Meeting Place: RGC 326

Meeting Time: 9:30 am

Participants: Ron Johns, Lala Guerra, Sal Valastro, James Friedrichsen, Chris Cavalli, James Heath, Dean Becker, Alan Underwood, Paul Nacozy, Laura Tacheny, Saad Eway, Jan Smith, John Cise, Paul Williams, C.D. Rao, Leslie Davis, Clyde Springen, Bob Blodgett, George Staff, Mostafa Pirnia, Hadi Parhikhteh, Elliot Richmond

1.) Approval of Agenda

2.) Approval of Minutes from 03/04/05.

3.) Information items presented:

a.) Faculty Evaluations – Physics Faculty Evaluations are almost done.

b.) Summer Staffing – Summer sections that are not staffed will be zeroed out temporally until an instructor can be found. Saad mentioned that the Hiring Committee would get together

in a couple of weeks to start setting up interviews for new Physics adjunct faculty.

c.) Honors Course – John Cise said that the honors course was going well. Students showed a

real interest. The Honors committee will review student progress this week.

d.) New Sections – We now have 13 new sections for the fall semester:

PHYS 1311, Stellar Astronomy at RRHEC,

PHYS 1312, Solar Astronomy at RGC

ENGR 1201, Intro to Engineering at RGC

ENGR 2301, Vector Mechanics – Statics at RGC

ENVR 1301, Introduction to Environmental Science, one at RRHEC and one at RVS

GEOL 1305, Environmental Geology at RVS,

GEOL 1403, Physical Geology, one at RVS and one at NRG

PHYS 1401, General College Physics I at RGC, one Honors and one regular section

PHYS 1402, General College Physics II at RVS

A section of PHYS 2425was also converted to PHYS 1405, Conceptual Physics I at NRG.

e.) Master Syllabi– The Master Syllabi need to be updated.

f.) Curriculum Committee Changes – Everything that was submitted to the Committee was

approved.

g.) Master Plan/Budget – March is Budget and Master Plan month. The latter is for requesting replacements and upgrades, the latter is for new requests. We submitted the same master plan items we usually do with the undying optimism that they will someday be funded. These include:

Lab techs in ESTE and GEOL

New facilities at NRG, RVS, and CYP

Phones in the labs

Computer projectors

ENGR workstations

Digital scanner for GEOL

Maps for GEOL

Renovation at RGC for ENGR

Dark sky site for ASTR

Planetarium support

15-passenger van for GEOL, BIOL, and BCNT

New sections of everything

h.) CYP Planning Process – Ron spoke to Tyra at the last CYP planning meeting. Steve Kinslow is requesting a run down on the Physics program, specifically, such things as enrollments, importance to degree plans, students turned away, etc. He will then decide if physics should be offered at CYP or not. Ron compiled the data collected by Chris and OIE and gave the report to Tyra, David, and Donetta.

4.) Discussion Items:

a.) PHY 1653 & Beyond – ACC is eliminating all courses without a Texas Common Course Number because they will not be reimbursed by the state. PHYS 1653 has no equivalent TCCN. There used to be an option that would allow a school to designate such a course as a “unique needs” course, but the Coordinating Board has recently changed the rules on what course can be so designated. To be classified as “unique needs”, a course needs to apply towards a degree at least two other colleges. Saad has investaged this matter and found similar courses being offered at UT, Texas Tech, and UTSA. But since PHY 1653 is taken as a substitute for prerequisites, it does not count towards a degree in and of itself

either here or anywhere else. So, PHYS 1653 will probably be discontinued at ACC.

b.) Distance-Yearning Courses – The Administration office decided they would like to offer a lot more additional distance learning classes because they are cheap. If any department wants more distance learning classes, now is the time to request them. There was some discussion, including comments that the distance learning classes were very difficult, quality of learning was not as good and the classes needed better techniques. The department again firmly reaffirmed our desire to not offer distance-learning courses

beyond those we already have.

c.) Faculty Nominations for Teaching Excellence - The office is gathering nominations for excellence in teaching. Instructors were concerned that students would not nominate their teachers and a suggestion was made that the evaluation committee could do the nominations based on the faculty evaluations. It was decided that this should be done annually.

5.) Action Items:

a.) Ron’s Reign of Terror Ends – James Friedrichsen was elected as the new Department Chair for Physical Sciences. There was much rejoicing. Jim Heath presented Ron with an award for “World’s Greatest Department/Task Force Chair”. Ron was very touched and will keep it proudly displayed (of course, he now has to find 25 sq. inches of horizontal surface in his office that isn’t covered by paper or files…)

6.) New Business:

Minutes of PHYS/AST/ENG Subcommittee

April 1, 2005

Participants James Friedricksen, Chris Cavalli, , James Heath, Dean Becker, Alan Underwood, Paul Nacozy, Laura Tacheny, Saad Eway, John Cise, Paul Williams, Lala Guerra, C.D. Rao, Clyde Springen, Mostafa Pirnia, Elliot Richmond.

James Health wanted some feedback from other Astronomy instructors about the new custom made Astronomy book. Instructors complained that the book was falling apart because the binding was not very sturdy. James Heath told his colleagues that he would talk to the person that put the book together to see if the book binding could be done better.

Everyone decided to keep Conceptual Physics, 9^th edition through Fall 2005.

Minutes of GEOL/ESTE Subcommittee

April 1, 2005

Participants Ron Johns, Sal Valastro, Jan Smith, Leslie Davis, Bob Blodgett, George Staff, Randy Larkin, Maurine Poe

After some discussion, it was decided to adopt Keller for GEOL 1305 and the new edition of Hamblin and Howard for GEOL 1403 in the summer. Ron and Bob will talk to Kate Spence about a custom lab manual for the fall.