Academic Council Minutes, March 1, 2006 

I.  Minutes

--Approved with correction of ITT to IT. 

II. General Agenda 

• Guest

--Sandra Heinold gave a report on CRLA certification for Academic Center tutors. 

• Data Collection

--73 students have now registered for the spring semester 8-week intra-session, which starts March 20.  Awareness and promotional effort were issues discussed.  It was agreed that the registrar could authorize students to participate in spring commencement if they had completed coursework during the 8-week session but would not be officially awarded the degree till the end of the first summer term, when the courses taken would be counted. 

--The 50% federal limitation (for financial aid purposes) on web-based courses has been eliminated. 

• Instructional Technology/Online Issues and Updates

--Chari Norgard shared a draft of a “good practices” document for online instruction.  It will be further shared with faculty for feedback and revision. 

Since Blackboard and WebCT have now merged, future considerations may be whether licensing arrangements will change and whether it will become more practical for institutions to lease host servers, as well.  

• Fort Bend Issues and Updates

-- The provost will be attempting to develop a process and time frame for discussing the administrative structure of the centers, now that the search for an academic administrator to oversee both centers has been put on hold. 

III. Specific Agenda 

• Faculty Development Requests and Reports

--Approved a development grant for conference presentation ($1,000) for Dr. Jim Holm to present at the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature International Conference, in Ottawa, Canada, in April. 

--Approved a development grant for conference presentation ($288) for Dr. Hsin-Hui Lin to present at the 15^th Biennial Conference of the Society for Research in Human Development Conference, in Fort Worth, TX, in March/April. 

--Approved a development grant for conference presentation ($1,000) for Dr. Cindy Schnebly to present at the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature International Conference, in Ottawa, Canada, in April. 

--Approved a research grant ($1,000), pending receipt of a FY 05 conference report, for Dr. Siva Somasundaram to study the anti-tumor activity of red chili active ingredient-capsaicin and lutine in breast cancer cell line with and without chemotherapy. 

--Approved a development grant for conference presentation ($316) for Dr. Ziad Swaidan to present at the 2006 International Academy of Business Disciplines Conference, in San Diego, CA, in April.

--Accepted grant funded conference travel reports from Drs. Peggy Cloninger, Margaret Dorsey, and Horace Fairlamb (2).

--Accepted a grant funded research report from Dr. Li Chao.

• Academic Policy

--Dr. Venneman reported that the Faculty Senate had not approved the proposal to grant an automatic W to students withdrawing after a given date but rather preferred to retain the prerogative of assigning an F. 

She indicated the Senate had not acted on the questions of repeated courses and incompletes. 

She noted that the Senate is discussing the question of using pluses and minuses with letter grades.  It was noted that two of the UHS institutions currently use them.  A further question was whether such grades would simply be recorded or whether they would count in the GPA. 

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3/6/06