Academic Council Minutes, February 25,2002

• Data Collection

 --Meeting to be set up with IR, OAR, and PR to discuss how to represent enrollments at the different locations, especially in view of online courses.

• Information Technology

--Installation of Windows 2000 is in progress with units in University West being done first.  Bandwidth problems are being addressed.  Suggestions again received from students for computer access in University West.  Consensus was that access is currently sufficient and additional access would be unjustifiably costly.

• Instructional Support Services 

--The UH System AAS group will shortly share drafts of a revised course articulation (partnered courses) policy.  Discussion of the scheduling grids took up most of the meeting.  The Council discussed the problems with early scheduling.  The prospect of do a full year’s schedule was floated, since the published schedules are inaccurate anyway by the time classes start.  Chari Norgard proposed setting up online courses and services as a separate icon on the web site, with links to all the different activities offered online.

--The provost noted that plans for auxiliary buildings were proceeding, with UHCL having recently requested additional space.  The Council discussed the problem that would occur if the UHV staff could not be moved at the same time as the courses.  The new building will be done by summer.  Questions are whether the parking lot will be and whether the auxiliary buildings will be.

• Graduate Admission Policies

--A draft revision of graduate admission policies was discussed, with changes suggested.  A law passed during the last legislative session forbids relying on test scores as the primary criterion for admission.  However, the legislation is not so clear on what additional or alternative provisions are sufficient to meet the mandate.  It was noted that the UHV process has three levels of review, which should be sufficient:  an admission index, a review by the relevant school for students who do not meet the minimal index but are within 100 points of it, and an appeal to the Council for those students denied at the school level.

The policy will again be discussed at a later meeting.