lab preparation, PDP and presentations.</p><p>7. Research</p><p>AJM asked for seminar speakers from the subject groups of Energy and Design & Manufacture for next session [Action: BSR/TL].</p><p>The need to complete PRES, essentially NSS for PG students will be intimated to all staff via e-mail [Action: AJM].</p><p>8. AOB</p><p> SDH stated that Semester 2 timetables will be issued shortly for checking.  It will be ascertained if the University Desktop System (UDS) is used for logging in to AV equipment in the large lecture theatres [Action: SDH].  Enquiries will be made as to the possibility of students accessing SAS directly for their marks and grades at the end of the semesters [Action: IB].  The problems with the web boards will be summarised so that PAK can take these to IT [Action: WS].  Future weekly staff meetings will be held in Room NS1.02 [Action: PAK].</p><p>9. Date of Next Meeting</p><p>September 2011 in the Royal Scots Club?</p>