Academic Council Meeting Minutes-January 6, 2010

Present:

Dr. Suzanne LaBrecque

Dr. Holly Verhasselt

Dr. Jeffrey Di Leo

Dr. Farhang Niroomand

Dr. Lawrence Rossow

Ms. Trudy Wortham

Ms. Carolyn Mallory

Ms. Chari Norgard

Dr. Denee Thomas

Mr. Joe Ferguson

Dr. Cindy Schnebly

Dr. Joe Dahlstrom

Mr. Chris Buford

Nikki Wilmoth (attending for Dr. Kathryn Tart)

 

 

 

I.                   Review of Minutes-December 2, 2009 meeting

Minutes were approved as circulated.

 

II.                General

A.     Downward Expansion

Dr. Suzanne LaBrecque noted that the Jaguar Hall has been approved since the last Academic Council meeting. She thanked Ms. Chari Norgard for all the work she did towards getting that approved.  There have already been tours for the administration and the renovating work has already begun.

 

Ms. Chari Norgard shared with the group that architects will be brought on board and a dorm management team will be put in place by February 1st. She is also still trying to decide which staff members and what services for students will be at Jaguar Hall.

 

Dr. LaBrecque asked Ms. Trudy Wortham if UHV is going to use the four letter prefix for the Core Curriculum courses. Ms. Wortham noted that she knows the course numbers need to be the same, but she is not sure about the course prefixes.  Dr. LaBrecque stated that she feels it is important for transferability for students to use the common course numbering system.

 

Dr. Jeffrey Di Leo asked if there could be two different math courses with different prefixes, e.g. MAS and MATH. Ms. Wortham would not recommend having two different ones. 

 

Ms. Trudy Wortham noted that she will send the URL address to the Deans that shows the list of Common Course lettering, to aid them in eventually changing all courses to have the four letter prefix.

 

Based on comments from faculty and staff regarding the need for more information on downward expansion efforts, Ms. Chari Norgard plans to send updates to faculty and staff. She will be sending out her first monthly departmental update this week.  The updates will be distributed the first week of every month and it will be posted on the website as well.  She will also be putting primary contact information on there as well.

 

 

Dr. Lawrence Rossow noted that he has been asked by the broader community about the new building purchase.

 

Ms. Norgard informed the group that building A will be ready August 1st, but building B will continue to be worked on and will be ready Spring 2011.  She noted that UHV will also be hiring a dorm management company to help manage the dorm.  She also explained that she is determining which staff to move to the dorm while also identifying some of her current space that could serve as space for the new counseling center.   

 

B.     Enrollment Management

                                                                          i.      Admissions-Trudy Wortham

Ms. Wortham informed the group that as of yesterday UHV has 294 freshman applications and 46 have been approved.  She noted that out of the 294, 30 are in the “donut” area.

 

Ms. Wortham reported that the number of students currently registered for spring 2010 is at 3,038, which is 59% ahead of this time last year. Also as of yesterday, UHV currently has 25, 380 semester credit hours.

 

She said she will bring more detailed information to the President’s Cabinet Retreat this week.

 

Ms. Chari Norgard presented to the Deans and Dr. LaBrecque, the draft of UHV’s “Strategic Enrollment Management Plan” that she received from Greg Fanelli before the holidays.  She asked the Deans to go through the document and let her know if the information is accurate and what may need to be added. She requested that they return it back to her by Monday before noon.

 

                                                                        ii.      Financial Aid-Carolyn Mallory

 

Ms. Mallory gave an update on the Campaign Victoria funds and noted that they are still trying to decide the amount of money that will be given to students in the fall. 

 

Ms. Mallory reported that $8.5 million of financial aid has been awarded for this spring semester, as of today.

 

                                                                      iii.      LEAD & Student Recruitment-Dr. Denee Thomas

Dr. Thomas shared with the group that Minnie is working on organizing and event called, “Jag Day.”  The two events would take place on a Saturday and it would be scheduled when UHV’s baseball and softball teams have a home game.  It is currently planned to be a two part event, it will begin in the Multipurpose room in the morning and then go to a tailgate party and the game in the afternoon.  The two possible dates are:

·         Saturday, March 27, 2010-UHV Baseball home game at 6:00pm

·         Saturday, April 17, 2010-UHV Softball home game at 2:00pm

 

Dr. LaBrecque suggested that the event begin at 1:00 and to have session for       parents and separate session for students addressing the issues applicable to each.

         

Dr. Di Leo suggested setting up a tent at the stadium where the baseball and softball games are played and just have the event at one place.

 

       Ms. Chari Norgard noted that if they had the event at the stadium, they could 

       schedule campus tours for those that would be interested.

 

 

C.     Information Technology-Mr. Joe Ferguson

Mr. Ferguson announced that the badge process went relatively well.  The badges should have numbers on the back, which indicates that it is able to be used to gain access to the building you are located in. Not all of the outside doors to the buildings on campus have been activated.  IT will send out a notice before all the doors are activated.  They are still experiencing issues with the badges.

 

There was discussion on how to obtain badges for new faculty and staff.  Mr. Ferguson informed the group that Human Resources should be contacted for future badges for faculty and staff.

 

Students will not get ID badges; they are only for Faculty and Staff. Students use the Jaguar card as their ID card.

 

Dr. LaBrecque asked how those who may be hosting events on the weekends will gain access to the buildings.

 

Mr. Ferguson said that his staff will be there or the security guard on duty will give them access.

 

Mr. Chris Buford announced that the maintenance window, that was scheduled every Friday from 4:00am to 8:00am, is now going to take place from 2:00am to 6:00am.  The change is posted on the Black Board system.

 

Dr. Holly Verhasselt noted that the reason for the shift was so that it would not interrupt operations.

 

Ms.Wortham also reminded everyone about the security changes that have been implemented in the People Soft password requirements.

 

Mr. Ferguson noted that the added security will eventually be implemented in the local password for everyone’s computer as well.

 

Mr. Joe Dahlstrom asked Mr. Ferguson about the status of “single sign-on.”  Mr. Ferguson noted that they are still working on it.   

 

D.     Provost Office Updates-Dr. Holly Verhasselt

Dr.Verhasselt shared that the 5th Year Interim Committee should have a draft in place by February 1st.

                   

She also noted that her on-going project is catching up with unreported substantive change.                           SACS expanded on the discussion of what some of the items meant.  They particularly address programs that started as a face to face course and then moved to on-line.  Currently, the MBA is the only online program that we have approval from SACS.  For any program that has more than 50 % of the courses offered online, SACS requires a substantive change prospectus.

                       

E.     Library-Dr. Joe Dahlstrom

Mr. Dahlstrom reported that the library’s new Catalogue Librarian did start on January 4th.  He also informed everyone that the library will be expanding their weekend hours next fall.

 

F.      Presidents Office Updates-Dr. Margret Rice

No Report.

 

G.    Other

Ms. Chari Norgard wanted to inform mostly the Deans, that she needs assistance with tracking class attendance of  F-1 Visa students.  UHV currently has two students that have had their I-20 revoked for not attending classes.

 

Dr Rossow asked how many classes are they allowed to miss.

 

She said there is not a warning system in place. She also knows that attendance may not be taken in all of the face to face classes and it is hard to track on-line course attendance. But, she did emphasize that we need to identify early, on those F-1 Visa students who are not attending class so that we can intervene and try to determine how to help.

Dr. Verhasselt noted that the new version of Blackboard may help with an early warning system because it will allow a teacher to see how many times each student has logged in, if it includes all of the features they’ve included in the demo of Learn 9.

 

Dr. Niroomand asked if the schools could receive a list of international students.

 

Ms. Norgard said they are going to work on providing that and she also noted that the “Retention Committee” will be pushing for an early alert system.

 

Dr. Di Leo inquired about the status of the mid-term grade reporting for tracking academic progress and the advising module.

 

Ms. Wortham reported that the Mid-term grade reporting is on the list of items they want to implement in Fall 2010.

 

Ms. Norgard informed the group she is going to set up a meeting in the next couple of weeks with the Deans and the Provost to create a timeline for the things that need to be done to implement the advising module.

 

III.             Specific

 

A.     Student Issues

1.      None

 

B.     Consent Calendar/Faculty Development Grant Requests and Reports

1.       Approved an FY10 conference grant in the amount of $1170 for Dr. Li Chao to present at the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education (SITE) 2010 International Conference in San Diego, CA on March 29-April 2, 2010.

3.       Approved an FY10 conference grant in the amount of $910.00 for Dr. Chien-Ping Chen to present at the 2009 Economic & International Business Research Conference in Miami, FL on December 9-12, 2009.

4 .  Approved an FY10 conference grant in the amount of $1100.00 for Dr. Trina Gordon to present at the American Psychological-Law-Society in Vancouver, Canada on March 18-20, 2010.

5.   Approved an FY10 conference grant in the amount of $1170 for Dr. Kay Kohlhaas to present at the Association for Science Teacher Education International Conference in Sacramento, CA on January 14-16, 2010.

6.   Approved an FY10 conference grant in the amount of $1170 for Dr. Yixi Ning

 to present at the Midwest Finance Association in Las Vegas, NV on February 24-27, 2010.

     7.    Approved an FY10 conference grant in the amount of $1033 for Dr. Harold Smith

 to present at the Texas State Historical Association Annual Meeting in Dallas, TX on March 4-6, 2010.

8.    Approved an FY10 research grant in the amount of $1170 for Dr. Dmitri Sobolev

 to support pilot project to test hypothesis: Exposure to sub-lethal concentrations of mercury would lead to selection for metal resistant enzyme forms.  Such forms and resistance-conferring amino acid changes could be readily indentified from DNA sequences of the appropriate genes. 

 

There was discussion about future changes to the approval process of the Faculty Development Grant Requests and Reports.

 

 

As recorded by,

Tessa Naff