ACADEMIC POLICIES COMMITTEE
MINUTES

Meeting Time: 8:00 am Nov. 30, 2001
Meeting Place: KU 211
Presiding: James Dunne

Senators Present: Bartlett, Cox, Dunne, Erdei, Johnson, Pedrotti
Ex Officio Member Present: Palermo
Guest: Tom Westendorf

Handouts: Jim Dunne provided a letter from Katy Marre summarizing her view of the policy changes that needed to be implemented in light of the new graduate grading system to be used in Fall 2002. This letter was dated November 12, 2001. Jim Dunne also provided a draft copy of a proposal to the academic senate entitled “Graduate Academic Policies Affected by the New +/- Grading System.”. Tom Westendorf provided a handout entitled “Web Registration” and dated Nov. 30, 2001.

1. The minutes of the November 2, 2001 meeting of the APC were approved.

2.     APC approval of the proposal to the academic senate regarding impacts of the +/- grading system on graduate academic policies:

The APC approved the wording of the draft proposal to the senate entitled “Graduate Academic Policies Affected by the New +/- Grading System.” The motion suggested in the proposal has the following wording, “The graduate policy on transfer credit should include the following statement, “No transfer credit will be given for a course in which the student earned below a B-.” This wording would replace an existing graduate policy statement in which the lower limit for transfer credit is set as B. The APC agreed that this motion would be put before the senate at the December meeting of the full academic senate.

3.     Discussion with Tom Westendorf regarding technology issues related to registration and academic advising:

Tom Westendorf, Registrar, led a discussion centered around web registration and Colleague 16.

He provided a handout entitled “Web Registration” and dated Nov. 30, 2001. Referring to the handout he noted, among other things, that the web registration had been up and running 99% of the time during the current registration period and that 80% of the students had, up to that time, used web registration to register for Winter 2002 classes.

(A) Current Functionality Problems:

Tom Westendorf noted that while the stability and usage patterns have been largely positive there have been some problems with the functionality of the system. These problems (and their status) are:

·     Mac Computer Access: This problem is being addressed and should be “fixable”.

·     Prerequisites: Release 16 does not recognize more than one line of prerequisites. This issue is still an unresolved problem.

·     Registration Status –Transfer Hours: Some conversion issues with transfer hours were encountered and resolved on a case-by-case basis.

·     Students Registering on the Wrong Date: Because of an input error over 200 students registered prior to their assigned date. This input error is easy to make when adjusting the registration date for a single student. The students were notified, removed from their classes, and allowed to register on their original assigned date. The program has been rewritten to avoid the possibility of this input error in the future.

·     Permission Courses: Originally the system restricted students in permission classes, now it’s only giving them a warning, which is the proper response. That is, this problem has been fixed.

·     Graduate Students: Some graduate academic programs did not convert correctly to Release 16. This delayed the registration of some graduate students.

·     Touchnet: The Touchnet system has been very unstable for the past several months.

(B) Future Enhancements to the Registration Process:

 Tom Westendorf stated that the first order of business is to fix existing problems and get through the current registration cycle. An enhancement being pursued is the ability for an advisor to add notes to individual student records. John Erdei asked if ASI advisors could be provided with “dummy” passwords which could be used to show students how the registration process works.

Tom Westendorf noted that these “dummy’ passwords already exist and can be provided as needed.  Jim Dunne raised the issue of collecting data on clusters and other aspects of student registration patterns. Tom Westendorf noted that Release 16 was to provide that functionality with access to the “Data Warehouse”. This feature is not currently working and is unlikely to be available for a year or so. It was noted that the ability to collect data on registration patterns is important and should be given priority. Tom Westendorf noted that his budget and personnel resources limit his ability to rapidly solve problems and make enhancements to the system. The members of the APC agreed that Jim Dunne should draft a letter indicating the importance of a registration system that works smoothly and allows for easy and flexible data collection and analysis. The letter would request that more resources be committed to this end. The letter should go to Chris Munoz with copies to Fred Pestello and Tom Westendorf.

4. Report on Oversight of General Education:  Pat Palermo noted that the report on general education would be completed soon and brought before the APC for review early in the Winter 2002 semester. James Dunne noted that a review of this report would form a large part of the workload of the APC in Winter 2002.

The meeting adjourned at 9:00 am.