Physical Sciences Task Force
Meeting Minutes
November 10, 2000

 

The Physical Sciences Task Force met at 9:30 AM Friday, November 10, 2000 in room 2223 at RVS. Members in attendance: Blodgett, Friedrichsen, Cise, Pirnia, Rao, Biggs, Becker, Pedigo, Heath, Bechtold, Williams, and Underwood.

1. Approval of Agenda - approved.

2. Approval of Minutes- The Minutes of the October 13 meeting were approved, but the GEO/PSC breakout session minutes were unavailable and will be supplied later.

3. The following information items were presented: (1) The Chair announced that he would participate in an "Academic Retreat" this weekend. (2) The Job Fair from last weekend was fairly successful, and our TF received inquiries from half a dozen potential new faculty. (3) The group was reminded that the deadline for completing student evaluations is November 17. (4) The implications of the new Draft Administrative Rule on paychecks were discussed. Full-time faculty were encouraged to use direct deposit to avoid delays in payment. (5) John Fulton has yet to announce the rescheduled date for telescope training as part of our discipline-specific faculty development program.

4. The following items were discussed: (1) A review of lab fees in the current college catalog indicates that those for the physical sciences are generally lower than those for comparable sciences. The breakout groups were asked to consider lab fee increases for next year. (2) New committee members were solicited, and several people signed up for additional committee service.

5. The following action items were dealt with: (1) The change of PHY 1634 Applied Physics to the WECM course SCIT 1418 Applied Physics I was approved, subject to comment by the workforce disciplines involved. The TF feels that this is our only option other than simply discontinuing the course.

6. New business: (1) Jim Heath and Daryl Pedigo presented final versions of several posters to advertise Conceptual Physics.

7. Breakout sessions-

GEO/PSC – only Bob Blodgett attended, so there was no session.

AST/ENR/PHY - (1) Testing requirements were revisited, and after some strong feelings were expressed, no action was taken to change the existing requirements. This will be considered again. John Cise asked to collect sample exams to provide guidance to adjuncts. Jeff Bechtold, Jim Heath and Daryl Pedigo agreed to provide samples. (2) The Chair provided data on lab fees in other sciences, lab fees for physics courses at UT Austin, and a dollar cost needed to generate our total non-capital operating costs for supplies and equipment. After some discussion the group voted to increase all lab fees to $20 effective next Fall. (3) The new (fifth) edition of Gere, Mechanics of Materials, was agreed to as a text for ENGR 2332 beginning this Spring 01. (4) Required Topics for PHYS 2426 were discussed. Paul Williams agreed to produce a draft showing the new Tipler section numbers for our next meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 AM.

Submitted by Daryl Pedigo, TF Chair.