Mathematics Department Meeting
Friday, October 21, 2005
HBC 301.0 2pm – 4pm
In attendance: Janet Bickham, Tinh Bui, Jerry Caples, Gustavo Cepparo,Mike Dellens,Christy Downs, Lenore Eklund, Constance Elko, Irie Glajar, Susan Hord, Mike Huff, Weilin Jiang, Mark Karl, Bob Leibman, Stephanie Lochbaum, Clarence McGuff, Nancy Miller, Juan Molina, Pedro Mota, Mary Parker, Vicki Payne, Steve Rodi, Omar Rodriguez, Allison Sutton, John Thomason, Tony Vance, David Woods, Paul Wright, Oralia Guerra, Kathy Hartman, Herb Ling, Betty Ludlum, Paricher Moin, Wanda O’Connor, Merianne Prickett, Kanthi Sathasivan, Willia Bailey, Dave Johnson, Mike McCarthy.
MINUTES
Agenda Item / Discussion / Action1. Approval of Minutes of October 7, 2005 / No discussion / Minutes approved
2. Announcements / Nancy Miller thanked all faculty for their support and service and for helping each other. Special thanks were given to those who have covered classes for others this semester.
Nancy Miller announced that travel funds are still available for the joint MAA/AMS meeting in San Antonio in January. Interested faculty should send travel requests (available from campus Math Administrative Assistants) to Nancy Miller and may ask Mary Parker, Constance Elko, or Steve Rodi for more details. Book, computer software, and technology exhibits will be on display. There will be a two-year college reception one evening.
Irene Doo will be the national secretary of AMATYC again for those who want to congratulate her.
Questions regarding teaching observations should be sent to Gillian Waterston or Nancy Miller.
All faculty were asked to pay special attention to emails about the "Rule of Three."
Mike Dellens asked faculty to remind students about the math contest this Friday.
3. Bridge course for Biotech/Matd / Mary Parker distributed the same handout from the Oct. 7th meeting except that she had inserted in bold responses to concerns expressed at that meeting. The program would begin this spring. Biotech has both a Certificate program and an Associate Degree program. Mary recommended that MATD 0160 be offered instead of a lab course to count as students' mandatory remediation. / Approved
4. OIE Planning / Roslyn Wallace reported that the math department has been assessing about 10 courses per year for about 10 years. The process was designed to find where improvements could be made, but the math department usually meets its criteria. SACS' Criteria for Accreditation has been replaced by SACS' Principles of Accreditation, which is quite different. The math department needs more information. She distributed a handout, "AMATYC Position Statement - Academic Assessment of Mathematical Programs."
Our focus should now be on student learning outcomes and how we know they have learned what we said they would learn. Ideally, we should look at students' majors. She recommended visiting the website She also said that SACS wants us to show that we are gathering learning outcomes data to make improvement to our curriculum, but we should not send our data to SACS. Instead, we should document for them that we are using our data to improve our curriculum so that the quality of learning is enhanced.
There is a new annual Assessment Summary Form which helps identify particular learning outcomes. We should be asking three questions:
1. What do our students need to be doing?
2. How well are they doing it?
3. What are we doing about it?
When asked whether we will likely be held accountable for our students' performance or non-performance in the future, it was speculated that we will likely be held accountable through performance-based funding.
5. OIE math planning / John Thomason distributed a handout "Multi-Year Comparison of Percentage Successfully Completing Subsequent MATD/MATH Course." He reported that he has already requested the same data as last year and said that we may want to change the 50% rates on some so that we no longer have mostly success and therefore will need to document improvement in some areas.
It was also suggested that this year the math department should focus on the newly created arithmetic lab, possibly looking at successful completion of MATD 0330 before and after the creation of the lab or looking at those students who chose to attend the lab and those who did not. / Approved. Faculty were asked to email ideas to John Thomason.
6. Course challenges / Paul Wright reported there were 3 or 4 challenges in the past 5 months. Under a course challenge, faculty administer all of the tests for a course, which students must pass with an overall A or B in order to get credit for a course. By doing this, they actually earn an A or B in the course. Currently, challenges go through the Dept. Chair or Dean for referral first and then the course committees do screening. Some course committees do not allow challenges. During the discussion it was noted that for some courses students also have the option of taking a CLEP test. / Faculty were asked to think about whether tests should be administered only by full-time faculty and whether tests should be given at a campus other than where the student normally takes their classes. This item will be brought back to a future meeting for further discussion and possible action.
7. Early College Start Guidelines report / Clarence McGuff distributed three handouts:
1. a draft of a letter expressing concerns regarding a classified ad placed in the Austin American-Statesman on October 16, 2005
2. Clarence's concerns about having college-credit classes in the high schools
3. A draft of "General Guidelines for off campus classes including ECS"
There was limited time for discussion on these issues because of Donetta Goodall's arrival. / Faculty were asked to send input regarding the first handout listed, but it was approved with minor editing changes. Faculty were asked to email Clarence and Constance Elko feedback regarding the Early College Start Guidelines.
8. Developmental Education Plan and Developmental Math/ Legislative updates / Donetta Goodall reported on several issues. First, she told the math department that she thought our web pages were outstanding and she thanked us for that.
She also reported on advising. Beginning this spring, classes will need to be 65% (up from 60%) full in order to make. Too many courses have been making at minimum enrollments. ACC will continue to keep courses that are required for graduation.
Next, Donetta reported on several issues coming from the state legislature that are impacting the lives of our students. ACC has a 42-hour core curriculum. The state budget and our reimbursements from the state are shrinking. We are trying to get more grant funds, but this is another challenge we face.
The state legislature has decided that students who complete a 4-year or 5-year degree on time will receive a $1000 rebate. However, one result of this is that it penalizes community college students and those who cannot attend full-time.
The legislature also decided that if students take 50% more courses than needed to complete their degree, colleges can charge them extra tuition. However, ACC has decided not to implement this.
The state will not reimburse colleges for certain classes taken three or more times. All students will have to pay $60/hr extra for courses not reimbursed by the state, which means they would have to pay $180 extra for a 3-hr course. This will not affect developmental math. The 27 hours of MATD classes currently allowed will still be allowed. Some other classes are excluded.
Additionally, there is a 170-hour rule for Bachelor's degrees. If the degree exceeds 170 hours, the student can be charged extra.
By the time a student completes their 30th hour of academic course work, ACC notifies them about possible limitations on the number of hours that may transfer.
Title IV funds are tied to keeping attendance, and since we are not currently required to keep attendance in all ACC classes, we do not have to worry about this one yet.
ACC may be required to accept courses from other institutions regardless of their accreditation. If a student gets an International Baccalaureate Diploma, with a score of 6, the student may get up to 24 hours credit.
ACC will have a visit from SACS between now and August. For this visit, we will be focusing on faculty credentials and advising students about transfer.
The Developmental Education Plan is being updated annually and will be on the web. A council is looking at developmental education to identify issues to address at the next legislative session. A group looked at best practices and in particular, structural changes. What can we do better? We are looking into aligning the curriculum between middle school, high school, and college. We also need to improve our curriculum and are looking for innovations but not fads.
There are also definitional issues. What knowledge is needed? What does it mean to be educated in the 21st century? The first discussion about this will be at Pinnacle. Much as we would like for it to decrease, the need for developmental education is growing.
ACC is also looking at ways to reward faculty. Developmental faculty are often looked down upon. Rewards for collaboration, teaching developmental education, etc., are being considered.
Input is also needed for the full-time faculty advising initiative. Which students must be advised? How can we approach this? Advising will take place during regular office hours with our own students taking priority. Professional development hours will be given for advising orientation. Campus discussions will probably begin in November. / Donetta said that she would send more information to faculty for input and feedback.
9. Assessment and Advising Committee Request: OSD TSI math waivers procedure / Christy Downs reported that the Assessment and Advising Committee wanted some initial feedback from the math department with regard to issuing OSD TSI math waivers. These waivers are granted very rarely. Only one has been granted since the change was made from TASP to TSI.
It was suggested that we should begin by checking into how the state has been determining who is awarded these waivers. Faculty felt that these waivers should not be given automatically, even when students have documented dyscalculia or dysgraphia because these disabilities can be of varying degrees. Instead, it was recommended that students should have taken the same math course at least twice at ACC and have at least two letters from 2 different ACC instructors recommending a waiver. Students should be genuinely trying in the course. They should also have been successfully completing other courses at ACC. Their workload and courseload should be examined to verify that it is not too heavy. The decision of whether a waiver is granted should be determined by the math department instead of OSD. / Faculty were asked to email ideas and input to Christy Downs and Nancy Miller.
Adjourned at 4:15pm
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