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

PRESENT: Dave Caudill, Tom Currin, Steve Hamrick , Joyce Mills, Mike Murphy, Nikki Palamiotis, Dawn Ramsey, Michele Shauf, Zvi Szafran, Andy Wang

ABSENT: Bill Barnes, Alan Gabrielli, Ruston Hunt

Item 1. Closure on Class Sizes

It was decided to establish an overall strategy to increase efficiency at the University by increasing class sizes where appropriate, but to leave that decision to the department chairs and deans. It was also agreed that we would revisit the target formula used previously to determine the departmental workload, FTE, fulltime versus part-time faculty, etc. to address faculty growth needs. Mike Murphy will research and generate a document for the next ALC meeting agenda for discussion.

Item 2. Closure on Size of the University

In today’s continuing discussion of on the size of our University in 10 years, the following comments/questions were shared:

If our target number of students is 8,000, how do we make our space accommodate this growth?
Should we have deans and chairs lay out reasonable scenarios for growth, then combine and review them?
How do we address getting students here?
Shouldn’t the decisions come from the top down rather than from the departments to the VPAA?
We need a big picture of where we want to be.
What is our recruiting area and where should it be?
Who are our competitors?
Retain the students we admit.
Outreach minority students.
Use more distance learning.
Partner with DTAE.
To broaden offerings, have deans bring ideas to chairs for new programs, growth, etc.
Have institutional parameters and guidelines and boundaries set at the administration level.
How do we allocate funding fairly among the departments?
Evaluate cost of programs to see if viable or to see if better way to deliver. education to save money – work with Extended University.
Look at existing programs separately from new programs.
How do we obtain balance of vision and participation?
Vision has begun to be established but not clearly defined and tangible.
Need brief document outlining vision.
We have good graduate programs already but may need tweaking – need online programs.
We are already placing resources where the most growth is happening.
Must pay more attention to retention and success rates in the classes.
Our math and sciences courses are not geared toward non-science majors.
Encourage faculty to help solve retention problems – offer release time, extra funding, etc.

It was agreed that the upper administration should generate a general vision document for the University and call on the chairs (coordinated by the deans) to come up with a plan to fit into that vision. It was also suggested to broaden this concept to the entire campus not just to Academic Affairs.

Item 3. Enhancing Links to Industry

The item will be discussed at the next Academic Planning Steering meeting on April 25, 2007.

Meeting adjourned at 3:40.