Academic Council Minutes, July 28,2003
I. General
Agenda
--Tim Terry and Melissa Carmona from the
Victoria College Bookstore were present to discuss textbook orders and
related matters. The
on-site availability of textbooks at Sugar Land could affect sales.
Many competing vendors are now competing for sales—which makes
it difficult to anticipate how many texts to stock. Identifying and ordering textbooks well in advance of the
start of the term reduces costs to students.
--Trudy Wortham, representing OAR
distributed revised petition forms.
- Instructional
Technology/Online Issues and Updates
--Joe Ferguson said it was not yet possible
to access the M drive from home. Additional
equipment will be needed and will be ordered in the fall.
Maintaining security has become a big problem, with the
university thousands of hits a day from Internet vandals.
In response to a question, he noted that at the present time
PC-based applications remain a less expensive option that most
server-based applications.
--Chari Norgard noted an open house at
Cinco Ranch on August 6 and need to identify who will attend, since
lunch will be served. She
reviewed what she had learned at a recent WebCT conference.
Apparently, Vista may take longer to implement than was
previously thought, but a schedule is being developed.
Staff will be trained in the fall.
The roll-out will be piloted in WebCT supplemented courses in the
spring and in fully online ones in the summer.
Faculty training will be scheduled as conveniently as possible.
The UH System will work with A & M University and N. Harris
College in developing and sharing training modules.
- Fort
Bend Issues and Updates
--On Fort Bend matters, the Provost noted
that summer enrollments were down some, owing probably to a decline in
the number of course offerings, particularly from the other UHS
institutions.
--Communication problems during the recent
hurricane event were discussed. The
impact was obviously different for the campus and the off-campus
centers, but confusion occurred particularly with regard to online
courses enrolling Victoria students and Victoria faculty teaching
courses in Fort Bend. Getting out a sufficiently detailed message is difficult,
owing to the need to contact people individually and the loss of
communication capabilities, owing to the weather.
II. Specific
Agenda
--Approved a request for admission though
the student may not have been eligible to return to UH, since the
student had since completed courses at UHD, but on probation with the
stipulation that the student earn at least a 2.0 in his first semester.
--Approved a request for admission from a
student caught in the increase of TOEFL requirements from 500 to 550,
with a condition stipulated.
--Approved a request for admission from a
student who had three suspensions from another university but who had
received a bachelor’s degree from that university.
--Denied the request of a student suspended
three times from one university and twice from another. Student also had not completed TASP requirement.
--Denied the appeal of student of a C grade
for the course, the grade having been lowered for plagiarism and not
completing all assignments.
- Faculty
Development Conference Presentation Requests and Reports
--Approved the request of Dr. Barba Patton
for a travel grant ($143) to present at the International Group for the
Psychology of Mathematics Education Conference, in Honolulu, HI, in
July.
--Accepted grant-funded
conference travel reports from Drs. Jeffrey Di Leo, Xavier Garza Gomez,
Richard Gunasekera, and Andria Young.
--Accepted reports on
grant-funded research from Drs. Richard Gunasekera and Harold Smith.
--Trudy Wortham noted that total summer 03
enrollments came in 245 headcount and 1150 credit hours above the
figures for the previous summer.
--The provost reviewed the status of
responses to the SACS recommendations.
DNS/kw
7/29/03
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