Minutes of Physical Sciences Task Force
Meeting
Time: 9:30am
Participants: James Friedrichsen, Ron Johns,
George Staff, Bob Blodgett, Laura Tacheny, Karl Trappe, Dale Biggs, John Cise,
Allen Underwood, Saad Eways, Eric Ebner, Paul Nacozy, Elliot Richmond, James
Heath, Paul Williams, Dennis Dunn, Cindy Carr, Leslie Davis, C.D. Rao, Dean
Becker, Hadi Parhikhteh, Lala Guerra, Larry Wigginton
1.) Approval of Agenda
2.)
Approval of Minutes from:
3.)
Information items presented:
a.) ESTE C&P Degree Plan
change – The requested degree plan
changes were approved at the September Curriculum & Programs Committee
meeting.
b.) CYP supplies and budget
–James Friedrichsen announced that supplies and equipment that have a life span
of more than a year will be purchased for the CYP lab. The purchasing would not be done by the
department, but will be handled by the project manager of the CYP expansion. Everyone shared their suggestions and their
concerns.
c.) CYP Lab Tech Job Posting –
James Friedrichsen brought everyone up to date about the Lab Tech
position. He mentioned
that there was a problem with the titling of the position that was not caught
due to the reclassification process. He
also mentioned that we would not be able to change the education requirements
for the job position at this time. The
problem with the titling is being worked on.
d.) Faculty Evaluation &
Portfolios – James Friedrichsen informed everyone that the Faculty Evaluations
and Portfolios process will be kept to the stated timeline this year. He told everyone that he intends to do the
evaluation process according to the timeline this year. Portfolios will need to be submitted in
November.
e.) Committee Membership –
Everyone looked over the Committee Membership list. There were additions and deletions.
f.) Program Reviews/good and bad
news – The good news is that we do not have to do the Program Reviews but we do
have to do a Quality Improvement Plan Update.
The QIP update is a short form based on our last IPR document of
progress we made on the previous QIP.
The bad news is that Physics, Astronomy & ESTE will all have to do
program reviews this year.
g.) Creationism/ID Seminar
–James Heath mentioned that Astronomy was having a meeting on October 27, 2006
at NRG. He asked everyone if they would
like to make that day a Physical Sciences faculty professional developmental
day. Everyone agreed. If anyone has ideas for the professional
developmental day, please forward them to James. James also mentioned that on November 10,
2006 his pastor would come in and talk about creationism and intelligent
design. This would take place at 2:00pm,
hopefully at RGC.
h.) Laptop Replacement – The
Technology Committee is implementing a program this year. If
your computer is up for replacement, you can under certain circumstances
replace it with a Laptop. A form would
need to be filled out. The dept. chair
and the dean would then approve or not approve the request depending on the
circumstances.
i.) Annual Schedule Development
– James announced that we were now going to annual scheduling instead of
semester-to-semester scheduling.
j.) ACGM update – There are new
courses listed in the ACGM and we should consider if we want to include them in
or make any changes in our degree plans/catalog.
k.) NANO Technology Program - Saad Eways announced
that Hector Aguilar, who is in charge of the NANO Technology Program, came to
his classes to talk to his students about the program. The program is a semester internship where
the program pays the students at the rate of $15.00 an hour. The students continue with their classes and
work at Semetech for their internship. This program is not only for students at
ACC, but also for any student in the state of
4.) Discussion
Items:
a.) RGC storage and safety –
Everything has been taken care of.
b.) C&P proposed changes –
James listed all of the courses that were to be deleted at the next curriculum
and program meeting. And made sure that
everybody approved of the deletions.
c.) Incomplete policy/Draft
Discussion – There were discussions over the Draft Incomplete policy and
changes were made.
d.) Master Syllabi – Topic was
delayed.
e.) Minnie Stevens Piper
Professor Candidate – Everyone agreed to wait till next year.
f.)
ACC Collaborative Mentoring Program – Saad Eways suggested coming up
with a buddy system where ACC assigns faculty to answer questions for the
teachers in the two elementary school systems involved in our collaborative,
which are Pflugerville and Round ISD.
The best way for this would be to do this via email. It would be good to involve all
sciences. There were suggestions
made. One major suggestion was to have a
website and post the answers to the frequently asked questions on the
website. Saad passed a sheet of paper to
have anyone that was interested to sign up.
g.) NISOD Teaching Excellence
Awards – James Friedrichsen told everyone to think about this and to email him
suggestions for the Math and Science Division’s two nominees. The deadline is November 1, 2006.
5.) Action
Items:
a.) Engineering Budget – We haven’t been successful
in acquiring a standing permanent budget for engineering. We discussed what could be done to help
remedy this situation.
6.) New
Business:
Minutes of PHYS/ASTR/ENGR Subcommittee
October 6, 2006
Participants James Friedrichsen, Laura
Tacheny, Karl Trappe, Dale Biggs, John Cise, Allen Underwood, Saad Eways, Paul
Nacozy, Elliot Richmond, James Heath, Paul Williams, C.D. Rao, Dean Becker,
Hadi Parhikhteh, Lala Guerra, Larry Wigginton
Paul
Williams develop a list of 46 labs. Out
of those 46 labs, he suggested that we should come up with 12 labs to be
considered as the “standards” to be able to be used by any faculty at any
campus. Preliminary discussions and
decisions were made and it was decided that a final decision and discussion
will be held at the next department meeting.
Laura
Tacheny, Hadi Parhikhteh, Paul Williams, Allen Underwood, Karl Trappe, James
Heath and James Friedrichsen agreed to be on the Conceptual Physics Committee
James
told everyone that he had not heard from the all of the publishing companies
concerning the release dates of their new editions of their Engineering Physics
Textbooks, but it looks like we might want to wait one more year until we want
to start the textbook adoption process.
Paul
Williams demonstrated a wireless dynamics system demo to everyone in the
meeting.
Minutes of GEOL/ESTE Subcommittee
October 6, 2006
There
was no GEOL/ESTE Subcommittee meeting.