II. Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

Courses leading to the MEng degree after a total of four years are now firmly established as normal for engineering. The two-year Part I of the Engineering Tripos feeds the new two-year courses for Part II and for the Electrical and Information Sciences Tripos, in addition to the well established Manufacturing Engineering and Chemical Engineering Triposes, the latter being in a separate department. The Faculty Board of Engineering still takes responsibility for the one-year Management Studies Tripos, although it now attracts fewer engineering undergraduates (3 after Part IB of the Engineering Tripos in 1996) and recruitment is from a number of Triposes with Natural Sciences predominating.

The number of candidates for each of the 1996 Tripos examinations in the Department was:

Engineering Tripos, Part IA 304

Engineering Tripos, Part IB 299

Engineering Tripos, Part IIA 138
Electrical and Information Sciences Tripos, Part I 126
Manufacturing Engineering Tripos, Part I 44
Management Studies Tripos 42

Engineering Tripos Part IIB 134
Electrical and Information Sciences, Part II 98
Manufacturing Engineering Tripos, Part II 43

Of the 299 who were candidates for Part IB, 28 subsequently transferred to Chemical Engineering and 2 to Computer Sciences, whereas of the 264 who were candidates for the Engineering Tripos, Part IIA, or Electrical and Information Sciences Tripos, Part I, 22 had transferred from the Natural Sciences Tripos, the Mathematical Tripos or the Computer Sciences Tripos. Of that same group of 264, 13 decided not to continue to the fourth year and left Cambridge with the BA degree only.

We congratulate I.H. Temperton of Churchill College for winning the nation-wide student paper competition and the Lindapter Award of the Institution of Civil Engineers. In place of one of the four-year modules a student may submit a short dissertation on a topic in the field of the module. The paper submitted by I.H. Temperton to the Institution was based on such a dissertation and entitled `Studies in Timber Design'.

During the year the Department has been one of six departments throughout the United Kingdom undertaking pilot studies of teaching quality management under an initiative of the Engineering Professors' Council. Much interest has been expressed by the other participants in the systems for obtaining feed-back from the undergraduates which have been evolving over a number of years in the Department. Of particular interest has been the annual computerised survey which is now well established in CUED.

Graduate Teaching

The number of candidates applying during the year for graduate courses offered in the Department totalled 584. Of those admitted to taught courses, 52 students registered for the one-year Advanced Course in Design, Manufacture and Management (ACDMM) and 17 students registered for the MPhil Course in Computer Speech and Language Processing. The number of admissions to courses in research included 2 for the Certificate in Postgraduate Study in Engineering, 7 for the MPhil degree in Engineering and 57 for subsequent registration for the PhD degree. Of the candidates approved for certificates and degrees during the year, 1 candidate received the Certificate of Postgraduate Study, 52 candidates were approved for the Postgraduate Certificate in Design, Manufacture and Management, 23 candidates were approved for the MPhil degree, 1 candidate was approved for the MSc degree and 61 candidates were approved for the PhD degree. At the end of the Michaelmas Term 1995, there were 353 Graduate Students registered for courses in Engineering, of whom 311 were in residence (the figures do not include the 52 students registered for the ACDMM). Of the 353 students on the Register, 162 were Home students, 158 were Overseas students and 33 were EC students. There were 312 men and 41 women.

The taught ACDMM course celebrated its 30th year of operation, having run continuously from its inception in 1966. As in recent years the course operated with two streams, one beginning in August with 33 students and the other in December with 19 students. There were 39 men and 13 women on the course. Course content for the two streams was largely unchanged from the previous year. The taught MPhil course in Computer Speech and Language Processing was given jointly by the Engineering Department and the Computer Laboratory. As in previous years, it consisted of two terms of lectures and coursework followed by a three-month project. This year, with the encouragement of the course's Industrial Liaison Steering Committee the programming language used in the practical classes was changed from Pascal to C.

An increasing number of first year PhD students, on the advice of their supervisors, attended lecture courses and some took the corresponding written examinations as candidates `not for honours'. Most of the courses attended were chosen from modules offered in the fourth year of the MEng course. During the year, the Head of Department established a Working Party on Graduate Studies under the Chairmanship of Professor A.P. Dowling (Deputy Head of Department, Graduate Studies) to review the PhD programme. The review is examining ways of ensuring that (i) graduate students of the highest quality applied to the Department to study for the PhD degree, and (ii) the PhD programme offered was well-balanced and effective in providing the students with the background and training to enable them to become leaders in research. The report is expected in the academic year 1996-97.