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DEANS COUNCIL

Deans Council Meeting

B-120

March 21, 2012

 

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, Steve Hamrick, Ruston Hunt, Joyce Mills, Thomas Nelson, Jeff Orr, Nikki Palamiotis, Jeffrey Ray, Han Reichgelt, Zvi Szafran

 Members Absent:  

 Guests: 

 

Item 1. Updates

 Dr. Szafran welcomed guest Sam Conn, the new CIO.  Sam spoke briefly and touched on the following topics and issues from the Council:

  • Echo 360 has been approved, looking to purchase Workflow Banner
  • Vision is to build infrastructure and become competitive with other USG institutions
  • SPSU has potential
  • Wireless needs work – major project – bringing in a firm that specializes in campus wireless
  • Datatel has purchased Banner – Conn hopes this will mean good things for us
  • Business intelligence
  • Planning to evaluate and realign IT – understaffed
  • Open door policy – willing to help in any way – office number is H 220, wants us to work together
  • Architecture needs a separate server
  • Cloud servers – trend changing
  • EDP process should be streamlined – aware it is cumbersome
  • Message sizes for email attachments a problem – candidate portfolios are being bounced back because of size – contact IT for help
  • Too many computer labs on campus – using too much space and money – other schools have students using their own laptops and wireless
  • Look at moving away from traditional labs and going to this type of model
  • Look at personal learning networks to hold teaching tools, materials, etc. which would be accessible from off campus – faculty creating and using blogs, etc., focus changing from teaching to learning.
  • Software acquisition process is broken
  • EU operates under constraints of IT but gets no support for EU, ELS, etc.
  • look at moving to a client services model where each unit on campus would have a representative in IT that works to resolve issues

Conn closed by stating that he would like to spend quality time with the deans to get a full understanding of the nature of the problems and suggested lunch meetings or one-on-one meetings.     

 

Item 2. Paying for Development of Courses

Dawn Ramsey spoke about some faculty objecting to signing the agreement that shares ownership of developed courses with the University.  Szafran asked Dawn to provide him with a list of courses where faculty have not signed the agreement and he will share it with the deans.

 

Item 3. Complete College Georgia

 Szafran updated the Council on the Complete College Georgia initiative stated that this ties in with our work over the last few years to increase graduation rates.  Senior Staff must make a decision as to what percentage increase we will establish as our goal.  The overall goal of this initiative is to increase the number of credentialed students by 200,000.  Szafran has suggested to the BoR that we establish a 30-credit certificate (AA Degree) which would also increase the number of credentialed students.  The BoR is in agreement with this and no permission is required just that we send them notification.  SPSU draft proposal is due April 15; the final report is due June 1st.

Our immediate steps include:

  • Identify goal
  • Set metric
  • Identify impediments
  • Give notice to departments that are not meeting their goals that they need to make changes
  • Deans and department chairs will develop plans
  • If faculty consistently fail to meet goals there will be consequences
  • Student Learning Progress Model – Zvi asked the deans to look up and review