NOTE: At times, issues of confidentiality may require that some items discussed in meetings be excluded from these minutes.

ALC MEMBERS: Robert Glenn Allen, Austin Asgill, Tom Ball, Bill Barnes, Richard Bennett, Renee Butler, David Caudill, Lance Crimm, Tom Currin, Venu Dasigi, Ameen Farooq, Alan Gabrielli, Steven Hamrick, Bob Homer, Ruston Hunt, Sonny Kim, Andrew McMorran, Joyce Mills, Julie Newell, Mark Nunes, Ilseok Oh, Jeff Orr, Nikki Palamiotis, Phil Patterson, Dawn Ramsey, Jeffrey Ray, Nancy Reichert, Han Reichgelt, Ronny Richardson, Richard Ruhala, Becky Rutherfoord, Khalid Siddiqi, Denise Stover, John Sweigart, Zvi Szafran, Andy Wang, and Tim Zeigler

MEMBERS ABSENT:

GUESTS:

Item 1. Updates

Dr. Szafran updated the Council on the following:

The Board of Regents has simplified the process for the generation of certificates, minors, and online degree programs that fall within the individual institution’s normal degree offerings. As long as these are approved through the normal campus procedures and SACS, the BoR will approve them with just a letter of notification.
ABET – The ABET visit for Construction Engineering went very well; the official accreditation report should be received in August 2011.
Budget – State revenues are up; no other news. Dr. Rossbacher approved beginning faculty searches and Szafran encouraged all to get their paperwork in. Please remember that it is extremely unlikely that all the searches will be brought to completion.
Grant – SPSU received a grant from the University System of Georgia to hire someone to work with adult students, especially students who attended our University but didn’t graduate.
DegreeWorks – is being installed. Steve Hamrick and Khondra Moss will be contacting the chairs and administrative assistants in the next few weeks to be sure the correct information is being entered into the program. Smart Catalog is the source of the initial load into DegreeWorks so it needs to be current and updated.
Degree Programs – Master of Architecture is almost ready to be submitted; still working on CET – Structural, and --Environment Engineering Technology, and Environmental Science.
Blackboard Issues – David Stone announced that Blackboard won’t support Vista after 2012. A survey is going out to students and faculty that will help determine needs and assist David in finding a new product that will be compatible and serve the needs of the students and faculty.

Item 2. Improving Graduation Rates

The Council continued a discussion on ways to improve graduate rates at SPSU. Szafran stated that the Board of Regents is considering tying funding to graduation rates, another good reason to bring our numbers up. He further stated that we have made moves to improve graduation rates by building better facilities for our students, offering more degrees, and hiring more faculty. He also stated that we are working to improve advising by offering advisor training workshops for faculty, hiring professional advisors, and adopting a QEP that focuses on learning communities for our students. Bob Brown talked about the pilot QEP currently being done in CSE and the rollout campus-wide beginning Fall 2011. He distributed a handout on the QEP and implementation plan, developing cohorts, block scheduling, etc. He will also be developing a manual to guide the departments. Becky Rutherfoord is developing the official curriculum for SPSU 1001, which must be followed in all sections. There will be a need for a significant number of faculty to teach these sections and they will be compensated $500 for the one-hour course if it exceeds their workload. Szafran encouraged the chairs to schedule these classes early to be sure there are enough sections and faculty to teach them. Szafran also talked about scheduling the blocks of courses for the cohorts which much include SPSU 1001 (or a departmental equivalent that meets the required learning outcomes of SPSU 1001), English 1101, and a department-specific course. Mark Nunes will be scheduling English 1101 as in the past (with several extra sections) and the departments will need to fit their students into those sections. Szafran reminded the Council that they need to assign their students to classes in groups of 12 or a number close to that. Anyone with questions or concerns about this should contact Bob Brown.

Meeting adjourned at 3:00 P.M.