Meeting Place: NRG 2242

Meeting Time: 1:30pm

Participants: Ron Johns, Lala Guerra, Sal Valastro, George Staff, Bob Blodgett, Maurine Poe, Chris Cavalli, James Heath, Dean Becker, Saad Eways, Laura Tacheny, C.D. Rao, Dale Biggs, Mostafa Pirnia, David Potter, Jeff Bechtold, John Cise, Larry Wigginton, Elliot Richmond, Jan Smith, Hadi Parhikhteh

1.) Approval of Agenda

2.) Approval of Minutes from February 6, 2004

3.) Information items presented:

a.) Planetarium Update - The Friends of the Austin Planetarium Board is progressing in its efforts to build a planetarium. They are developing marketing materials and have submitted materials to AISD, and hope to start raising money soon.

b.) Monitoring Well Update – Bob Blodgett noted that the monitoring probes have been successfully used and hooked up to the computer. The next stage is to get data posted on the Web.

c.) Evaluations – Evaluation are coming alone fine. Fulltime faculty evaluations are due at the end of March.

d.) Department Development Day – Attendance was low. In the morning,

Diane Kramer from the Counseling center had a workshop on where to send troubled students and the services to which we can refer them. Red Wassenich from the Library also had a workshop on what kind of references were available for us in the library. In the afternoon, there was a Physics workshop on lab demonstrations. The next Department Development Day will be on Friday, April 16, 2004. Please let Jim Heath know if you are interested in doing a workshop.

e.) Del Valle Petition Drive – Del Valle will be on the May ballot. Unfortunately the 7 % hospital tax will be on the same ballot and it might affect the Del Valle voters. Hopefully if 1000 out of the 1400 people that signed the petition vote and also the 500 students that are attending ACC that live in Del Valle also vote, we might have a better chance. If you’re interested in helping, thefriendsofacc.com are looking for people to volunteer to do phone banks and other activities.

f.) Physics Grade Distribution – Data was collected from 57 sections of 1435 students over the past 5 years for Physics 1401. The results are as followed:

A – 27%, B –19.2%, C – 10.5%, D – 2.2%, F – 5.6% and W – 34.6%

g.) Phone Record Browser – ACC has developed a phone record browser on the Internet to check on long distance phone calls that are made by ACC employees.

h.) Teaching overload change – Fulltime faculty can now teach 21 LEH rather then 20 LEH during the long semesters and 10 LEH instead of 8 LEH during the summer without it being considered an overload. These changes will go into affect in Fall, 2004. The fulltime faculty were concern if their pay would be affected during the summer sessions. Ron said he would look into that.

i.) Catalog Changes – The big change in the catalog will be that ENVR 1301 – Introduction to Environmental Science and ENVR 1302 – Issues in Environmental Science will be part of the Core Curriculum. A sentence was added to the course descriptions for both GEOL 1345 (Environmental Oceanography) and 1445 (Introduction to Oceanography) stating that a student could not use both courses to get credit towards a degree.

j.) Unique Needs Status – The other issue in reference to the curriculum is PHYS 1653. Since PHYS 1653 doesn’t have a common course number, research had to be done. Saad said that he had not contacted anyone but that he had sent out some emails to other colleges explaining the dilemma with PHYS 1653 and is waiting for responses.

4.) Items presented for discussion

a.) MSTA Criteria & Status –The MSTA positions have been revised. We now have MSTAs that can only teach 5 sections a year and then we have MSTA (exception) which are people that taught a full load before summer 1999. These individuals will also be able to teach more sections then regular MSTA’s. The biggest change is Instructors that have been MSTA’s for three years consecutive, will become permanent college employees. David Fonken also wants us to come up with a MSTA criteria. Ron had drawn up a draft list of MSTA Criteria. There was some discussion, resulting in the following:

To be considered for an MSTA position in the Physical Sciences, an applicant must have:

1.) Taught in a physical sciences program (astronomy, engineering, environmental science and technology, geology, physics) at ACC and have at least one faculty evaluation on file.

2.) Received an overall rating of Excellent or Very Good and an administrative performance rating of Meets Expectations on the latest evaluation from the Physical Science Evaluation Committee.

3.) Taught during the previous four consecutive semesters or five semesters in the previous three years (teaching in the summer semester will be counted towards this record, but not teaching in the summer semester will not be counted against it)

It was unclear to all what the impact of these changes will be, so there was agreement to maintain the same number of MSTA’s as last year.

b.) Elections – There will be a formal election at the next meeting for Department Chair. Chris Cavalli will be the Election Coordinator. A call was made to see if there were any volunteers, and Ron said he would do it again. He apparently needs additional medication.

5.) Action Items

a.) Disposal of Old Records – As the volume of paper in the paperless society continues to build, it is necessary to send old records packing. A decision was made to send old faculty records back to the faculty member after three years. If the instructor is no longer teaching, the records will be sent to the warehouse.

b.) Safety Training for Students – Marvin Richmond volunteered to do the Astronomy Safety Training videotape for students. Jim Heath and Alan Underwood volunteered to do Physics. George Staff volunteered to do the Environmental Science. And Jan Smith volunteered to do Geology. The video department will work for free if we script, act, and narrate. The biology and chemistry folks spent 40 hours making an 8-minute film.

c.) Writing Components: Write or Wrong – Jeff Bechtold and James Freidricksen volunteered to be in a committee to develop a writing/research component for Physics.

Minutes of PHYS/AST/ENG Subcommittee

March 5, 2004

Participants- Lala Guerra, James Heath, Dean Becker, Saad Eways, Laura Tacheny, C.D. Rao, Dale Biggs, James Friedrichsen, Mostafa Pirnia, Jeff Bechtold, John Cise, Elliot Richmond, Larry Wigginton

Everyone agreed that there was not enough information to make a decision on changing the prerequisite for the Astronomy classes. James Heath recommended that data be collected on the last Math class the students had taken before taking either Astronomy class before making a decision. Lala volunteered to collect the data.