Minutes of Physical Sciences Task Force

April 5, 2002

Meeting Place: EVC 3221

Meeting Time: 9:30 am

Participants: Ivy Abraham, Jeff Bechtold, Dean Becker, Bob Blodgett, Chris Cavalli, John Cise, Dan Dewberry, Saad Eways, Jim Heath, Ron Johns, Tim Jordan, Mostafa Pirnia, Elliot Richmond, Jan Smith, George Staff, Allen Underwood

1.) Approval of Agenda

2.) Approval of Minutes for 3/01/01

3.) Information items presented:

a.) Vomit Comet — Allen Underwood presented a summary of the project in which ACC engineering students are participating in the microgravity research program at NASA. The students are investigating whether a specially designed harness can simulate the effects of gravity on the torso while under microgravity conditions.

b.) Hiring Committee Progress — Saad Eways presented a brief rundown on the progress of the Physics Hiring Committee. The Committee expects to complete interviews shortly and make recommendations by 4/16.

c.) Engineering Program Review — Saad Eways noted that the Engineering program has addressed most of the recommendations made in last year's self-study report.

d.) Travel Policy — The Board approved an administrative rule on student travel that is utterly hideous and wildly inappropriate for conducting field activities. Fortunately, President Fonté has not yet signed off on it, so it is not in force. The Safety Committee has approved a much better document concerning student travel that the Dean will carry forward to be accepted as the college's travel policy.

e.) Chautauqua meetings — Jim Heath

f.) MSTA Revisions — The number of MSTA's and the departments to which they will be assigned will probably be slightly different in the fall.

g.) Master Plan — The Master Plan initiatives for FY '03 have been released. Of the 109 pages, only three are for academic programs. Nothing from Math/Science is among them. This situation is being investigated by the AVP to determine why so few academic programs were included.

h.) eTime — HR is trying to get all timesheets on line by 8/30.

i.) Prerequisite Skills — After some investigation and conversations with counselors and the Dean, the college policy regarding skill requirements and prerequisites basically comes down to this: the only skills listed as prerequisites in the catalog are those that are needed at the TASP-level or above. Put another way, skills that are not needed at TASP-level are not listed as prerequisites. Thus, if a course only requires, say, elementary algebra, it would not list MATH as a prerequisite.

j.) Budget Cuts — The TF Chairs for Physical Science, Biology, and Chemistry met with the Dean and worked out a set of budget cuts to meet the targets set by the Executive Vice-President. Unfortunately, they apparently never made it to his desk, and he responded by taking out an increased portion of our budgets. The Dean will meet with him to work out this situation. (Addendum: this meeting went quite well. Dr. Kinslow accepted that our departments had done our parts in cooperating with the budget crisis and restored the budgets to the levels we had recommended.)

k.) Inventory — The business office wants to inventory everything. More details as this develops.

l.) Transfer Student Talent Roster — The CEEB is collecting nominations for outstanding students to send to four-year institutions. Please let the TF Chair know if you have any students that may qualify.

m.) Surveys — The OIE folks are doing not one but two random surveys of college sections this month. The data are for the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), and the Gulf Coast Consortium Student Perception Survey (lovingly known as GCCSPS).

n.) eStaffing — The process of eStaffing for the Fall, 2002 semester begins on 4/17. However, MSTA's will not be chosen until 4/12, and HR should notify them sometime later this year.

o.) PEP Evaluations — Supervisors are expected to evaluate their PEPpy employees sometime in April or May.

p.) Section Cuts — Several classes have now been cut from the Fall, 2002 semester as well. Not as bloody as for the summer, but still not very cheery.

q.) Media Borrowing — Jeff Bechtold brought to the TF's attention a problem with faculty who want lab techs to check out library materials for them. The TF unanimously rejected this idea and deemed it wildly inappropriate.

r.) Physics Workshop — Jeff Bechtold also informed the group about two workshops he was teaching on Tutorials in Introductory Physics and Ranking Task Exercises in Physics.

4.) Items presented for discussion:

a.) Evaluation Procedures — As the evaluation process has demonstrated, there is an insufficient amount of material to go on when faculty are only evaluated in the fall semester. After some discussion, it was decided that the TF Chair should identify people who are teaching courses that they did not teach in the fall and ensure that they do student evaluations for such courses in the spring and summer.

b.) Media Carts — The History TF passed a resolution condemning the incompetence of the media people at NRG in providing support. However, members of our TF have not had a significant problem and do not feel there is any need to take action.

c.) Distance-Learning — Shane Forest of the distance-learning group has inquired whether any of our courses could be taught in such a format. Jim Heath volunteered to work with him on developing some distance-learning astronomy courses.

d.) MSTA Requirements — The administrative rules only require that MSTA III's have taught here before Summer, 1999. A debate on this topic led to a consensus that MSTA III's should also have excellent to very good student evaluations except under extenuating circumstances.

e.) Communicating with New Adjuncts — New adjuncts often feel cast adrift. Biology has developed a manual to help orient new adjunct faculty, and there was general agreement that our TF should follow suit. Volunteers for a committee to write up and develop such a manual include: Bob Blodgett, Chris Cavalli, John Cise, Saad Eways, Jim Heath, Ron Johns, Tim Jordan, Elliot Richmond, Jan Smith, and Allen Underwood.

f.) TF Chair Volunteers — The current TF Chair asked if anyone was interested in running for the position. After a deafening silence, he offered to do it again. To his astonishment, the Task Force spontaneously commended him for doing a "very good" job during the previous year. They also agreed that the job should carry additional release time.

g.) Degree Plan Phrasing — For the sake of consistency with the other science task forces, the TF agreed to require a GPA of 2.0 for a student to receive an Associate's degree in one of our disciplines. The appropriate statement in the degree plan should read:

"To receive an Associate of Science in , students must: (a) make a minimum of grade of "C" in all required math and science courses and (b) have an overall GPA of 2.0 or greater."

h.) TV Observations — Evaluations of new faculty are supposed to include classroom observations. A suggestion was made to do this using TV cameras, but this did not meet with warm and fuzzy feelings. The use of TV observation was deemed best left as an option for an instructor to use.

i.) Thermometers of Terror — Bob Blodgett, Physical Sciences Safety Officer, noted that there were some old mercury-filled thermometers in the Physics labs at NRG. However, no one knew of any such apparatus at any other campus.

5.) Items presented for action:

a.) Program Review Chairs — Physics and Astronomy will get to do their own fun-filled program reviews next year. Jeff Bechtold and Jim Heath bravely, um, "volunteered" to be the Program Chairs, respectively.

b.) Eligibility Lists — The Task Force reviewed the criteria and procedure by which an adjunct could be removed from eligibility, and approved them.

c.) SACS Assessment — These are ongoing, and should be compiled at the end of the semester.

d.) Workload Contracts — Faculty workload contracts for the summer were distributed for review.

6.) New Business:

a.) None

Minutes of ESTE/GEOL Subcommittee

April 5, 2002

Participants: Ivy Abraham, Bob Blodgett, Dan Dewberry, Ron Johns, Jan Smith, George Staff

1.) Because of its importance, the discussion of oceanography items was postponed until later.

2.) The items on service projects for the ESTE program were postponed until the next meeting.

3.) Ron Johns notified the gathering of an opportunity for a trip down the Colorado through a school in Utah.

4.) Ron Johns handed out an article discussing GPS technology and its uses.

Minutes of PHYS/AST/ENG Subcommittee

April 5, 2002

Participants: Jeff Bechtold, Dean Becker, Chris Cavalli, John Cise, Saad Eways, Jim Heath, Tim Jordan, Mostafa Pirnia, Elliot Richmond, Allen Underwood

1.) There was a brief discussion of the name for the Conceptual Physics class. The consensus was to leave the name unchanged due to the fact this is the most common name for the class.

2.) Discussion then turned to the PHYS 1401 required topics list spearheaded by Jim Heath. Jeff Bechtold suggested that the voting for the list be accompanied by a recommended amount of weeks for each chapter, the purpose being to give a better guide to a new instructor to what the faculty at ACC feel are important and necessary topics for the class. Jim will forward an email voting form to the faculty and the results will be disseminated at the next meeting.