Academic Council Minutes, April 19, 2006

I.  Minutes

--Approved as written

II. General Agenda

·        Data Collection

 --Margaret Rice reported summer registrations of 904 to date (1,575 was the final total for last summer).

--The Council reviewed a report provided by Trudy Wortham on issues considered at the last meeting concerning international students on F-1 visas. 

·        Instructional Technology/Online Issues and Updates 

--Chari Norgard indicated that the FACT would be meeting to look at the question of moving to Vista 4, the next upgrade.

She said that UH had finally completed its transition to Vista from the campus edition. 

She noted at that the rolling blackouts recently experienced in the state would not affect WebCT, since the servers had backup power generation. 

·        Fort Bend Issues and Updates 

--Charles Bullock noted that on-site Business courses scheduled for summer at Sugar Land were not getting enrollment and wondered if the road construction might be having an impact. 

--Possibilities of moving courses to weekends or second summer term were discussed. 

III. Specific Agenda 

·        Student Appeals 

--A student appeal for accepting 52 upper-level credits for completion of a degree was approved, since staff indicated the error was not the student’s fault and should have been caught. 

--A student appeal to accept dated GRE scores was approved.

·        Faculty Development Requests and Reports 

--Approved a development grant for conference presentation ($200) for Dr. Massoud Metghalchi to present at The Global Business and Finance Research Conference, in London, England, in July.

--Approved a publication award ($600) for Dr. Nagarajan Ramamoorthy for the published article “Determinants of Innovative Work Behavior:  Development and Test of an Integrated Model” in Creativity and Innovation Management.  

--Approved a request of Dr. Sandy Venneman for a research grant ($500) on Characterization of Equestrian Personality and Its Impact on Success.

--Approved a development grant for conference presentation ($1,000) for Dr Chun-Sheng Yu to present at The Helsinki Mobility Roundtable 2006 Global Conference in Helsinki, Finland, in June.  

--Accepted a grant funded conference travel reports from Drs. Peggy Cloninger, Mary Mayorga, Mary Natividad, Nagarajan Ramamoorthy, and Ziad Swaidan. 

IV. Other 

--Procedures and a form for handling proposed changes to academic programs were given final review.  They will be implemented and refined as need be in an effort to bring more order to the approval process. 

DNS/kw
4/24/06