Academic Delivery Group Meeting
November 8, 2011
2:00 p.m.
Personnel Conference Room
(Revised 2/14/12)
Members Present: Jackie Blakley, Tim Bowen, Scott Harvey, Lynn Lewis, Gwen Owens, Donna Shannon, Sarah Shumpert, Brian Swords
Members Absent: Eugene Grant
Others Present:
Length of Meeting: 2 hours
Topics Discussed:
The minutes of the October 25, 2011 meeting were approved with a minor change.
The agenda was revised slightly, and Announcements were presented next. Brian noted that the Easley Campus is extremely busy and is hosting several events in the next few weeks. Jackie noted that the ECD Inspiring Futures students are selling raffle tickets as a fundraiser. Sarah was pleased to announce that we will have Mark Taylor on campus on June 29, 2012. Several members of the group have already heard Mr. Taylor and are excited that he will be on campus. Mr. Taylor will have two workshops on the 29th. The topics include “Meet Generation Next” and “Teaching Today’s Learners” which has a learning community component. Title III funds will pay for his visit to campus. Tim reported that new computers are being installed at the Oconee campus. Gwen announced that the Humanities Department faculty participated in a service project at Clemson Community Care. Donna reported that Faculty Senate will meet again on November 16, and continues to work on several issues.
Dr. Buckhiester announced that ADG will not meet on November 22.
The LEI End of the Semester event will take place on Wednesday, December 7, at 1:20, in RH 248. Dr. Buckhiester encouraged the members of the group to attend. The deans’ meeting scheduled for the 7th will be rescheduled.
Scott noted a few minor calendar changes that he made prior to his meeting with Executive Staff. The most notable was to remove the wording “Last Day to Apply for Session C.” With the Fall 2012 calendar, the last day is August 2, regardless of the session. This early deadline should help with financial aid implications.
Dr. Buckhiester noted that Scott and Amanda met with Executive Staff on October 26 to present the proposed calendar changes. Scott presented the proposal very well, and Dr. Booth agreed with it. The only concern was the need to communicate these changes, and to saturate the public schools, the community and the Tri-County population with this information. Dr. Buckhiester asked the members of the group to do anything possible (banners, announcements in class, etc.) at a division and department level to make students aware of the new deadlines.
Scott discussed the waitlist function and its lack of use by faculty. While this function is not applicable to lecture/lab combinations and some other classes, it is still a valid tool and can help with projections. Scott asked the deans to encourage their faculty to use it. He will continue to monitor this function and its use.
The Academic Fresh Start Policy was discussed. Dr. Buckhiester mentioned a scenario in which a student asked that it be applied retroactively. He denied that request and explained that the policy had not yet been implemented, and since we had to have one start date, it could not be administered retroactively. Scott noted that of a dozen or so students who have inquired about the policy, none of them have been eligible to petition. In most cases they have either missed the deadline or have not been eligible because the student had not been out of school for the minimum three year period. It was noted that we need to better communicate the deadline for the petition. Scott will reword the policy to note that the Student Records Office is the point of contact for students interested in this policy.
Dr. Buckhiester discussed Strategic Objectives and stated that this would be discussed at the November 16 Executive Staff meeting. He noted that the objective about maintaining overall enrollment near the 2% mark while growing enrollment significantly at Easley and Anderson may be very difficult. Another concern that was noted is that we keep statistics for first-time post-secondary students, but we do not have data for non-first-time, post-secondary students. Chris Marino is working to gather data, but how do we do measure it? For the community campuses, Brian and Tim will meet to provide feedback on objectives. It was suggested that we may want to consider setting goals for credit-hours generated rather than headcount.
Some members of the group noted that during the recent current year report out, the one year plan seemed to trump the three year plan. It was stressed that the plan progresses over three years, and we need to keep that in mind. It was suggested that we may want to include milestones within each year in order to document the progress made during that year.
It was suggested that we invite the new Institutional Effectiveness Director to a meeting to discuss these concerns.
Dr. Buckhiester asked the group to send any other strategic objective concerns to him.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned.
Recorded by: Anne Bryan
Next Meeting: Tuesday, December 13, at 2:00 p.m., in the Personnel Conference Room, RH 102
