Academic Council Minutes, December 5, 2007
I. Review of minutes – November 7, 2007
--Approved as circulated.
II. General
· PeopleSoft Issues and Updates
1. Ms. Trudy Wortham provided current enrollment figures for Spring 2008 and the admissions applications status report. Analysts are working on processing the incompletes. Ms. Wortham expressed some concern with the number of approved but not enrolled. Dean Charles Bullock asked if it was possible provide a breakdown by school. Ms. Wortham will provide the breakdown to Academic Council. Dr. Nagarajan Ramamoorthy was concerned that there were more undergraduate applications than graduate applications. Ms. Wortham will look at trend data to compare undergraduate and graduate applications data with previous semesters. Dr. Di Leo asked if application updates can be provided to the school. Ms. Wortham will provide the data by school, but also stated that the schools may run a query giving updated data. Ms. Wortham will send a list with query names so that the schools will know how to identify individual queries.
2. Ms. Wortham reported that Alex Leal, PeopleSoft Consultant, was on campus the week of November 26th to provide query training. The training was informative; however, the need for centralized query writing was recognized. Admissions will be asking Ms. MaryAnn Rivera for assistance with queries. Ms. Norgard reiterated the importance of centralized query writing and discussed the possibility of hiring a person to write queries.
3. Ms. Wortham reported that there were problems with extracting enrollment data.
4. Faculty grading is going smoothly. All grades must be entered into PeopleSoft by December 12, 2007.
· Admissions Updates
1. Dean Bullock asked if additional help is necessary to assist in processing the applications. Ms. Wortham will visit with the admissions analysts. Ms. Chari Norgard also mentioned that after the holidays, phones will be answered by other staff members thus allowing Financial Aid, Admissions and Bursar Office personnel focus on processing students. Phone support will continue until the week after classes begin.
2. Ms. Wortham stated that an application fee was being considered. There was concern that using an application fee may limit the number of individuals registering. Currently not charging an application fees allows more individuals to apply since there is no monetary loss and allows UHV to make initial contact to new students who apply.
· Information Technology Updates
1. Mr. Joe Ferguson provided handouts on the Texas Learning and Computation Center (TLC2) which provides learning and research sources to UH campuses through Research & Education Network of Houston (RENoH). Mr. Ferguson suggested asking Rosalinda Mendez or Dr. Dennis Fouty to give an overview of how the TLC2 can help provide research and learning support for our faculty.
· Fort Bend/Cinco Ranch Issues and Updates
1. Dr. Margaret Rice reminded Academic Council that the Fall Commencement will take place at 3:00 p.m. on December 9th at the Merrell Center in Katy. Senator Cornyn will be the guest speaker at the commencement ceremony and Regent Gonzalez will be attending. The inaugural Nursing cohort will be graduating on December 9th.
2. At the November 5th Provost Council, UH campus proposed 5 new programs and 1 certification to be offered at UHS Sugar Land. Included in their proposal was Early Childhood through EC4, Organizational Leadership, and Biotechnology. These new programs are in response to a charge that Dr. Foss gave to the deans to take new programs to Sugar Land. There is concern with their Biotechnology program since it is nearly identical to our Biology program.
· Other
1. The Undergraduate Committee will be bringing a change in Honors policy to the Faculty Senate on Friday, December 7. Students will be receiving honors for this commencement based on the suggested revised policy. Programs will contain an insert with all the Nursing honors graduates. Ms. Wortham will provide the names of the Nursing honors graduates to Dr. Rice and Mrs. Gresham.
2. Ms. Norgard submitted the program plan for the Uniform Recruitment and Retention Report to the Coordinating Board. The Coordinating Board now has asked that the report be revised to include demonstrating how program plans tie into Closing the Gaps. Ms. Norgard will be revising the plan, but will need to refer to schools for the recruitment and retention information. Ms. Norgard feels it will be beneficial if school personnel can attend the Coordinating Board’s Regional meeting that will be held in Spring. Dr. Di Leo asked if international students will be included in the figures. Ms. Norgard believes that the report pertains to just Texas student enrollments, but this is something that can be asked at the regional meeting.
Dr. LaBrecque stated that the Uniform Recruitment and Retention Report as well as the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis and Annual Plan are all reports that can be examined during an Academic Council Retreat next year.
3. Ms. Norgard stated that for purposes of the One-Stop Shop, Student Academic Services areas will be tracking and assessing how many students contact each office and how much time is spent on responding.
4. Ms. Wortham reported on the visit to the University of North Texas, University of Texas Arlington and the Southern Methodist University to gain insight into Peoplesoft processes implemented by those universities. It looked at how they are structured. Specialists have minimal to no frontline contact with students. Admissions will be looking to see if they can implement the same process. Ms. Wortham stated that Admissions is also looking at extending hours to Saturdays and Sundays to help the working student.
III. Specific
· Student Appeals
1. There were no student appeals.
· Faculty Development Grant Requests
--Accepted an FY08 grant-funded conference report from Dr. Hsin-Hui Lin.
--Accepted an FY08 grant-funded conference report from Dr. Xavier Garza Gomez
--Accepted an FY08 grant-funded conference report from Dr. Mary Mayorga.
--Accepted an FY08 grant-funded conference report from Dr. Jun-Yeon Lee
--Accepted an FY08 grant-funded conference report from Dr. Ziad Swaidan
--Dr. Vera Adamchik was awarded a FY08 conference grant for $1300 for her presentation at the 2007 Economics and International Business Research Conference in Miami, FL on December 12-15, 2007.
--Dr. Andrew Baerg was awarded a FY08 publication grant for $600.00 for his article “Flight Night Round 2: Mediating the Body and Digital Boxing.” published in the Sociology of Sport Journal 24, 324-45..
-- Dr. Jeffrey Di Leo was awarded a FY08 conference grant for $655.00 for his presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Modern Language Association on December 27-30, 2007.
--Dr. Jeffry Moe was awarded a FY08 research grant for $200.00 for research on 1) Surveying Counselors about perceptions on similarity and differences between social advocacy and consultation; 2) Psychometric validation of a measure of holistic wellness for GLBT people; and 3) Survey for counselor educators & counseling psychologists on professional identity.
--Dr. Denise Neill was awarded a FY08 research grant for $1300 to research nurses’ perceptions of their workload.
--Dr. Luh Yu Ren was awarded a FY08 conference grant for $1300 for his presentation at the 2008 Applied Business Research Conference in Orlando, FL from January 2-5, 2008.
--Dr. Qi Zhu was awarded a FY08 conference grant for $900.00 for his presentation at the Educational Technology Research Symposium in Austin, TX from February 5-8, 2008.
As recorded by,
Karen Boldt
12/05/07