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

ALC MEMBERS: Charles Bachman, Tom Ball, Bill Barnes, Richard Bennett, David Caudill, Lance Crimm, Tom Currin, Venu Dasigi, Ameen Farooq, Alan Gabrielli, Jo Galle, Steven Hamrick, Ruston Hunt, Andrew McMorran, Joyce Mills, Julie Newell, Mark Nunes, Jeff Orr, Nikki Palamiotis, Phil Patterson, Dawn Ramsey, Jeffrey Ray, Nancy Reichert, Han Reichgelt, Ronny Richardson, Khalid Siddiqi, Sandra Stone, Denise Stover, John Sweigart, Zvi Szafran, Margaret Venable, Andy Wang, and Tim Zeigler

ALC Members Absent: Ameen Farooq, Denise Stover, Lance Crimm, Russ Hunt, Tim Zeigler

GUESTS: Austin Asgill, Becky Rutherfoord

Item 1. Updates

Dr. Szafran updated the Council on the following:

Budget – It appears that merit increases will be included in the new budget. The Chancellor also authorized increasing the proposed budget cut of 6% to 8% with the possibility that it may be higher but should not be more than 10%. Dr. Rossbacher will be sending out a memo later today on the budget situation.
Academic Programs:

¨ Engineering – still no news from Georgia Tech. Dr. Rossbacher will be contacting their president soon and if not resolved we will send our proposal to the System Office in January.

¨ Education – still in progress and looks promising

¨ Masters in Information and Instructional Design – the proposal is ready but the department is still working on the budget

¨ Political Science – still in progress

Healthcare Changes – The University’s portion on some healthcare plans will change from 75% to 70% resulting in an increased premium to employees in those plans. Human Resources will send out information in the near future.
Student Fee – all students will be charged a mandatory $100 fee in the spring semester to help offset some of the budget cuts.
The Graduate Academic Plan is ready to be merged with the Academic Plan.
Negotiations fell through on the Manget property so we will not be purchasing the building.
Construction on the new parking deck began last week. Construction on the new ETC will begin in January.
Budget reports are still inaccessible on-line and appears to be an IT problem. Those needing printouts can request them from the Budget Office.
Dr. Siddiqi congratulated Jo Galle and Becky Rutherfoord about the positive SACS review – only a few items need to be addressed. Our last review resulted in 62 items that needed to be answered as opposed to only 15 this time.

Item 2. Revised Unit Assessment Forms and Procedures

Jo Galle distributed SACS-related documents and talked about some of the finding of the SACS review and asked the Council to provide additional information for 2006/2007 and 2007/2008 to satisfy SACS. Items needed relate to targets and measures and evidence of improvement. Dr. Szafran stressed the need to have this information in before Christmas break.

Item 3. Honors Research Assistant Policy

Nancy Reichert distributed a draft policy to introduce a proposed new course for honors students. Nancy explained that she is trying to find a way to give honors students more options, without burdening departments, and stay competitive with other universities to keep the honors students we have. She distributed the draft policy for discussion. Her proposal is to offer a 1 or 2-hour course which pairs sophomore honors students with faculty who have similar research interests. The students would work closely with the faculty providing support for their research, lab work, etc. Reichert also suggested that faculty, in addition to research support, should receive recognition for professional growth and development by participating in this as a way of rewarding them for helping the honors program. While there was general support for her proposal, Nancy was asked to edit the wording about professional development and to change the course number and title to possibly “Introduction to Research – Honors”. There were also concerns that sophomore students may not have enough knowledge of the subject matter and experience at the sophomore level. Use of satisfactory or unsatisfactory as the grade mode, which is what Nancy is proposing, must also be approved by the System Office. Dr. Reichert encouraged the Council to email her with questions or concerns.

Item 4. Graduate Assistant Policy

Nikki Palamiotis discussed revisions to the original graduate assistant policy and stressed that her goal is to centralize the application procedure for graduate assistantships not to make decisions about who the departments hire. Nikki explained the need for changing the policy. Several suggestions were made including the need to correct the signatory path of the paperwork. Nikki and Zvi will meet and discuss the suggestions.

Item 5. Discussion of Course Scheduling

Dr. Szafran talked about the need to go to a locked schedule to improve efficiency of classroom space and asked for feedback from the Council.

Some comments included:

¨ We need to draft a policy

¨ different departments have different scheduling requirements

¨ concerns about evening timeslots limiting flexibility at the department level

¨ align MW and TR time slots more closely

¨ need a way to recognize special purpose labs to avoid appearance of underutilization

Dr. Szafran asked the Council to email comments/concerns to him.

Steve Hamrick announced that enrollment is up 6.7% compared to the same time last year and could be up as much as 10% for the spring semester.

Meeting adjourned at 4:15 P.M.