Academic Council Minutes, May 17, 2006 

I.  Minutes 

--Approved with corrections to be provided by Trudy Wortham. 

II. General Agenda 

• Data Collection

--Registrations are running about 70 ahead of last year, not counting the 8-week sessions. 

• Instructional Technology/Online Issues

--UHD is migrating to Vista. 

--IT will forward 3-4 software requests to provost. 

--Provost provided copies of previous guidelines on how software purchases were to be assigned to IT, schools, or provost’s budget. 

• Fort Bend Issues and Updates

--Tuition Revenue Bond’s for new building were approved; construction should commence fairly soon. 

--There is a need for space assigned to Nursing before visit of Board of Nursing Examiners. 

--AAS group held a retreat at Pearland to address the first two portions of the Process and Time Lines previously distributed—namely the data analysis and marketing plan.  Productive meeting.  Summary and supporting materials will go to Provosts’ Council. 

--Dr. Hartshorn made a case for changing the terminology used to describe UHV operations.  I.e., terms like “off-campus,” “distance,” and “extended” imply a traditional distinction between instruction offered in person on the campus and that offered in other locations or through other media.  UHV is a delivery system, with Victoria being one location and in-person being one medium.  The terminology tends to mislead those with a traditional concept of instructional delivery, including those on oversight bodies. 

III. Specific Agenda 

• Student Appeals

--Appeal for grade change, based on student’s contention that allegation of collaboration on certain tests were unfounded, was referred to School of Education and Human Development to inquire further into the test instructions and related matters.  

--Appeal for admission to Education and Human Development graduate program despite admission index of under 1300 was denied.  

--Appeal for admission to Education and Human Development graduate program despite a low admission index was denied.

--Appeal for change of grade in graduate Education and Human Development course, based on differing views on whether assignments were late, was referred to the Education and Human Development for further inquiry.   

• Faculty Development Requests and Reports

--Approved a development grant for conference presentation ($245) for Dr. Margaret Dorsey to present at the Narrative Matters Conference, in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in May. 

--Approved a development grant for conference presentation ($1,000) for Dr. Xavier Garza Gomez to present at the International Meeting of the American Accounting Association in Washington, D.C., in August. 

--Approved a request of Dr. Xavier Garza Gomez for a research grant ($900) to test a new discretionary accruals model measuring its ability to explain stock returns of US companies. 

--Approved a development grant for conference presentation ($640) for Dr. Linda Hayes to present at the Academy of Management 2006 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA, in August. 

--Accepted a grant funded conference report from Dr. Luh-Yu Ren. 

• Other

--The Council agreed that the amount of the development/research grants should be increased and that faculty should be able to request the full amount available for one presentation or project.  The provost will examine the budget to see what amount would probably be within budget, though preliminary review indicated that the amount could go to around $1,300 and would need to go to at least that in view of increased travel and registration costs.  

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5/22/06