Minutes from the Institutional Planning Council Meeting

 

August 21, 2001

 

Present: Ahearn, Birkeli, Brown, Buchanan, Duttera, Geeter, Gulley, Harrison, Hartman, Hearn, S. Johnson, Kraemer, Lawrence, Major, S. Mallory, McClanahan, McCoy, McMullen, Naglee, Pinkerman, Rowe, Sauter, Simmons, Slay, S. Smith, Thompson and Whitney. 

 

President Gulley opened the meeting with a greeting.  The new members of the IPC were introduced; they are Bryan Hearn, representing AAC; Jack Slay, president of the faculty; Phil Naglee, president of the Student Government Association; Glenda Major, representing the Leadership Council; and Charles Thompson, director of the Albany Campus.  Each member of the Council shared significant and meaningful events of their summer break.  President Gulley requested approval of the minutes from the May 8th meeting.  Mr. Pinkerman moved that the minutes be approved, Dr. Kraemer seconded the motion, a vote was tallied and the motion passed.  President Gulley asked that everyone review the schedule of future meetings and the topics to be discussed.

 

Dr. Hearn updated the Council on the search for Instructional Information Technology Director.  The search committee met several times during the summer to review the 45 applicants.  The top choices have been picked and preparations are underway to bring them to campus for an interview.  The IPC will be asked for input during the process, as will other campus groups.  President Gulley stated that the new person would probably not be in place until January. Dr Hearn assured the IPC that many of the applicants do satisfy the criteria requested in the job description developed by the Technology Task Force.

 

President Gulley discussed the predicted enrollment for Fall semester and how that impacts this year’s budget.  As today prediction is less that the count used for the budget, it is anticipated that cuts will need to be made from the current budget.  We are 30 students short of the 970 used to set the budget in February.  Of the 940 that are anticipated for fall, 426 are expected to be resident students, up from the 384 living on campus last year.  This heads us in the direction of the goals of the Strategic Plan item 2.2.1.  The SAT scores for the new class of freshmen are up to 1013, putting us well on our way to achieving that goal of the Strategic Plan. 

 

SGA President Naglee reported to the Council the events of the recent SGA retreat.  He stated that the SGA adopted a vision statement to coincide with the five-year plan of the College.  The SGA aims to incorporate the Strategic Plan into their plans to aid building stronger community ties and cultivating student/teacher relations.  President Naglee cited examples such as helping local high schools with their homecoming events to give area high school students interaction with the College; and having professor/administrators speak at the SGA meetings, thus giving the speaker an opportunity to interact with the SGA. 

 

Dr. Simmons reported that Ms. McMullen and he are in discussion with Dr. Roy Nichols of the Troup County School System about providing courses to allow teaching assistants to obtain certification.  The Evening College is also examining the possibility of offering an Organizational Leadership degree at the LaGrange campus.  This would duplicate the program offered at the Albany campus.  Both items address the Strategic Plan objective 1.1.16.

 

Dr. Thompson gave an update on the LaGrange College at Albany program.  The staff has been restructured, so that there are now three full-time persons. The extra full-time person is recruiting through


Minutes from the Institutional Planning Council Meeting

August 21, 2001

Page 2

 

the local businesses and proves to be very beneficial in that capacity.  Future consideration will need to be given to the facility and location as the student body grows.  Recent television advertising has proven very productive and beneficial as it generated a lot of telephone inquiries.  Item 1.3.6 of the Strategic Plan is addressed through the staff restructuring and the television campaign.  Item 1.1.15,

broadening and strengthening offerings at the Albany Campus, is addressed through Independent Study options offered to the students; and allowing adjunct professors the opportunity to collaborate on  the content of their respective courses and class work.  The first cohort group will finish their coursework for graduation in November of this year.  They will walk at graduation in May of 2002.  President Gulley

stated that the last five Substantive Change recommendations are under review, the final report is due in April of 2002. 

 

Mr. Pinkerman reported that he and Dr. Robinson visited eight academic libraries during this past summer.  A presentation was made to the Leadership Council, which resulted in a list of eight consultants that submitted proposals.  One proposal in particular is very good.  Attempts are being made to hire a consultant to advise on a new library building.    The circulation rate per FTE student has exceeded the one-year goal by circulating 13.38 items per FTE.  Objective 1.2.2 of the Strategic Plan calls for a circulation rate of 21 items per student, with the current increase, we are well one our way to realizing this goal.  Mr. Pinkerman reports that library instruction has doubled since 1998.  The hits on our Galileo service are being measured and citations from JSTOR are being recorded.  These counts are shown on the attached report. 

 

Dr. McClanahan reported on the Self-Study work.  The Steering Committee worked diligently for several days during June to review comments to all of the “musts” statements.  The editing process is underway and the committee will meet again on August 23.  Shortly, documents will be ready for review and feedback will be requested from all the College community. 

 

Dr. McCoy reported on the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ).  The results from the 2000-01 surveys are here, but we do not have the national norms, as the instrument is still too new to establish these norms.  The new form was introduced in 2001 and we have used it for the first time this past year.  The significant data is shown on the attached sheets.  The data discussed is intended for use by the College as base-line information for comparison to future data.  As this is one of the surveys available to gather student’s opinions regarding their college experience, it is suggested that we investigate other surveys (NSSE) and other ways of tracking (class rank) this information. 

 

President Gulley thanked the membership for their participation and dismissed the meeting at 4 PM.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Shirley Harrington