July 17, 2002 Academic Council Report

Conference Call

Submitted by Bob Turner

 

Present at the meeting:

Shirley Clark, Chair	Holly Zanville	Lorraine Davis, UO	John Miller, EOU
Nancy Goldschmidt	Andy Duncan	Howard Thurston, OIT	John Minahan, WOU
Yvette Webber-Davis	Ruth Keele	Terry Rhodes, PSU	Lesley Hallick, OHSU
Jim Arnold	Diane Vines	for Mary Kathryn Tetreault	Tim White, OSU
Grattan Kerans	Susan Weeks		Charles Lane, SOU
Dave McDonald
Vicki Falsgraf	Guest:	Bob Turner, WOU, IFS

 

 

From the Minutes of the July 17, 2002 Academic Council Meeting by Conference Call:

Discussion of conversion to the semester system is totally off every campus’ radar screen.

 

 

Board Meeting Agenda/Issues: Budget Renewal will attend to issues raised in president’s letter in June, with David Longanecker again facilitating and Chancellor Jarvis participating. Shirley Clark supplied her notes to the Provosts, which Bob Turner forwarded to IFS members this summer. OUS’s Strategic Planning Committee found that no Board action is needed prior to increasing admission requirements above the Board’s minimum. There was some discussion of budget issues and plans with no firm resolution or recommendations.

 

 

Legislative Update by Grattan Kerans confirmed that the governor will probably veto four bills, that higher ed & community colleges look at the impact of postponing their payments to the next biennium, and that OUS’s share of the budget reductions will be about 6% of the total.

 

The report “Where Have Oregon’s 2001 Graduates Gone” was summarized with particular attention to the increasing percentage of HS grads entering higher ed, increase in the percent of high achieving HS grads that stay in Oregon for their higher ed and, of course, concerns over the impact of budget cuts on OUS’s ability to deal with these two factors. Provosts noted a marked drop in the number of computer science majors – no concrete response was available, though the weakening economy and high-tech industry were mentioned. There was also comment on the inaccurate perception of the cost of higher ed, most notably on the part of low income and first generation students – the response being that this needs to be corrected by increasing awareness of the real costs and of the impact of the four year freeze on resident undergraduate tuition.

 

The Education and Arts and Sciences Summit was summarized by Holly Zanville. She saw five main issues – pre-education programs, arts & science faculty knowledge of Praxis exam content, communication of advising and articulation between OUS and community college campuses, education transfer degrees and top administrator involvement in K-16 teacher education partnerships. Responses and questions from the provosts focused on articulation and advising issues, with the persistent thread being the difficulties presented by patterns of inconsistent advising at the community colleges and by the conflict between transfer degrees based on seat time and competency based competitive admission to education programs. There was discussion of the party responsible for accurate advising and the communication this implies between OUS and community college campuses. Praxis exam content is viewed very differently on different OUS campuses; some arts and sciences faculty regularly take this exam, while other faculty view their major programs as supplying all the content that is needed. In closing, it was noted that Chancellor Jarvis is interested in K-16 partnerships.

 

Semester conversion was briefly discussed, with the consensus being that no campus wishes to participate without a Board guarantee that the conversion will occur. This seems a low priority for both the Board and the Chancellor.

 

The Oregon Council for Knowledge and Economic Development was described by Provost White, who agreed to serve as a liaison between this body and the Academic Council.

 

The meeting closed after a reminder that there would be no August meeting and that the September meeting may be another conference call.