2012-05-31

Attendees:

Dr. Hicks, Dr. Lemons, Dr. Mickles, Dr. Laub, Judy Graves, Will Sandidge, Linda Rodriguez, Mike Danos, Walter Krug, Dr. Fronheiser, Susan Beasley, Mary Evans, Tom Sparhawk, and Mike Fein

Agenda Items:

Dr. Hicks: Additional Courses for 2^nd 5-Week Summer Session. 

Dr. Hicks said that the President would like us to come up with additional courses for the 2^nd 5-week summer session to push up our enrollment into the black since we are currently in the red. He said that the three academic deans need to get focused on this. He asked if they had any ideas. Dr. Mickles said one or two and they will touch base with each other to come up with a plan. Judy said that marketing will be the key to getting students into these classes. Dr. Hicks asked the deans to work together to come up with classes that they want to add.

Non-Agenda item: Report from Dr. Fronheiser regarding SACS. 

Dr. Fronheiser said that the QEP topic selection process is complete with data. He said that the next step is to present it to the President’s staff at the next meeting. He said that the current front-runner is the Student Success Center. The goal is to have a semi-complete planning committee in place this fall semester. For Compliance Certification, he said that the committee is meeting, they are writing, and they are behind in the process, but moving along.

Dr. Hicks: Required SACS Documentation. 

Dr. Hicks gave everyone a handout of SACS principles that AA & SS is responsible for. He said that the hard part is not going to be writing this stuff, but getting the information gathered for the yellow highlighted parts, which is the required documentation that will support the narrative. Dr. Hicks said that Dr. Fronheiser told him that SACS wants us to be using a common snapshot of information about the college that takes place in Spring 2012 and Fall 2012. Whatever information we present to them will be during that timeframe.

Dr. Hicks went over the list of principles one at a time to make sure that everyone was on the same page with what is required. For 2.6, Dr. Hicks asked Dr. Fronheiser if current enrollment numbers mean both spring and fall. Dr. Fronheiser said yes, the enrollment numbers will be for spring 2012 and fall 2012. For 2.8, Dr. Fronheiser said that he will provide the data for the required documentation.

For 3.4.1, Dr. Fronheiser said that he would like to share some information back to this group regarding the procedures for approving programs. He said that in some ways our procedures have gotten out of sync or have not kept up with SACS’ demands of prior approval. He said that in the near future he would like to share checklists of program approval procedures and talk about time frames. He said that we are supposed to get SACS’ approval before we even take anything to the Board. He will bring this information to the group two weeks from today.

For 3.4.8, Dr. Fronheiser asked if we have a policy for this. Dr. Laub said that he did not know of a policy, but he would look for one and if he cannot find it, the deans will work on creating one. They will report back in two weeks with a policy.

For 3.4.10, Dr. Hicks said that he will write it up and bring it back to this group for everyone to give feedback on.

For 3.4.11, Dr. Hicks said that they are moving along with this one with a taskforce. They have identified programs and disciplines. They got approval from the President as to compensation. They now have a clear idea of how the program heads will be compensated. The deans are getting together to come up with consistent policies among the programs and disciplines and they will follow through with implementing that policy. Dr. Mickles said that they will refine the policy first, then get feedback from the taskforce and go from there.

For 3.7.1, Dr. Lemons said that they are already working on this and should be done in a week.

For 3.7.5, Dr. Hicks said that the new governance model could be provided for documentation. Dr. Mickles said that it should have final approval soon.

Dr. Hicks said that he will begin writing the narratives and once the documentation materials start coming in, he will add them in the necessary areas.

Will Sandidge: Books for fall 2012 semester. 

Will wanted to know what the drop dead date for faculty to finalize books is so they can tell students what that date is so they can buy books. Another issue is faculty use different books for the same course and last year they had a problem when students bought the wrong book for a class. Dr. Hicks brought Cassondra from the bookstore to answer these questions. Cassondra said that there is not a certain drop dead date but when she gets the book information from the faculty, she puts it on the website within 24 hours.

Dr. Mickles: Change add date for the 5-week summer sessions. 

Dr. Mickles said that this was something that came to her attention from one of her faculty members. He was teaching a first 5-week class this summer. Classes began on Monday, May 21^st, the last day to drop with a refund was the 24^th, and the last day to add was that Tuesday. What the faculty member was saying was that for classes that meet Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, by the time we get to the day to drop, students who did not come to the first day of class could have missed the equivalent of two or three weeks of classes. That puts the student far behind.

Dr. Hicks asked Judy to look into this issue, research to see what other colleges are doing and what the VCCS policy is.

Non-Agenda item: 

Dr. Laub brought up an issue regarding course evaluations. He said that the question has been raised by the faculty about the evaluations for courses that the students are doing each semester through IOTA. At present, the deans have access to full-time and all of the adjunct evaluations. The faculty policy is that they turn in a selected semester with their APR. What Dr. Laub is saying is that they do not want to change that unless the faculty want to change it. The deans would like to keep things the same way but have it turned off for full-time, get the print-offs the same way they always have and still have full access to the adjuncts. Dr. Hicks brought Dr. Fronheiser back into the meeting to answer his question. Dr. Fronheiser said that he could give access to the administrative assistants for full-time and they can print them off and give them to the faculty.

Dr. Hicks asked if there were any other items to discuss and since there were none, he dismissed the meeting.
 
Handout from this meeting: