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, Bob Harbort, 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, Denise Stover, John Sweigart, Zvi Szafran, Andy Wang, and Tim Zeigler

MEMBERS ABSENT: Dave Caudill, Tom Currin, Ameen Farooq, Bob Harbort, Jeff Orr, Nikki Palamiotis, Jeff Ray, Denise Stover

GUEST: Becky Rutherfoord

Item 1: Updates

The council was updated on the following items:

The SPSU Foundation approved the loan for $1.2 million for Building I renovations and $2 million for the Design of the ETC.
Parking fees will be mandatory for students and will be $75. Faculty and staff must also pay if they wish to use the new parking deck, otherwise there will be no parking fee for faculty and staff.
Engineering – going forward with survey in conjunction with Georgia Tech. Gary Schuster will serve as Interim President of Georgia Tech until next year and is still committed to working with us.
End of Year Funding – no hard number to report at this time but Dr. Szafran guesses $500,000 - $1,000,000. Dr. Szafran reminded the ALC to have departmental requests ready to go on short notice.
Next Year’s Budget – there is a rumor that the Governor may cut 2% ($450,000) from next year’s budget. Szafran stated the University should be prepared if that happens and is holding back equity adjustments, etc. pending outcome. Our proposed 2.5% raise was temporarily cut back to 2% but has been reinstated to 2.5%.
Searches – are going along well and we should have no problem funding all the positions.
A handout for the new ETC building and parking deck was distributed.

Item 2. Fall Kickoff

Dr. Szafran talked about fall kickoff and distributed the tentative schedule for kickoff week. A Council member asked that the schedule not be changed after it is published as this caused some problems last year. Also, orientation for new part-time faculty did not happen last year but Szafran assured the Council that is will be scheduled for this year.

Becky Rutherfoord reminded the Council that we need resumes/vitae, transcripts, and course justifications immediately. Steve Hamrick reported that summer enrollment is approximately 100 students ahead of last year. Fall accepted first-year applications are 20% ahead of last fall. Council members were asked to watch first year course enrollments and be prepared to add sections as needed.

We are adding 12-13 new faculty and will need offices for them. We will begin looking at space on the entire campus to find underutilized space. Providing space to Georgia Highlands and ELS when we are in need of space was brought up and Szafran responded that this is under review but that we have to squeeze for the next year and one-half until the new building is ready. Nancy Reichert asked if J 381 (conference room) can be used for classes and was told yes, though this is discouraged. The space assigned to Georgia Highlands is open to anyone else who needs it once Georgia Highlands has assigned all of their classes. Dr. Szafran reminded everyone that classes should be scheduled according to the email sent out by the Registrar’s Office. Dr. Siddiqi asked that our policy on laptop purchases for students/parents be published on the Admissions website. Dr. Szafran will suggest this to Bill Gruszka; Steve Hamrick will also follow up on this

Item 3. Faculty Workload

Faculty Workload Discussions – Dr. Szafran talked about a discussion in a recent Deans Council meeting about release time given to faculty for various reasons. The Deans Council is trying to come up with a policy and model to be implemented in Fall, 2009. Dean Han Reichgelt shared a policy used at Georgia Southern whereas each faculty member is assigned a load of 15 units. Three of those units are assigned to “normal” service and advancement/scholarship activities, and the other 12 may be for teaching or other release time hours with the majority of faculty teaching at least 9 hours. T1 faculty would have 3 of the 12 hours devoted to additional scholarship. Szafran asked for suggestions/concerns of using such a model:

Need to clarify expectations of T1 faculty versus T2 faculty
Check to see if this would cause any accreditation problems
Need consistent policy campus-wide
Must have resources to support such a plan
Do review of release time available and cost it out
Issue brought up about equitable use of graduate assistants campus wide. Dr. Szafran responded that the Deans Council is working to add more assistantships and will distribute them around campus more equitably.
Need to define “coordinator” duties as they vary from department to department.

Item 4. Reorganization of Academic Affairs

Dr. Szafran talked about the need to reorganize several areas in Academic Affairs such as advising, faculty development, and outreach, and distributed a proposal to establish an Office of Faculty Support and Development prepared by a joint committee (members included Joyce McGriff, Mike Murphy, Bernice Nuhfer-Halten, Dawn Ramsey, Brichaya Shah, David Stone, Mark Sugalski, Scott Tippens, Lance Crimm, Bob Harbort, Keith Hopper, Howard Itzkowitz, Julie Newell, and Fred Hartfield).

E-Core

The ALC meeting adjourned and the Chairs and Dean of Arts & Sciences were asked to stay behind to discuss E-core. Dr. Szafran talked about the fact that University of Georgia no longer wants to house E-core and therefore it needs a new home. The University of West Georgia has expressed interest and willingness to take over. Szafran asked whether SPSU should also consider pursuing this. The decision to relocate administration of e-core away from UGA was made to provide better service to students, etc. Approximately 80% of the funds from e-core go to University of Georgia with headcount going to the individual universities. E-core is being revamped and if we decided to take it over we could have greater input. There were a few concerns such as certifying faculty and how this might affect SACS, whether the trend in e-core growing, and whomever takes responsibility will have responsibility for evaluating courses and faculty. Dawn Ramsey talked about two models proposed as potential frameworks. The most positive benefit to our University for doing this is that we would receive 80% of the tuition. Steve Hamrick commented that it would require a large commitment of personnel and would probably need a separate department to handle it.