Present: John Ronnau, Farhat Iftekharrudin, Sylvia Peña, Jóse Martín, Eldon Nelson, Betsy Boze,  Edna Claus, Rene Villarreal, Eli Peña, Victor Fuhro, Pat Wade, Jon Steingass, Delayne Hudspeth, Deborah, Suzzane, Cynthia Lerma, Wayne Lewis, Raymond Rodrigues- Presiding

#1- Proposal for Revising Placement Testing Procedures
Jon argued for a  request in the way students are assessed and placed in developmental courses Currently, there is no standard measure for placing students, and, therefore, all students aren’t being assessed: Some slip through the cracks and are not going to succeed because they are placed at too high a level.  The change is for writing and math testing and placement only,  not reading. Current reading placement practice will  be maintained.  Jon discussed  that there is no real correlation between TASP and anything..  Simply stated, the change will  test more students. Jose asked to change language in the proposal  to state that LEP students “will be advised into the appropriate course.”

#3- NISOD 2001 Excellence Awards
Raymond suggested that the faculty committee that will pick the recipients for this award and future faculty teaching or advising awards be comprised of faculty that have been past winners.  The deans concurred.

#4- Preferred Adjuncts
Raymond stated a need to ratchet up adjunct salary by $200 to $1690.  José asked that we differentiate between lower and upper adjuncts, or a two-tier system. Victor will present various scenarios for increasing part-time faculty salaries.

#5- Employee Recognition Program
The Vice Presidents have approved a program to recognize outstanding staff monthly and provide a parking space for each.  Academic Affairs Directors will come up with process for choosing recognized employees and report back.  The Provost assigned Doug Ferrier to chair the task force and convene all the directors.

#6- Deans/Chairs Agenda
Pat asked that the Exemplary Educational Objectives from the THECB’s Core Curricula Advisory Committee Report be a topic.  Another area for discussion would be to come up with topics that might be considered at the VP/Deans retreat Oct 15-18.

Other Discussion
? Raymond asked for requests to advertise positions in SMT and Business.
? Letty Fernandez still needs PR information about faculty.
? The enrollment Management retreat will be October 31.

#2- Data Extraction Using Colleague
The group retired to a computer lab in Tandy  for the purpose of receiving instruction in the use of the Colleague System.