Minutes of Physical Sciences Task Force

Sept. 6, 2002

Meeting Place: RGC 326

Meeting Time: 9:30 am

Participants: Ivy Abraham, Jeff Bechtold, Dean Becker, Bob Blodgett, Chris Cavalli, John Cise, Dan Dewberry, Saad Eways, James Friedrichsen, Jim Heath, Ron Johns, Tim Jordan, Ron Kostelecky, Mostafa Pirnia, C. D. Rao, Jan Smith,

George Staff, Tom Stege, Allen Underwood, Larry Wigginton

1.) Approval of Agenda

2.) Approval of Minutes for 5/03/02

3.) Information items presented:

a.) Introduction of New Faculty — There was much rejoicing to welcome James Friedrichsen and Mostafa Pirnia as new full-time and temporary full-time instructors in Physics, respectively.

b.) Master Syllabi — Kudos to Jeff Bechtold, Bob Blodgett, Chris Cavalli, Jim Heath, and Laura Tacheny for their efforts to develop syllabi for the physical sciences that are compliant with the Master Syllabi guidelines.

c.) Faculty Handbook — We missed the deadline for getting a faculty handbook written in time for the fall semester, but work is continuing.

d.) Office Hours — All faculty need to have entered their office hours for the fall semester online.

e.) eTime — Beginning in October, all full-time faculty will have to submit monthly timesheets recording their absences online. The procedure is fairly simple and described in the handout.

f.) Timesheets — For budget purposes, the lab coordinators need to track how many hours their employees are working.

g.) Budget Issues — The budgets for our areas were not hit as badly as they might have been, but all were cut. The biggest cut was the loss of $4000 to the Physics hourly employee account. Some discussion followed this announcement regarding the need to have real data relating the amount of hourly support that Physics has relative to Biology and Chemistry. This would be useful for the program review, as well as when it comes to arguing to maintain or increase the current level of funding. Saad Eways agreed to do such an analysis.

In addition, duplication is now a real cost and the amount spent on it in last year’s budget has been added to the operating costs account. Of course, we have no means of controlling how much is actually spent, and we can hardly say that we’re not going to give a final or do any labs because there’s no money left in duplication. But that’s beside the point.

h.) Field Safety Training — Geology and Astronomy instructors are required to attend the field activity safety training session on Saturday, Sept. 14 at HBC 201 from 9-11 am.

i.) Microgravity Project — Allen Underwood presented a summary of the microgravity project this summer with the folks at NASA. The project was successful, although additional data will need to be collected. Congratulations to Allen and the students who participated in this research effort for a job well done!

4.) Items presented for discussion:

a.) Assessment Procedures — After a brief discussion, it was decided to keep the procedures currently in place to assess student learning in the physics, astronomy, and engineering programs. Geology and ESTE will adopt the assessment tools suggested in their program reviews last year.

b.) Faculty Evaluations — Portfolios for many faculty are due Nov. 1. The Task Force Chair wills end out reminders to the faculty who need to complete portfolios this year.

c.) Overloaded Sections/Facility Issues — There was not as big a problem with over-enrollment in sections this fall as there had been earlier in the summer. However, there is a fundamental shortage of facilities (and lab tech support too, but that’s another matter). There were suggestions made as to how to obtain additional facility space, specifically including the construction of outbuilding as CYP and offering PHYS 1402 at RVS. The possibility of offering more Saturday labs was discounted until additional lab tech support is available.

d.) Honors Classes — The idea of offering honors classes in any discipline of the physical sciences was beaten and stomped on. We have too much to do as it is.

e.) Prerequisite Checks — Due to potential legal issues, we need to ensure that the students in our classes have the necessary prerequisites. After a bit of debate, it was agreed that a sheet for the student to sign declaring that they are aware of the prereqs and have met them be included as part of the syllabus. The students would sign the sheet and turn it into the instructor.

f.) Early College Start Guidelines — We need to ensure that the courses taught as ACC sections in highs schools meet the standards set by our task force (as well as SACS). At the moment, the only such courses are the PHYS 1401 and 1402 sections taught at Wimberly, but agreements have also been signed to teach sections of PSC 1603 in area school districts. Allen Underwood commented that LBJ Science Academy was also interested in teaching such courses too, but there were deep concerns about the quality of equipment and instruction. John Cise, Saad Eways, and Ron Johns agreed to serve on a committee overseeing such situations.

g.) Meeting with the President — President Fonté is interested in meeting with faculty to discuss program issues and needs. The general consensus was that we should try to arrange such a meeting on an afternoon following a Task Force meeting.

5.) Items presented for action:

a.) UT Collaboration — Associate Vice-President Donetta Goodall dropped by to talk about an opportunity to work together with folks from the University of Texas. The idea is to develop an ongoing, working relationship with UT so as to track ACC students at UT and determine how best to shape our curriculum to ensure their success. Jeff Bechtold, Chris Cavalli, Saad Eways, and Jim Heath agreed to serve in this collaboration. The courses that will be reviewed as part of it were later agreed upon, and included PHYS 1311, PHYS 1402, PHYS 2425, PHYS 2426, ENGR 1201, and ENGR 2301.

b.) Safety Training for Late Students — Due to the drawn out add-and-drop process, students may register for a class after the safety training has already been given. The instructor could just do it again and again, but this seems impractical. The best solution that was developed was to make a short videotape of the safety training for each lab room that the student could then watch on their own time.

c.) Course Objectives — The Master Syllabus requires listing course objectives. We have a list of topics that are usually taught in our courses, but not a formal set of course objectives. A curriculum committee was formed for PHYS/AST/ENG and for GEO/ESTE.

6.) New Business:

a.) Committee Assignments — A variety of committees were filled. Their membership is given in a separate attachment.

Minutes of ESTE/GEOL Subcommittee

Sept. 6, 2002

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

1.) Service Projects for ESTE — Due to pressing time commitments, this issue was not discussed.

2.) PSC Curriculum — The program needs to be completely revamped and brought into line with the THECB guidelines. Specifically, we need to:

a.) create an Environmental Science Department with programs in environmental studies and environmental technology

b.) change PSC 1603 and 1643 into a sequential pair of courses that have ACGM numbers (ENVR 1401 and ENVR 1402)

c.) revise the current course names to make them more friendly

d.) get an article in ACCent

e.) go to the semesterly advisor meeting with Maggie Culp and hand out stuff

3.) Field Trips — Despite their importance to the curriculum of geology classes, savage cuts to the dean’s travel budget mean that we may not be able to provide the same level of field activities as we have in the past. Oceanography classes have the greatest field expenses; it was decided that a van will be provided for every two sections of Oceanography, but only if at least 8 students commit to riding on it. It was also reluctantly agreed to forego optional field activities for PSC courses and GEOL 1305.

4.) Geology Licensing — The state of Texas is preparing to license geologists. To be grandfathered, geologists will have to fill out certain paperwork and pay a fee.

5.) Web-Based Geology Courses — Steven Dent has expressed an interest in developing such courses, but there was no interest among the other faculty for doing so.

6.) Lab Tech Support — The Task Force Chair agreed to meet with the EVP to discuss changing the geology lab tech position to full-time.

Minutes of PHYS/AST/ENG Subcommittee

Sept. 6, 2002

Participants: Jeff Bechtold, Dean Becker, Chris Cavalli, John Cise, Saad Eways, Jim Heath, Tim Jordan, Ron Kostelecky, Mostafa Pirnia, C. D. Rao, Allen Underwood, and Larry Wigginton

1) Physics Purpose Statement — Jeff Bechtold, program review committee chair, polled the faculty for input on the purpose statement on file, asking the faculty if they would like to modify the statement in any way. Mel Oakes, professor of Physics at UT, and a program review member, Chris Cavalli, and John Cise responded with recommended changes. A copy of these suggestions was provided to all present at the meeting. It was decided that changes will be made, and interested faculty will email their suggestions to Jeff, who will present a draft of the changes to the committee.

2) Physics Program Assessment — Saad Eways requested the committee consider adding to our current program assessment. His suggestion was to ask all instructors of Engineering Physics I to include college-wide questions on their final exam. The advantage being a larger quantity of data than our current assessment of evaluating the success of Engineering Physics I students who enter the class using PHYS 1653 as the prerequisite. With a lack of consensus on this suggestion, John Cise volunteered to run the old assessment and bring the results to the next meeting. The committee will then evaluate this data in order to assess its continuing value as an assessment tool for our program.