Academic Council Minutes – March 4, 2009

 

I.                   Review of Minutes – February 18, 2009

1.      The minutes were approved as circulated.

 

II.                General

A.                Enrollment Management

1.       Ms. Carolyn Mallory provided a breakdown by school of financial aid disbursed to the students for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009.  Ms. Mallory stated that Financial Aid is having problems loading changes for 2009-10 into Peoplesoft due to the recent problems we are experiencing.  Dr. LaBrecque asked if financial aid will be funded prior to the first class day.  Ms. Mallory stated that Clear Lake disburses aid prior to the first class day to the student’s account.  Clear Lake has an agreement with their bookstore that the aid applied to the student account may be used at the bookstore to purchase textbooks   However, UHV is implementing a Higher One card.  A Higher One card is a student card that acts as an Student I.D. card, library card, and as a debit card where refunds are credited.  Currently UH and UH Downtown are also using the card.  If a Higher One card is issued, students will have three options for disbursement.  The first option is to have the refund applied to the debit card.  The second option is to have refund sent to another banking institution.  The third option is that the student may have a refund check mailed to them.  Financial Aid will disburse the funds and the Bursars office will ensure that the refund is issued.  Mr. Greg Fanelli, Director of Business Services, is reviewing the Higher One card.  He will be working with Marketing to decide how to get the information to the students and how to name the card, if the University chooses to do so. 

2.      Ms. Trudy Wortham provided a revised enrollment report to Academic Council.  Ms. Wortham stated that since she receives so many requests for five year trend data, she has decided to include the five year trend in the report that she provides Academic Council.  She noted that the headcount by residence figures are different than the Coordinating Board report because the report figures are based by a student’s mailing residence.  Ms. Wortham asked Academic Council to e-mail any suggestions on how to improve the report to her.

3.      Ms. Norgard stated that she and Mr. Shawn Brett are still working developing a web page that will allow users to receive updated data on enrollment.  The information will be static at first; but, Ms. Norgard hopes that users will eventually be able to select the information they want from the website.

B.                 Information Technology

1.      Mr. Ferguson reported that he has been trying to contact UH regarding the Peoplesoft and WebCT problems that we have been experiencing.  UH is also experiencing network and Voice over IP problems.  He will continue to work with them until the problems are resolved.

C.        President’s Updates

1.   Dr. Margaret Rice reminded Academic Council that the President’s Regional Advisory Board (PRAB) will be meeting on Tuesday, March 10th.

D.        Provost Updates

1.      Dr. Holly Verhasselt provided a handout which she received at the Texas A&M University Assessment workshop in February.  The recommendations are Higher Education goals found in Closing the Gaps 2015 that support Access to Success, improving the quality and ensuring excellence of undergraduate education, and strengthening funding for undergraduate education.  While these recommendations are not mandatory at this time, it possible that they will be enforced at a later date. 

2.      Dr. Verhasselt stated that the Provost Office has reviewed assessment software and are looking into purchasing Sedona in the near future.  Dr. Verhasselt and Dr. Tong-Ai Zhang attended a conference at Texas A&M and visited with various software vendors to find out the pros and cons of the software. 

 

D.        Other

1.   Dr. Natividad reminded Academic Council that the TEA site visit is next week.

 

III.             Specific

A.    Student Appeals

1.      None

 

B.     Consent Calendar/Faculty Development Grant Requests and Reports

1.      Approved an FY09 conference grant in the amount of $1300 for Dr. Donna Stringer to present at the Intellectbase International Consortium Academic Conference in Dallas, TX from March 19-21, 2009.

2.      Approved an FY09 publication grant in the amount of $600 for Dr. Louie Ren for the “Revised Mean Absolute Percentage Errors on Errors from Simple Exponential Smoothing Methods for Some Popular Non-Normal Independent Times Series.”

3.      Approved an FY09 conference grant in the amount of $1300.00 for Dr. Jim Holm to present at the2009 Society for the Study of Multi-ethnic literature in Spokane, Washington, from April 2-5, 2009.

4.      Approved an FY09 conference grant in the amount of $1105.37 for Dr. Yong Lee to present at the Intellectbase International Consortium Academic Conference in Dallas, TX from March 19-21, 2009.

5.      Approved an FY09 conference grant in the amount of $615.00 for Dr. Donald Loffredo to present at the Southwestern Psychological Association Convention in San Antonio, Texas from April 2-5, 2009. 

6.      Approved an FY09 conference grant in the amount of $1300 for Dr. Massoud Metghalchi to present at the Global Business and Finance Research Conference in London from July 8-11, 2009

7.      Approved an FY09 conference grant in the amount of $1300 for Dr. Cindy Schnebly to present at the 2009 MELUS Conference in Spokane, Washington from April 2-5, 2009.

 

As recorded by,

Karen G. Boldt