November 6, 2018

Attendees: James Marquart,  Katrina Brent, Dan French, Lynn Maurer, Brenda Nichols, Joe Nordgren, Bob Spina, and Victor Zaloom.

 I.  Approval of Dean’s Council Minutes dated October 23, 2018   

     The minutes of the Academic Dean meeting, dated October 23, 2018, were approved as written.

II. GUEST: Theresa Hefner-Babb
     RE: Syllabi

The SACS office compiled a list of departments with incomplete syllabi. The deans were presented with the list and asked to follow up with the department chairs for those areas with deficiencies.  An email was recently sent out stating what the specific areas of incompleteness were so corrections could be made.  Dr. Hefner-Babb will send this information to the academic deans so they can forward it to department chairs directly. The chairs in turn will have the faculty complete his/her syllabi as necessary.  An official compliance report for HB 2504 will be submitted in January.  

Dr. Hefner-Babb also shared that over half of the draft reports are in and they are beginning to review faculty qualifications for SACS and HB 2504 updating. Deans should be prepared for possible questions about credentials, tenure status, etc. on faculty.  The Faculty handbook is currently being updated and the faculty hiring manual will be sent to Dr. Marquart to view and determine who will be the best one to update it.

Brenda Nichols

• Please remind chairs that when faculty puts a link to specific publishers on his/her syllabus it violates the Lamar contract with Barnes & Noble. In addition, when faculty fail to inform the book store which course book is needed, it also violates our contract. Brenda will send out an email to the deans with the verbiage about this so they can share the same information when speaking with department chairs.
• Work continues with Concourse. Concourse can create a grade book and build a block linking it to Banner with the grades automatically. Brenda requested comments from the department chairs on this, positive or negative, be sent to her.   

III. GUEST: Dean Terrebonne, Chief of Staff

       RE: Strategic Plan/Assessment

Dean Terrebonne, the new Chief of Staff, stated the RFP for consulting services to lead the strategic plan was posted today. He then reported on the current plan which is lacking accountability by certain groups. Congratulations given to the Colleges of Engineering, Arts & Sciences, and Business for being 100% complete.  Dean shared where we are percentage wise and stated that he will follow up with those listed as the perspective person in charge of those areas that haven’t reported, or are not at 100%.  Mr. Terrebonne will contact the dean’s offices first so they can open the doors for communication and also to let him know if there is someone different he needs to follow up with.

IV. GUEST: William Harn

November 28^th will be last Graduate Council meeting of the fall semester. Reminder that for any curricular changes, or program proposals, this will be a late opportunity to get it moved through the approval process for the February Board of Regents. The next meeting will be in late January.

Two handouts were given for informational purposes. One was a list of the last 10 years of proposals that were presented to The Coordinating Board and whether they were approved or denied. The second was four examples of schools following the trend of fast tracking the Master’s degree.  

V.  OTHER:

Dr. Marquart

• Admissions - Deans were asked to continue to monitor in Argos and see what can be done to increase admissions for spring. There was discussion of some information that was recently discovered to make a difference on the head count reports due to there being numerous parts of term. For fall 2018, there are approximately 475 students that do not start until later parts of term that are not included in the fall count. The numbers eventually catch up, but it puts us a year behind on the true head count.
• Currently our students are required to pay 50% upfront before they are even enrolled. The plan is to change this to 25%. We are working with Marketing to see that this change gets communicated out to the community. Dr. Marquart reminded everyone to let him know of any impediments or roadblocks to admission that are discovered.
  • Another issue that was raised involved students being readmitted after being dropped for non-payment and is there a way to give short term loans so they are not dropped. Dr. Brent talked about the options that are available, installment plans and emergency short term loans (basically a deferment plan). These options need to be made more readily accessible.
  • Dr. Nichols also spoke about the Rebuild Texas Grant that will be providing scholarship money.
• TALH is being looked at due to the decline in students. Development of a recruitment plan has been requested by the Director of the program.
• The review of HEF requests hopefully will be completed by the end of the week.
• The quarterly Board of Regent’s meeting is next week at Sam Houston State University.
• Mr. Bennett Bartlett, the new TSUS Associate General Council, started last week. His office is located on the first floor of the Reaud building.
• There has been one salary market adjustment request submitted. The plan is to obtain three external reviewers.

Bob Spina

• American Education Week is next week. There will be a recognition luncheon on Tuesday for Region V with Lamar Alum, Dr. Jimmy Cheek, as the Key Note Speaker.
• An alumni network was initiated in the College of Education for Counseling with a reception in Dallas next week.

Dan French

Work continues on retention and revising plans for directing Herman Wilson funds more towards students at risk, and using funds more efficiently.

Victor Zaloom

• It was shared that Payscale.com ranked Lamar University as #5 for the best value in the country for engineering. For the BSIT online engineering program, we were #1!
• A Commencement speaker has been secured for the College of Engineering.
• Engineering alumni will be participating in the President’s suite at Saturday’s game.

Lynn Maurer

• Dean Maurer will be the keynote speaker for the 5^th Annual Humanities, Arts, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Education & Business Conference on November 17^th.
• Department Chairs with the College of Arts & Sciences have been tasked with looking at the bylaws for tenure and promotion for their departments.

   

Katrina Brent

Cardinal View is Saturday, November 10^th.  There are 500 students registered as of yesterday with about 1500 guests expected to attend.

VI.  Adjourn @ 3:00pm