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ALC Meeting

Academic Leadership Council Minutes

M-100

November 4, 2011

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

ALC MEMBERS: Austin Asgill, Tom Ball, Bill Barnes, Richard Bennett, Renee Butler, David Caudill, Lance Crimm, Tom Currin, Venu Dasigi, Ameen Farooq, Pam Frinzi, Alan Gabrielli, Chan Ham, Steven Hamrick, Bob Homer, Ruston Hunt, Sonny Kim, Andrew McMorran, Joyce Mills, Thomas Nelson, 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, George Stickel, Denise Stover, Mark Sugalski, John Sweigart, Zvi Szafran, Andy Wang, and Tim Zeigler

MEMBERS ABSENT: Richard Bennett, Renee Butler, David Caudill, Lance Crimm, Tom Currin , Ameen Farooq, Pam Frinzi, Steven Hamrick, Ronny Richardson, Richard Ruhala, Han Reichgelt, Jeffrey Ray, Becky Rutherfoord, George Stickel, Denise Stover, Tim Zeigler

GUESTS: Sylvia Carson, Stephanie Coleman, David Stone for David Caudill, Steve Kitchen, Max North for Ronny Richardson

Item 1. Updates

Dr. Szafran updated the Council on the following:

Stephanie Coleman – was introduced and explained that she visited the ALC today to talk about the faculty web page feature that will become available in January. Each faculty member on campus will have access to OmniUpdater and will use a template to create their own web pages.
Steve Kitchen – was introduced and talked about the new space management policy that became effective Summer, 2011. The forms must be signed by the Deans Office and VPAA’s Office. Once requests for new space reach the VPAA’s Office, the project will be reviewed by the Deans Council or the Academic Leadership Council for prioritization and will then be forwarded to Steve Kitchen in Facilities for review. Facilities will work with the originator of the project to cost it out and proceed from there.
RACAA – one of the topics at the recent RACAA meeting was the new process for new degree proposals at System Office. The System Office will not be accepting any new program proposals until January 1, 2012, but will continue to review those already submitted. There are a number of complex issues to be worked out. They have also gone back to the two-step approval process and want to know the cost impact on facilities, etc. for any new program. If the first step of this process passes, they will ask for a full proposal.
TCSG Articulations – also a topic at the RACAA meeting was the proposed expansion of the mini core and how it may impact articulations with the TCSG institutions. This may cause some issues with transfer courses both in the USG and the TSCG institutions, especially with the overlays.
Shared Services – Szafran has been appointed to the Shared Services Committee and asked that anyone with issues or concerns bring them to him. It appears we may be staying with ADP but no final decision has been made yet.
Online Degree Programs – being pushed forward from several directions as a way to save space on campuses. All courses need to be listed on Georgia on My Line and the SREB website. Universities teaching on-line courses must satisfy the laws in every state in which they have students. David Stone needs to know about every program being taught on line. A new learning management system, “Desire to Learn,” is in the works and will be implemented in three phases and has options such as portfolios for an extra cost.

Item 2. Complete College Georgia

Dr. Szafran distributed an executive summary on the new Higher Education Completion Plan being proposed by the USG to the Governor. The goal is to increase the number of students completing post high school education by 250,000 (to 60% of Georgia citizens) by 2020. Points in the plan include:

Improve high school graduation rates
Prepare high school teachers better
Make high school graduates college ready
Work closely with the technical colleges
Prior learning assessment
Keep tuition low
Formula in formula funding will be adjusted to reflect graduation rates

The topic was opened for discussion. Discussion points included:

Graduation rates must be improved
We’ll be called upon to do this or fiscally it’s punitive if we do not
This “push” is being felt nationally.
The number of students going into engineering or architecture is lower today and increasing for business majors
It would help if entering students planned for the future

Item 3. Center for 21^st Century Universities

A Center for 21^st Century Universities has opened at Georgia Tech, and is implementing several interesting ideas, relative to how Universities will look in the future. Issues facing higher education include:

Other nations (e.g. India and China) are planning to increase their number of colleges and graduates significantly
Bachelor’s degrees may be offered for as little as $5,000 online
Universities are the incumbents in higher education. However, in other industries, many incumbents have become mere “shadows” of their former selves, or have failed entirely (i.e., Borders in the bookselling arena)
Georgia Tech has instituted “tech bursts” as a way of capturing how students lean, and as a way to help other students “learn better”. We should do something similar.

In the discussion that followed, the following points were raised:

We should ask ourselves what a 21^st century course looks like and then reward that kind of activity.
We need to transition from being in front of the class to being the advisor to the side of the class.
There was a consensus to bring the Center director, Richard DeMillo to campus.

Item 4. New Business

None

Meeting adjourned at 4:30 P.M.