September 17, 2019 Minutes

Council of Department Chairs

Attendees: R. Behl, B. Benken, C. Bennett, A. Bill, C. Brazier, T. Gao, L. Henriques, M. Horton, M. Karteron, K. Slowinski, D. Underwood

  1. Approve agenda (10:05am)
  2. Approve minutes. Unanimous.
  3. Announcements
    1. Student Research
    • Graduate Travel Fellowship (was HOGAR, is now part of Academic Affairs): Up to $1k to present at a meeting. Link for request is found on the Graduate Studies webpage or the Graduate Studies Resource Center (GSRC).
    • Graduate Research Conference: Tuesday Nov. 19, Deadline for proposal submission Oct. 19.
    • CNSM Student Research Symposium (Friday, Sept. 20): 129 posters, 158 presenters!
    • Chairs Council – meets next week. We will be looking at the Vision Statement for the Faculty Development Center.
    • Please have a look at the vision statement for the faculty center to be created.
    1. Operations updates
      1. GEGC – Still needs a nomination (Jason Schwans is already member). Need someone who is tenured, who knows the GE. One term replacement (for one year). Discussion about how to choose a person from the College and who is adequate for the work of this and other committees. Discussion about a full time lecturer to be a member.
      2. CEPC – Alan Colburn volunteered.
      3. Nominations still needed for College election committee, grade appeal, scholarship committee.
      4. RSCA – need a tenured member from each department.
      5. University Awards nominations is open and will be until Oct. 7.
      6. Software: Microsoft Windows 7 is not supported anymore starting 2020. The dean will look into solutions for systems that require Windows 7.
    2. Dean updates
      1. Data safety. Spam (soliciting gift cards?). Be careful with it; it is difficult to recognize the address. Also, don't send excel sheets that have more information than needed (for example on additional tabs). The college needs to develop an internal policy regulating the email exchange of data.
      2. Survey overload. Students are getting bombarded with all kinds of surveys. Is it so? The issue is discussed at the administration level. Internal vs. external surveys. Deans will discuss it. The question is how many surveys are too many? We discussed also the issue between length and number of surveys.
      3. Report on Deans Council
        1. Campaign. Started a new campaign. For the college the suggested story/theme is: students research in the college leads to groundbreaking research as alumni. Environmental science will be included. Open to other ideas.
        2. Budget. University carryover last year is large in absolute value and includes scholarship money, RS accounts, etc. The deans were informed that the size of these numbers hurts our requests for funding.
        3. Writing Center. Has a new director: Tina Matuchniak.  The center provides support for students and faculty and has tutors that can help in classes. See University Writing Center. The Center can provide embedded writing tutors, although funding must be found to pay for these.
        4. BEACH 2030. Four topics the deans are working on for Academic Affairs. Each of these topics has already its own leader in the college.
          1. Rethinking faculty (primarily on workload issues)
          2. Design an inclusive environment
          3. Innovative curriculum
          4. Advancing community partnerships.
      4. Upper division GE grantees. Reminder: we need the courses certified for Fall 2020. They need to get to the curriculum committee by Nov. 1 (meetings at the college level will be mid-October). All students admitted in Fall 2020 will be under the new GE policy. New courses certification is processed through Curriculog.
    3. Academic Senate report. Many first readings (GEGR, Opening and closing of programs).
  4. Associate Deans
    1. Research
      1. Beach Building Services solicits project requests for summer 2020 (smaller renovation projects). Send suggestions to Barbara Taylor. Departments need own funding.
      2. CSU has launched the STEM-NET affinity group (Executive Director, Frank Gomez; the only CSU affinity group to include all 23 campuses). Babette is already collaborating on a funding proposal; other may wish to explore this opportunity. an upcoming opportunity is a webcast on proposal development for NSF IUSE HSI-STEM. The webcast is Thursday 10/10 10-11am; Information has been sent by ORSP. Barbara Taylor will book a room for group viewing. Watch for an email and alert faculty.
      3. Oct. 5,6 – faculty can go to a field trip sponsored by the CSU Desert Studies Consortium (DSC) to preview a biology-geology cross disciplinary course offered by DSC Death Valley and the Mojave Desert. Emails have gone out, but please spread the word if you know of faculty who might be interested
    2. Academic Programs (see docs sent by K. Slowinski).
      1. Course Completion.  Report about Closing the Gap (see doc). CNSM is dealing with the course completion problem (DFW), but also wants to address the gap in AB grades. There is correlation between a C in a class and failing the next. We provided support for failing students (below C), but one has to think about students who get Cs. In particular in freshmen and sophomore courses.
      2. Completion of B4 courses (see doc). Getting a C in MATH 113 or MATH 112A leads to low completion rates in subsequent Math or Chemistry classes. Some steps are being taken to address this issue. See attached guidelines for pre-major declaration.
      3. Early Alert. Discussion about health profession and medical school - affects 2000 (?) students in the college. We have about 40 who actually apply and about 15 who are accepted in medical school. The median GPA is about 3.7 for entering medical school (see doc). We need to address issues early on to help students make choices that are realistic in regard to medical school and offer alternatives that are still in STEM or the health profession. A comparison is made to the UCLA and other schools submissions and acceptance to medical school.
      4. Curriculum deadlines. All department sent them.
  5. RS policy discussion (Curt)
    1. Limited Carry-Forward Policy. Supported by department chairs (no vote).
    2. Off-Site F&A and Progressive Distribution Policy. Discussion about understanding of what counts as off-campus and on-campus (follow up from last week). The chairs may want to talk to the faculty. Some clarification of the issue will be made in the first paragraph. Other comments and suggests should be brought to the next CDC. The policy will be voted on next week at CDC.
    3. Policy on the Sharing of Indirect Cost Recovery within CNSM. Comments and suggests should be brought to the next CDC. It will be discussed and voted on next week.
  6. Adjourn 12:10pm

The following topics have not been addressed during the meeting:

  • 6-9: BEACH2030 (Barbara)
  • Strategic Communications (Curt)
  • Sato Academy (Dessie)

Submitted by Dr. Andreas Bill, Chair, Physics and Astronomy.

Meeting Minutes were APPROVED on Tuesday, September 24, 2019.

Upcoming Dates

  • Thursday, September 19 – Department Chairs Third Thursday – 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM
  • Friday, September 20 – Student Research Symposium
  • Friday, October 4 – CSU Department Chairs Workshop – 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM
  • Monday, October 7 – Deadline for University Awards nominations.
  • Saturday, October 19 – Proposal deadline for the ºÚÁÏÍø Graduate Research Conference.
  • Tuesday, October 22 – ORSP Funding for OA Publishing Workshop – 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
  • Thursday, October 25 – Department Chairs Third Thursday – 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM
  • Friday, November 8 – CNSM Research Summit
  • Tuesday, November 9 – ºÚÁÏÍø Graduate Research Conference – 4 PM to 7PM
  • Thursday, November 14 – Fellows' Colloquium