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

Members: Bill Barnes, Dave Caudill, Tom Currin, Alan Gabrielli, Steve Hamrick, Ruston Hunt, Jeff Orr, Joyce Mills, Nikki Palamiotis, Jeffrey Ray, Han Reichgelt, Zvi Szafran

Members Absent: Jeff Orr, Han Reichgelt

Guests: Dawn Ramsey, Venu Dasigi for Han Reichgelt

Item 1. Updates

Dawn Ramsey visited the Council today and asked for help with Future Cities. The competition will be on January 23, 2010 on the SPSU campus and has considerably more schools and teams registered than last year’s competition. Dawn stated a real need for judges, mentors for the schools, volunteers for the day of the competition, etc. as well as help with fund raising. She is still in need of three major contributions of $4,500 and special awards in the amount of $250 each to reach the $18,000 needed. She encouraged the Council to contact their advisory boards for sponsors and/or donations and also expressed a concern that next year the competition may outgrow the space we have available on our campus forcing them to move to an off-campus venue.

Dr. Szafran updated the Council on the following:

M.S. in Architecture – LOI was sent to Georgia Tech
D.P.S. in Computing and IT is nearing completion
B.A. in New Media Arts was passed at the General Faculty Meeting. Alan Gabrielli is reviewing and will forward to Dr. Szafran
No budget news
New Core Curriculum – was adopted and will be phased in – Dr. Szafran will check on a time line/effective dates
Russ Hunt announced that the first Nuclear Power workshop is this week and has 31 registrations so far
Authors’ Reception – 120 articles were celebrated at this event in the Library
Tom Ball and Han Reichgelt sent out letters to students on the TCSG list regarding the B.A.S. degree and have begun to receive applications.
Tom Currin talked about the list of schools in Georgia with engineering programs and stated that SPSU is the second largest in the state.
Diversity Summit - There will be no Academic Leadership Council meeting next week because Dr. Szafran will be attending a Diversity Summit in Athens, GA. The ALC will meet on November 4^th in the Architecture Building Gallery. Dr. Szafran and Jeff Orr have been preparing a showcase presentation for the Summit, complete with several video interviews, and shared relevant facts and history.

Item 2. Research Centers

Russ Hunt updated the Council on the status of the research center proposals (eight posted and two more to be posted soon) and explained the budgetary structure/division of indirect costs associated with the centers. Additionally he explained the difference between grants and contracts and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Because of the complex nature of this topic, Russ will send out a detailed email to the Council. The Council also discussed requests Russ Hunt has received for start-up funds for some of the centers and whether they should be funded or not. The consensus from the Council was that Russ Hunt may approve requests for up to $500 and any amount over that must be approved by the Deans Council. Additionally, these are considered loans and must be repaid. The Council was then asked to vote on the proposals for centers that have been posted and they were unanimously approved. These will go forward to the VPAA and the President for final approval.

Item 3. Teaching Apples Proposal

Keith Hopper sent a “Teaching Apples” proposal to Dr. Szafran outlining an inexpensive way to reward faculty for good teaching, wherein students could nominate faculty for a teaching apple. All faculty who were nominated would get an Apple pin with the year of the nomination, and could wear those pins at graduation ceremonies, etc. The Council reviewed and discussed the proposal, but did not reach a consensus in favor of adopting.

Item 4. Space

This topic was continued from last week’s Council meeting. Space is and will continue to be a problem as we grow even with the completion of the new building next year and renovations of existing buildings. Of highest priority is to find short and long-term solutions to the shortage of classrooms/labs, faculty offices, staff/administrative offices as well determining how to divide or share existing classrooms and labs as new programs and personnel are added. Most departments on campus have a number of classrooms and labs “assigned” to their department and get first choice of these spaces when scheduling classes. Once the deadline has passed for entering the schedule, all open space is then available to everyone but this has caused some friction between departments. Dr. Szafran stated that he is in favor of letting the deans work out space issues and is also in favor of allowing departments to continue to have certain space assigned to them because of the specialized needs in most departments. He also stressed the need to use all space efficiently and that non-specialized space should be scheduled to serve students in the most efficient manner.

Meeting adjourned at 4:30 PM