Review of Technical University Crete, Department of Environmental Engineering

Steven Banwart, University of Sheffiled, U.K.
Panos Georgopoulos, Rutgers University, U.S.A.
George Pinder, University of Vermont, U.S.A.

Evaluation Committee for Graduate and Undergraduate Programs, 1st July 2006

Overall Assessment

The evaluation committee spent 30th June – 1st July visiting the department.  Background information was provided from department reports and brochures for the postgraduate and undergraduate programs, and review of previous evaluation committee reports.  The visit included presentations by faculty members on the state of the current programs and forward planning for their enhancement.  The Committee met with a number of individual faculty members to discuss teaching and research, met for extended discussion with MSc and PhD students, viewed written student feedback and visited the laboratory facilities.  The evaluation concluded with verbal feedback to the faculty, Q&A and faculty response and feedback on the points raised by the committee.  The committee looks forward to a report in due course on the implementation of the following recommendations.

The committee perceives that the department has two strategic aims: 1) to achieve growth and 2) to achieve excellence in teaching and scholarship.  The department has superb staff of international standing as a strong platform for academic excellence.  The current state of the department is one with very strong appointments, solid undergraduate and postgraduate programs and the potential to become very good to internationally excellent.  Many faculty members are internationally recognized and are leaders, or collaborate with leaders, in their research areas.  New appointments will expand current staff from 13 to over 20 in the next 3-5 years.  The department has achieved a remarkably high standard in teaching and research during an intense period of start-up since 1997.  Realizing the department’s potential for international excellence and visibility will require careful selection of strategic objectives, and focusing of resources and faculty effort.

The main risk to be managed is the extensive demands on faculty time to deliver and further develop the taught programs (both UG and PG).  This has the potential to spread overall effort too thinly, thus making it difficult to sustain the required depth of effort in scholarship.

General Recommendations

The committee supports the vision of the department as articulated above. Success in scholarship will enhance the visibility of the department in the international academic community with the concomitant benefits of faculty recognition, enhanced opportunities for research support and access to highly qualified students. Excellence in teaching will result in highly qualified students entering post-graduate education, government and the private sector. Both teaching and scholarship should be equally embraced.  To achieve success in advancing these two academic goals, it is necessary that individuals with talents in each area be used effectively and be rewarded commensurate with their achievements. Current workload strategies do not reflect the reality that good teachers should focus on teaching and those who are capable researchers focus on scholarship. All faculty teach essentially the same number of contact hours irrespective of their capabilities in, and responsibilities for scholarship.

The committee opines that it is in the best interest of the department and the university at large to recognize that the supervision of the research of graduate students, and to a lesser degree undergraduate students, is teaching. Time spent in the supervision of, and consultation with students regarding their research activities is similar to classroom contact hours and must be recognized as such. A generally recognized strategy to account for this aspect of teaching is to assign contact hour credit to time allocated to student research oversight. In this spirit, we suggest that each doctoral student supervised be considered as equivalent to one contact hour. For example, if a faculty member supervises three doctoral students, he/she will be relieved of teaching one course. The following table indicates how other research supervision responsibilities would be credited.

The support of graduate student research through grants and contracts must also be recognized as an important contribution to the welfare of the department and the university. In this spirit, the committee proposes that the preparation and submission of grant and contract applications be considered as departmental service. Should the grant or contract be awarded, the committee proposes that management of the grant also be considered as service. The metric of service used in some US departments is the ‘typical’ committee assignment. For example, preparation and submission of a competitive grant or contract proposal would be considered equivalent to 0.25 of a ‘typical’ committee assignment. Supervision of a grant or contract, once received, would be equivalent to 0.5 of a ‘typical’ committee assignment.

A further topic of discussion with faculty members was teaching delivery, and it is proposed that the department explore with the university IT services the implementation of carefully targeted e-learning support.  The committee understands that e-learning is under development, and strongly support this.  Examples of web environments are BlackBoard and WebCT.  These have the potential to upload teaching materials, conduct formative assessments (web-based quizzes), host discussion fora and distribute course materials and schedules.

Postgraduate Program Structure

The committee identified the two main drivers for development of the postgraduate program as

1. Service to the state through provision of high-quality MS graduates and
2. Enhanced international reputation through PhD research excellence.

The recommendations below apply to the PhD program.  The committee realizes that students completing the MSc program may benefit from other structures and that flexibility is needed.  This is particularly the case since some students enrolling for one year may choose to progress to PhD, while others enrolling for PhD may exit after 1 year with MSc.

The committee feels that the two “cycles” (or themes or directions in the following) of the Graduate Program (Environment and Health; Water Resources Management) are generally appropriate, capturing the wide diversity of teaching and activities within the Department, while being broad enough to allow for future growth.  Course titles appearing in the Graduate Program brochure under this cycle (Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Assessment of Environmental Impact on Health), are not currently taught.  There may also be a need for new courses so that the areas covered under the cycle more accurately and fully reflect its title. These new courses should cover both basic concepts (such as, e.g.: Essentials of Environmental Toxicology; Essentials of Exposure Biology; etc.) as well as Public Health Informatics Methods (such as, e.g.: Use of Geographic Information Systems and Geospatial Databases for Public Health; etc.).   Due to the limitations noted above concerning already heavy teaching loads, any adjustment to new courses offered should be carefully targeted, with respect to the skills of new appointments, and the opportunity they provide to reduce teaching loads by taking on existing courses.

Furthermore, the committee recommends that special direction “tracks” are defined within each of the two cycles, so as to balance the needs for achieving both adequate depth and breadth through the graduate courses offered in the Program. Each “track” will consist of a cluster of courses of related nature (e.g. Treatment and Remediation Processes and Technologies; Design and Management of Public Health Engineering Systems; Pollution and Health Risks; etc.1). A graduate student, in close consultation with her/his graduate advisor, would be expected to select courses primarily from one “track,” while being required to also select one course from each of two other tracks. This system can provide a rational structure for organizing and integrating the graduate courses in a meaningful manner, while allowing flexibility in the choices the student will have to make. It should be emphasized, nevertheless, that what is recommended above should be interpreted as guidance, and applied with appropriate flexibility, rather than as rigid procedure.

The committee also recommends flexibility in identifying any “basic courses” that may be required for students entering the Program with undergraduate engineering degrees from disciplines other than Environmental Engineering. Required courses, if any, should be identified, on a case-by-case basis by the Graduate Program Director, based on examination of the student’s undergraduate transcripts and, if necessary, after a consultation with the student.

Undergraduate Program Structure

The committee recognizes that the proposed Program Enhancements for 2006-2008 are funded and must be delivered in some format as a requirement of program support from the Greek government.

Noting the already heaving teaching loads, the committee recommends that the enhancements 1) – 5) be implemented carefully with specific, limited and targeted changes.  Enhancement 6) is important and should be carried out.  The department should engage with other departments and the university to obtain 24 hour access to the PC lab.

The committee noted that no electives are offered in Semesters 3-6.  It is recommended that moving some electives from later Semesters into earlier years be considered.  This is to offer students more choice at an earlier stage, and to give them the opportunity to “taste” specializations before the final 2 years of the program.

A further recommendation is that notional prerequisites be identified in order to inform students of the intended flow of teaching and learning during progression through the program. The Committee recognizes that formal prerequisites are not feasible given the assessment schedule during the academic year,   However, it would be useful to students and faculty members alike to have the preferred prerequisites for a course noted in the program handbook.

Regarding laboratory provision in the undergraduate program, the Committee notes that in the interest of teaching efficiencies, expansion of provision is not seen as a priority at this time.