The Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department Personnel Committee has evaluated the materials that you submitted for reappointment to the rank of assistant professor. I am pleased to inform you that the Committee recommends that you be reappointed to a third probationary year.

The Committee considers your teaching effectiveness to be good. Your teaching evaluations are at or slightly below the departmental average. The Committee encourages you to make every effort to substantially improve your student evaluations, which constitute an important element of the review. While a number of students praised your general approach to teaching, many others were not as supportive. Several students complained that your assignments are too time-consuming. For example, one student stated that he(she) had spent 25+ hours/wk on your class, excessive by any standard.

It is important that students enrolled in graduate classes have the prerequisites; otherwise, class instruction becomes difficult at best. In CIVE 631 Spatial Hydrology, a class with advanced applied GIS content, all students must have taken a beginning course in GIS. Many students complained that they did not have the required background, or that they were required to use Matlab (in CIVE 631) without adequate training. More importantly, the CIVE 445 Applied Hydrology class, taught in Fall 2014, seemed to focus more on scientific hydrology rather than on the more applied (engineering) aspects of hydrology. The Committee was unable to verify that you are following the SDSU Catalog's course description. Accordingly, the Committee urges you to redirect your efforts to more closely follow the SDSU course catalog, and to teach applied hydrology with a clear and definite engineering emphasis. Moreover, the Committee urges you to pay more attention to the students' realistic expectations, particularly regarding course load, since they are the ultimate beneficiaries of our efforts.

The Committee considers your professional growth to be good. The Committee notes that you have published, with coauthors or as a coauthor, three refereed journal publications in the past year, a reasonably good output by most standards. The Committee encourages you to actively pursue your own independent lines of research, above and beyond the subject(s) covered in your doctoral research. In addition, extramural funding to support your research program should be more proactively sought. The Committee notes that you have one (1) graduate student with thesis in progress, which is commendable. More activity in this area would be highly desirable. An intrinsic component of meaningful research is the publication of papers in refereed journals, particularly with your students as coauthors or collaborators.

The Committee considers your service to be very good. Your activities as associate editor of the journal Forest Hydrology are commendable. Your activities with the American Geophysical Union Hydrology Section are also worthy of mention. The Committee encourages you to continue to develop your professional contacts with the civil engineering professional society (ASCE), which would be more in line with your civil engineering faculty appointment. To enhance your service to the department, the Committee encourages you to serve on departmental committees and other departmental activities.

You have the right to submit a response or rebuttal in writing to this letter of recommendation. If you choose to submit a written response, it must be delivered to the departmental office by October XX, 2015 using the response/rebuttal form available from the Faculty Affairs website (http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~facaff/newrtp.html)

Sincerely yours,

Victor M. Ponce

Chair, Personnel Committee
Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department

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