Physical Sciences Task Force
Meeting Minutes
April 7, 2000

The Physical Sciences Task Force met at 9:30 AM Friday, April 7, 2000 in room 2228 at RVS. Members in attendance: Potter, Biggs, Cise, Bechtold, Underwood, Heath, Becker, Pirnia,Cavalli, Blodgett, Johns, Pedigo, Nelson.

    1. Approval of Agenda - approved.
    2. Approval of Minutes- The Minutes of the March 3 meeting were approved.
    3. The following information items were presented: The money for General Physics I at RVS this summer has been provided, and we have begun to buy the needed equipment. All of our catalog changes to courses and degrees were approved by the Curriculum Committee and will appear in next year's catalog. We have started narrowing the field of 34 applicants for the full-time physics job for Fall 00, and interviews will be scheduled for early May. Adjunct evaluation is half completed, with the remainder to be finished soon. The deadline for receipt of portfolios for Full-Time faculty is next Monday April 10. The TF Planning committee, chaired by Jeff Bechtold, presented a full list of requests to be entered in next year's budget process.
    4. The administration announced new MSTA and Institutional Associate positions, including one new physics or physical science position (it is not clear which). Paul Williams, chair of the screening committee, reports that we have too few applicants for the old number of MSTAs. Adjuncts are encouraged to apply for either category of new positions. A new Administrative Rule will now force us to use the Highest Priority to Hire category for at least some of our courses. This was discussed, and it was decided to let the GEO/PSC and AST/ENR/PHY subgroups make their own decisions on whether to go for minimal or maximal use of HPTH. The TF was warned that next year we may be required to document that our courses and degrees actually do meet the Core Competencies that we checked off.
    5. There were no new candidates for TF Chair. The current Chair (Pedigo) agreed to serve next year, as did the current Assistant Chair (Johns). NOTE ADDED IN PROOF: 6 days after this meeting, the Administration announced a new reorganization for next year. In response, the new TF Chair (Pedigo) resigned his position to allow another month for discussion and thought. There will be a Task Force Chair election at the next meeting, Friday, May 5, 2000.
    6. John Cise gave a brief report on the successful tour of Dell facilities following the last meeting.
    7. Breakout sessions-

GEO/PSC - (1) After much discussion, the GEO/PSC subgroup adopted new standards for syllabi, exams, lab work, etc., effective next Fall for all Geology and Physical Sciences courses. Ron Johns will circulate the new standards to all faculty in these disciplines. (2) It was decided to retain the same assessment questions for the same courses next year.

AST/ENR/PHY - (1) It was decided to retain the same assessment questions for the same courses next year. (2) The group agreed to review the Required Topics lists for PHYS 2425 and PHYS 2426 to incorporate the change of textbook to Tipler and the change of topics to include Thermodynamics in 2425 and Modern Physics in 2426. The changes will be submitted to the TF Chair, who will draft a proposed new set of lists for the next meeting. (3) It was decided to leave the new conceptual physics course, PHYS 1405 and 1407, without a list of required topics until the materials have been developed and tried next year. We will have to revisit the issue of required topics for Applied Physics, PHY 1634.

The meeting was adjourned at 11:25 am. An adjunct training session immediately followed the meeting.

 

Submitted by Daryl Pedigo, TF Chair.