December 10, 2019 Minutes

Council of Department Chairs

Attendees: Andreas Bill, Chris Brazier, Kris Slowinski, Laura Henriques, Rick Behl, Barbara Taylor, Margaret Karteron, Tangan Gao, Allie Puz, Christine Whitcraft

  1. Approve agenda
  2. Approve minutes for December 3, 2019
  3. Announcements
    1. Operations updates
      • Open House 4/25/20 1-5PM
        Departments need to commit to what they are going to have available at the Open House. CHAIRS – report to Margaret what each department is going to be able to offer. Respond by Thursday 12/19. Margaret to email chairs, SLC, Shark Lab, Marine Lab, etc.
      • Commencement Graduation Speaker – please send ideas to Margaret by week of Jan 5. Possible speakers should have some connection to the college (potential donor/existing donor).
    2. Academic Senate Report – updates on GR status.
    3. Spring Semester CDC Retreat – will not be meeting on Jan 23. Might have a longer CDC to discuss hiring but will do the retreat at another time.
  4. Associate Deans
    1. Academic Programs
      1. Advising Updates
        1. EAB authorizations to be processed has been sent - three parts to 12/17 EAB workshop: Analytics, Enrollment Management, Advising. Bring questions related to EAB to the meeting or send to Kris ahead of time.
        2. January Workshop - workshops for students getting Cs in pre-req chemistry courses to help them be successful in successive courses. Might be doing something for anatomy students as well.
        3. Semester Zero - after meetings this week, Kris will send a more finalized version of the workshops. Likely to include: major specific advising, workshops for parents, tours, resource fair (poster session), workshop/panels with current students. These will be followed by early start activities.

      2. Spring '20 Schedule, waitlists

        1. Monitor waiting lists. Some conflicts between MATH119A and CHEM111A (with CLA courses).

        2. There were conversations about students who use Rate My Professor and instructor pass rates to select classes. Dean Bennett asked that chairs monitor faculty pass rates. Chairs should be having conversations with instructors who are routinely >1 standard deviation from others in the course.

    2. Research

      1. Required power outages HSCI (Fri 12/27/19) and MLSC (Sat 12/28/19)

        • Red outlets (emergency outlets) are not reliable. Could we have verification of which red outlets work correctly?

        • Might be good to have someone from each department who could check on equipment during the outage.

      2. Week of Research 2021

        • NCUR will be on our campus spring break 2021. ºÚÁÏÍø’s week of research will take place the week after NCUR.

        • ORSP has asked if we'd move the student research symposium to the week after spring break. Chairs did not want to move the event to spring. Rather than move our symposium to spring, we could find some mechanism to include half of our fall students in spring. We could select winning posters to make presentations during the spring week of research or have fall student posters nominated to be included in spring. We could store fall posters (digitally) and then re-print for students who are invited/willing to present again in spring.

        • Could we explore how we could digitize student posters and do something with them (could be outreach or social media)?

  5. Space Analysis Follow-up
    • If we allow lab meetings to take place in under-utilized classrooms we can make the rooms be better utilized (do ad-hoc scheduling of the spaces).
    • Math will need rooms in HSCI and MLSC for fall semester.
    • Rooms under department control should be made available to other departments in the college. At this point, Tangan will reach out to the other 5 departments to see if we can use the rooms.
    • Consider how MICRO could be better utilized. Do we put SAS or other student services there so connected to Student Services building?
    • There will be complications for scheduling when PH1 gets renovated (and then given over to CHHS).
    • As the university considers expanding to 70,000 students, we need to begin thinking about creative/different ways of meeting student needs (online, certificate programs, weekend programs, etc.)
  6. Survey about college tech needs and services going out to faculty and staff today
  7. Adjourn (11:46am)

Submitted by Laura Henriques.

Meeting Minutes APPROVED on January 28, 2020.