Vice President’s Staff Meeting Minutes
November 29, 2012
Attendees:
Will Sandidge, Dr. Lemons, Dr. Mickles, Dr. Laub, Judy Graves, Walter Krug, Mike Irby, Mike Danos, Pat Gatti, Susan Beasley, Emily Muniz, Mike Fein, Peter Dorman, Linda Daye, William Osborne, and Joey Fronheiser
Agenda Items:
Joey Fronheiser: SACS Update.
He said that it just continues to be good news but he just wanted to give everyone an update about where we are with our reaffirmation and our monitoring report. He said that every one of the SACS program coordinators have completed their program assessments and there have been no problems. He said that everyone is cooperating and they are getting better and better. The next step is a training session on January 10
th for faculty. He said that there will be information at Convocation for what the follow-up on action steps is.
Joey said that the General Education Taskforce has done a lot of work with the General Education program goals, program-specific learning tasks and documentation. He said that process is going fine. There has been good participation and the program heads are heavily involved. He said that one thing that they have noticed that they need help and support from the Deans is more support of adjuncts as the program heads are reaching out to them. He said that an email from the Deans to the adjuncts encouraging them to be responsive to what the program heads are asking them to do would be helpful in strengthening the relationships with them.
William Osborne: Use of the Respondus LockDown Browser for placement testing.
illiam said that when we first started doing the math placement test, the guidance from the VCCS office was to use the Respondus LockDown Browser system to offer the test. He said that the problem with that is we are inconsistent with how we are using it. He said that we use the LockDown Browser on the Main Campus and Altavista, but it is not being used at the other 3 Off-site Centers. He said that part of the issue is that the LockDown Browser has compatibility issues with other software programs. William said that it is not a problem at the Main Campus because the computers here are specifically used for placement testing. At the Off-site Centers, some of the computers are used for other reasons and if the LockDown Browser detects certain other software, like Schoolview, LockDown Browser will refuse to run.
Will asked Judy to get numbers from Kevin of how many students take the placement test at the Off-site Centers so then a decision can be made regarding this issue.
Dr. Lemons: Proration of Low Enrollment classes for full-time faculty.
Dr. Lemons passed around emails describing his proposals for allowing full-time faculty to have the option to teach low enrollment classes for prorated pay. Will said that he thinks it needs to be cleaned up and made into a proposal. He also said that this needs to be presented to the Faculty Association. He said that nothing can be done for the spring, but if approved, could be implemented in the fall.
Judy Graves: Transfer credit policies.
Judy said that they are in the process of writing a policy manual regarding transfer credit policies. She passed around a handout that shows the transfer credit policies of John Tyler Community College. She said that this was just for everyone’s information and did not require a decision. She just wanted everyone to be aware that they are in the process.
Judy Graves: Syllabus attachment.
Judy said that she did not have a handout, but she wanted to talk about some changes to the syllabus attachment. A faculty member recommended that it be available online instead of printing it out and handing it out to faculty to give to students. Dr. Lemons suggested that they require faculty to make a brief statement on their syllabus that refers students to the syllabus attachment.
Judy Graves: BSK classes.
Judy wanted to give everyone an update on the Basic Skills classes. She said that they received an email from the federal government stating that the Basic Skills classes cannot be covered by financial aid because they are not college-level classes. She said that we are not even going to offer them for credit.
Mike Fein: Textbooks in library.
Mike said that they are looking at the probability of having textbooks in the library for every class. He said that VWCC has about 80-90% of all textbooks in their library. He said that he talked to Virginia Western library staff and they said that they get the books from the divisions who get them from the publishers. Virginia Western said that the textbooks do not go out of the library and are available for a 2-hour reserve. Will said that he would like to see it start with the highest volume classes. He told Mike to get with Evan so he could run a query to see what the top 20 classes by enrollment are. He asked Mike to get one book for the highest 20 classes for the spring term.
Susan Beasley: Collaborate. Susan said that she sent out an email that summarizes this past semester with Collaborate. She said that she attached the student feedback survey to the email as well as a summary of faculty feedback.
Will Sandidge: Submission of grades on time. Will wanted to emphasize that grades need to be turned in on time, especially now that we received an extra day off at Christmas.
Will Sandidge: 2nd 8-week classes. Will asked everyone to front-load 2
nd 8-week classes for spring to give them a better chance to make. He said that he would rather put them in now and cancel them if need be than to put them in at the last minute and have to cancel them anyway.
The next meeting will be January 10, 2013 at 9am. Will asked if there were any other items to discuss and since there were none, he dismissed the meeting.