Attending the meeting were: James Sondgeroth (Chair), Karen Bell, Mary Beth Booth, Mary Chipley, Richard Croxdale, Clint Davis, Michael Forney, Sherry Heiden, James Hill, Livingstone Kumassah, Tony Lee, Gary Livingston, Mike Pool, and Alex Slivinske.

The meeting was called to order at 1:10 p.m. and was adjourned at 3 p.m.

The agenda for the meeting is attached at the end of these minutes.

Item 1) Mark Butland could not attend our meeting. He will speak to us at a later time about ACC's Honors Program.

Item 2) Alec Slivinske introduced the government department's Instructor's Manuel to the task force and proposed that we develop one like it. A vigorous discussion ensued concerning whether we needed one or not, and if we did need one, whether the person who puts it together should be paid a stipend or not.

There was a long discussion of whether or not to list the course objectives for each anthropology, economics, and geography course and about how general or detailed such a list should be if we did list them in the instructor's manual. The task force chair announced at this juncture that the Curriculum and Programs Committee at the College would soon be requiring a departmental syllabus for each course taught at the college. It would be required that these syllabi include some sort of listing of the course objectives for each course.

The task force agreed to let the economics part of the task force go ahead with the development of an Instructor's Manuel for economics instructors modeled on the government department's manual.

Action on a manual for anthropology and geography was postponed until the next meeting. The task force chair agreed to look into whether there were stipends available for the development of such a manual.

Item 3) Clint Davis gave the task force an overview of the program review of the anthropology and geography programs that he has been working on. He distributed a handout containing the ideas that came out of a SWOT meeting which is part of the review process.

Tony Lee did the same for economics.

There was then an extended discussion of the purposes of these "program reviews" and how they tied in with the Baldridge Excellence Award self-study and the upcoming SACS accreditation self-study.

Item 4) The task force unanimously voted to retain the skill prerequisites that each of our courses now require. Anthropology and Geography now require college level proficiency in reading and writing (E). Economics requires college level proficiency in reading, writing, and math. There are now no college level course prerequisites for any of the courses the task force is responsible for. When the GIS II course comes on-line next fall (hopefully), it will require GEOG 1410 as a prerequisite.

Item 5) There was a discussion of how each discipline in the task force does their SACS mandated annual assessment. All disciplines do these during the spring semester.

Files concerning past years' assessments are not well organized. The task force chair said he would try to gather the information that was available and start a file on these assessments.

Item 6) Action on the degree plans was postponed until next meeting. Members are to send their suggestions to the task force chair. He will make changes to the present degree plans and post them on a web site so that all can view and comment. The web site is

http://www2.austin.cc.tx.us/sondg/taskforce/degreePlans/degree_plans.html.

Item 7) Richard Croxdale withdrew his request to use a textbook in his classes that he had been asked to help edit.

The following was the agenda for the Nov. 10, 2000 meeting.

1. Mark Butland will speak about ACC's Honors Program.

2. We will discuss the development of an instructor's manual for the

Social Science Task Force. Alec Slivinske will present the Government

Task Force's manual and make suggestions on how our task force might

develop a similar one. The Government's manual is on-line at

http://www2.austin.cc.tx.us/govtdept.

3. Clint Davis and Tony Lee will give an update on the progress of

the program review they are undertaking for the task force.

4. We will discuss the prerequisites required of students for each of

the courses under our purview and whether we want to change them. This

needs to be done since this information will be soon entered into the

Datatel data base. In the near future the computer will bar students

from registering in classes for which they lack the proper

prerequisites.

5. We need to discuss the annual assessment each discipline in the

task force carries out to meet SACS requirements.

6. We need to adjust the degree plans for anthropology, economics,

and geography. These plans need to be brought into compliance with the

the state mandated Core Curriculum and SACS General Education

Requirements. See the 2000/2001 Catalog on pages 32 thru 36 for

details. Compare those requirements with our degree plans and you will

see that all the degree plans are out of compliance.

7. Richard Croxdale would like get approval from the Task Force to use a

textbook that he might help edit.