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: Vanessa Bard, Jessica Williamson

Item 1. Updates

Dr. Szafran introduced two of the three newly hired professional advisors; Vanessa Bard, Engineering Technology and Management, and Jessica Williamson, Division of Engineering. He then updated the Council on the following:

Faculty Searches – paperwork has been submitted to Budget for review; Mary Ellen is reviewing Forms A. Once all is approved notice will be sent to the departments that advertising may begin. Human Resources will provide training for the new PeopleAdmin system.
Per Dr. Szafran, no furniture or equipment may be removed from any room or office vacated due to the recent moves until decisions are made for where it should go.
DegreeWorks – Steve announced that the team will be on campus January 4^th and 5^th from 9-12. All undergraduate degree programs have been scribed and the program is working. Szafran will send out an email regarding this in the near future. DegreeWorks will be an important tool for advising and to be most effective, students must declare a major. Steve can assist with this also. Students who want to change their major must do this on a form (not online) that requires signatures from both departments involved. Hamrick reminded the Council to be sure that the rules set up in DegreeWorks are accurate for each major and to let him know if changes need to be made. Updates to DegreeWorks will be initiated when changes made by the departments are entered into Smart Catalog.
ABET fees, other expenses, etc. – Szafran prefers to have departments pay for all their own dues, etc., and asked each to send him a list of things Academic Affairs has been paying on their behalf. Szafran will make sure sufficient funds are put in their budgets next year to cover these expenses.
Engineering – The Board of Regents recently approved engineering for the University of Georgia and Georgia Southern. Szafran stated that the University of Georgia plans to slowly roll out their programs over the next few years – probably one per year. Georgia Southern plans to replace their current engineering technology programs with engineering programs. Szafran stated that he is not sure how this will affect SPSU but feels it won’t have much of an impact. He further stated that this may help us enrollment-wise in the engineering technology programs as they phase out their ET programs. Hamrick asked about a school of engineering for SPSU. Szafran stated that this is being discussed this with Dr. Rossbacher.
Board of Regents – is experiencing IT issues with the online degree proposal submission system. Our M.S. in Architecture proposal was resubmitted alternatively.
Budget – There are concerns that we may lose stimulus funds year after next. State revenues are up 8% over last year.
Undocumented Students – The University System of Georgia has new rules concerning undocumented students. Undocumented students are excluded from attending five specific USG institutions but may attend others as long as they pay out-of-state tuitions.
Benefits for Part-time Faculty – As long as part-time faculty teach more than half-time (10 hours) fall and springs semesters they may be eligible for benefits. Those teaching 10 or more hours in the fall with a guarantee of 10 or more in the springs may receive benefits for both semesters. Those teaching 10 or more in the fall with no guarantee for the spring may receive benefits for the springs only if they end up teaching 10 or more credit hours for the spring. Szafran reminded the departments that benefits are billed to the departments.
Albany State – has submitted a proposal for engineering technology. SPSU has opposed their proposal as it is a duplication of what we are already doing.
Degree programs in progress:

§ Education

§ Media Arts

§ Biotechnology

§ Environmental Science

§ Environmental Engineering Technology

§ Structural Engineering Technology

Item 2. Block Scheduling (Implementing the QEP)

Dr. Szafran distributed a handout for implementing our QEP for discussion and input from the Council. He briefly went over the scenarios in the handout and stated that this would be applied to all first-time, full-time freshmen, including general studies/undeclared students, beginning Fall Semester, 2011. Transfer students will be required to take SPSU 1001. Mark Nunes and Julie Newell will identify English 1101 and SPSU 1001 classes that will be part of the cohorts. Departments will enter their cohorts in Banner. Mark Nunes suggested having all cohorts visible to all as they are being scheduled. It was also suggested that we use the same cohort schedules from year to year. Nancy Reichert had questions about how this would work for her honors students. Szafran and Bob Brown will talk about this. The following were major points from this discussion:

Zvi will talk to Bob Brown to see if students can be registered into cohorts during registration instead of pre-registering them as some has suggested may work better.
Develop cohorts and publish them to help avoid conflicts
Keep cohorts as a permanent schedule
Look at how to handle honors students

Becky Rutherfoord and Bob Brown are refining SPSU 1001 and will have a common syllabus available on Vista (or whatever product we may be using by then) in the near future. Becky reminded the chairs that if they are incorporating SPSU 1001 into an existing major course, the course content for SPSU 1001 must be in addition to the other coursework and all materials including assessment must be included in that course.

Item 3. Search and Hiring Procedures

Szafran announced that there will be training for the search committees. Julie Newell announced that she will be doing a project for ELI (Executive Leadership Institute) for the Board of Regents and has chosen to do it on our search procedures. She feels this project will benefit our university and needs help from the departments to see how each is conducting searches, what our campus policies are, and what the Board of Regents policies are. She will be contacting all the departments in the near future. Once her project is complete, she will have a product that she can share with the campus. Szafran reminded the Council to be sure their pools are as diverse as possible and that those with diverse pools will be given priority for discretionary hiring. Mary Ellen McGee and Joyce Mills will share lists of minority institutions with the Council.

Szafran asked the Council to review the current P&P on searches that states that the dean will convene the search committee and to vote to continue this policy or have the department chair convene the committee but not be on the search committee. The majority voted that the department chair should convene the search committee but not be part of the committee. Zvi will send out details concerning this change.

Item 4. Follow-Up on Improving Graduation Rates

Szafran will be meeting with each department in the near future to talk about their graduation rates. He stated that the focus is on first-time, full-time freshmen and that currently that graduation rate is approximately 30% and must improve. He further stated that this is not a move to lower standards. Szafran will send out a report with the RPG percentages. He also reminded the Council not to discuss specific numbers with anyone off campus and that David Cline is the only authorized person to release this kind of information.

Item 5. New Business

New Faculty Orientation – January 5^th from 5:30 PM to 9:45 PM
ETCMA Open House – tonight in J 212
H200 Renovation – all chairs have been replaced and it is ready for classroom use
SACS Annual Meeting – Becky Rutherfoord and Bob Homer will be attending the meeting in Kentucky in early December.

Meeting adjourned at 4:10 P.M.