Physical Sciences Task Force
Meeting Minutes
October 13, 2000
The Physical Sciences Task Force met at 1:30 PM Friday, October 13, 2000 in room 2110 at NRG. Members in attendance: Heath, Eways, Pirnia, Johns, Valastro, Blodgett, Smith, Bechtold, Pedigo, Underwood, Cise, Becker.
1. Approval of Agenda - approved.
2. Approval of Minutes- The Minutes of the September 8 meeting were approved.
3. The following information items were presented: (1) A presentation by Lucia Brimer on the NASA Zero-g Student Research Program for community college students. This included a video, which will be circulated. Then a student, Pamela Duke, followed up with a brief presentation about the project she participated in last year. (2) The ACC Honors Program representative never showed up. (3) Volunteers were solicited for the General Education Assessment headed by David Lydic. (4) Jim Heath discussed an outreach opportunity at Kirby Hall School. (5) RVS 2213 remodeling is underway. (6) The summer schedule is complete, and has a few less sections than last year in an attempt to avoid the adjunct staffing crisis. (7) Student evaluations will begin soon, and the TFC will send an e-mail reminder to everyone. (8) John Fulton and John Blum have arranged a Faculty Development opportunity October 27 involving telescope use at the dark viewing site.
4. The following items were discussed: (1) The Program Review process was discussed briefly. Saad Eways, the chair of the current year (engineering) PR Committee, gave a quick status report. (2) Faculty were again urged to participate in the General Education review process. (3) New members were solicited to join those who have already volunteered for service on one of the Task Force Committees.
5. The following action items were dealt with: (1) It was decided to defer the decision on increasing class limits for GEOL 1403. (2) Draft Committee assignments for TF Committees were approved as drafted.
6. New business: (1) Lucia Brimer gave us some circulars to promote the Zero-g Strudent Research program. (2) Possible posters to advertise Conceptual Physics were shown to the group.
7. Breakout sessions-
GEO/PSC - minutes not received from Ron Johns as of this time.
AST/ENR/PHY - (1) Jeff Bechtold raised the issue of whether the physics course requirements on testing, etc., are too restrictive. Point one, this could be considered micromanagement; point two, how can we criticize the use of questions directly from the text for HW or directly from the Test Bank for tests? After some discussion, this item was postponed to the next meeting. (2) It was decided to leave our degree plans alone for now, and wait to see if anyone complains. (3) Draft posters for Conceptual Physics advertising were discussed. It was decided to proceed with several different versions, and to explore what could be done at low cost.
The meeting was adjourned at 3:50 PM.
Submitted by Daryl Pedigo, TF Chair.