February 7, 2013
2:00 p.m.
Ruby Hicks Hall, Room 245
Members Present: Doug
Allen, Jackie Blakley, Amanda Blanton, Tim Bowen, Scott Harvey, Lynn Lewis, Amoena
Norcross, Brian Swords
Members Absent: Dan Holland, Sarah Shumpert
Others Present: Renae Frazier
Length of Meeting: 2.5 hours
Topics Discussed:
The Minutes of the January22, 2013 meeting were approved, as
presented.
Renae Frazier attended the meeting to discuss admission
policies and procedures. She distributed
an open admissions overview, a revised Open Admissions policy and procedure,
and a proposed new Application Fee procedure.
The overview provided recommendations for high school/GED credential and
recommendations for admissions critiera.
These recommendations were proposed by a Provost Council sub-group, with
input from the deans. Renae noted that
revisions to the policy are needed to align it with the state policy, which
does not require a high school diploma or GED for admission to a college.
Concerns included:
·
A high school transcript may be required to be
eligible for financial aid.
·
Some occupations require a high school
transcript to graduate and for employment.
·
The college will not deny a student admission if
he/she does not have a high school transcript.
If the student self –admits, he will be placed into a certificate
program.
·
No regulations to require a high school diploma.
·
Are we doing a disservice to our students to not
require it?
·
Where in the matriculation process will the
transcript be obtained?
Renae noted that the application will ask if the student has
a high school diploma. If the student
notes that he does, it would be listed as a missing requirement, with the
expectation that the college would like to have a copy of it. The diploma is required for the LIFE
scholarship and for most financial aid.
Renae noted that changes in the Open Admissions Policy and Procedure
and reviewed the proposed new Admissions Application Fee Procedure. Suggested changes to the procedure include:
·
# 4, Change the wording “Special program
students” to “Student enrolled in these programs”
·
Add a #7
to include veterans.
Renae will send Galen the documents with the markups for
review.
Scott discussed the Retention of Student Records and the
Standards of Academic Progress procedures.
He noted that for the most part he took the wording for the Retention
procedure from the Retention Manual. The
group made a few suggestions:
·
Page 4, 3.12-809-7 – Change Grade “Sheets” to
Grade “Records”
·
Page 5, 6.12-809.12, B (1) Research the
terminology “Inactive File”
·
Page 5, 7.12-809.13, B, Change “termination of
enrollment” to “date of last attendance”
·
Page 7, Under Security of Student Records, is
that correct information? Are those
offices the only offices that are supposed to maintain student records?
· Removal of the ranges
· Removal of the second round of the process
· Allow only one suspension appeal.
Before implementation of the procedure, the college would
have a one semester grace period in which all students would be in good
standing. The revised procedure would be
implemented after that grace period.
The group’s biggest concern is the impact this revision will
have on students who want to change their majors. They may be caught in the cycle, and never be
able to overcome a low GPA, regardless of success in a new major. It may impossible to recover, and they may lose
their financial aid. It was noted that
the state policy uses the 2.0 GPA, and that we may need to consider the 80/20
rule.
Galen will ask Chris Marino to expand an earlier research
project to try to determine how many unrecoverable students were able to
continue with other funds.
Scott will send this procedure to Galen for review prior to
presentation to the Executive Staff.
Galen announced that the Strategic Plan was approved by the
Commission at the February 6 meeting. He
mentioned that budget development will begin in March, and developers should
try to align budgets based on initiatives in the plan.
Galen noted that he needs input on whom the project owners
should be. Once the project owners are
identified, they can begin work on the deliverables to be ready by April. Ann Hall will have a specific budget meeting
for project owners with information on how the plan fits into the college
budget. Galen mentioned that the adjunct
budget is the biggest part of our budget.
Other than equipment needs and project needs, it is assumed that the
remainder of the budget items will be the same for next year. The enrollment projections should help with
preparing the adjunct budget.
Under Announcements, Amoena noted the need to review the
attendance notification process. Faculty
are receiving so many notifications, that there is not enough time to do
anything with them. She has received a
lot of feedback from faculty that it is out of control. It was noted that, based on the college’s growing
enrollment and the number of advisees assigned to faculty, are we setting
students up for failure because advisors have too many advisees? As we work on the matriculation process,
should this issue be considered on the front end? Currently, we do not have the infrastructure
in place to handle this. To help address
this, Galen will invite Rob Massey to the next meeting.
It was questioned whether the advisor needs to receive the
initial attendance memo that is sent to the student. It was suggested that we turn off the copy to
advisors to help with the influx of e-mail.
It was noted that we will continue to make changes to the process to try
to better it.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned.
Recorded by: Anne
Bryan
