Academic Council Meeting 18 March 2004

Announcements. WOU made NY Times yesterday. Student body objected to having Red Cross on campus because were not taking blood from Gay Men. Will have Red Cross on campus but students had quite argument over it.

Board meetings. Thursday and Friday Apr 1/2. By tomorrow the final agenda and docket will be on their way out and posted on the web. Likely to start Thursday with first of several board work groups. Chancellors office review at 1130 AM. And other work groups will also meet. Nesbet's will be Friday afternoon. Big Gallery. Canyon lot - spans VA Bridge up at west end of canyon. Nursing building is on one end. Walkway - Library is other side. Will be maps in the packet. Atrium like long thin room. Reception afterwards to which everyone is invited.

Bob Kieren. Campus enrollment watch. Redone the web site for OUS. Has enrollment watch button on front page. Need to update high school degree class to send out initial projections. Will be in about 2 weeks. Continuing enrollment winter has stronger drop-off than in the past. EOU applications are higher for fall than last year. Had drop in fall but recovered. For right now things are looking quite optimistic. Very early. Leslie OHSU. Not relevant. Our enrollment is pretty stable. Managed b class size limitations. In nursing some challenges for year after next fall. In terms of consortium real ramp up will start in Fall 05. That is where campuses will start seeing prerequisite pressures. OIT Little hard to see if trend or not. In 5 weeks Jan 3- Feb 10 had 250 applicants. Most of effort spent on trying to communicate with students and encouraging to come. Data is pretty flat. OSU. Applications are down 30% a month ago but is now 10%. Other indicator of paid applications is down about 10%. So anticipate lower incoming first year class. Graduate enrollments and out of states are down. Across the board. Doing better on retention. So enrollment is flat. Few first year students better on retaining students. Our carrying load W04 increased 1% from 14.2 to 14.34 credits. Insignificant change. Percentage enrolled for 13+ went from 79.3% to 79.1% Fall to winter. Insignificant. Enrolling in plateau from 76% to 75%. More than student enrolling for more than 16 credits is up. Caution in interpreting winter data. Students made enrollment decisions in fall before they got first bill reflecting plateau changes. Look at spring compared to S03 for more information about transition. Might have to wait until financial aid package for new year. At OSU readjusted everyone's financial aid package - had roll up for many students. May be a couple of years before we can sort out what the impact is. SO. Overall numbers up 5.2%. Increase is larger for out of state students. Small base. See drop off in 1 credit courses at 17 and 18 credit level. Look at reduced tuition across board at levels across 12 as opposed to same fees at below 12. To encourage faster graduation. LG. UO. We are soft on enrollments for applications for fall. Down about 10%. More instate than out of state. Freshman class will be a bit smaller than anticipated. Housing enrollments - out of states are holding in those applications but instate applications for housing is down - good indication as to whether they are really coming. Big decreasing is in our international graduate student population - visa problem and competition from Canada and Australia. Transfer seems to be holding right now. As tuition's change we are seeing people make firm commitments later and later given some of the uncertainties they are having individually. Students are applying to more schools.

John Mininahan. WOU. Looking at 6 year trends. Last year had big Freshman class. Had 1758 have 1598 down 9.3 in apps. In terms of admissions even to 944. Down 1.7 in Freshman. Transfers up 44%. Masters is up. Oregon Residents tracks class. US non resident up 18%. International numbers are in tank down 23%. Will be even to last year. Below what had predicted. At this is pint, not helpful to look at anything before May or June. Our secret is we recruit best during the summer. Will be even with last year. Retention rate is high in middle 70s. Going to be ok. Apps are down. Tracking down.

Make impact on board working groups looking at pipelines. In F2002. CC was fairly flat. F2003 preliminary numbers show down 10%. Strong drop in one year. If not seeing increases in OUS means are loosing students out there - that will be of concern to board - presumption due to economy and tuition. Pipeline - students outline that we are not able to serve right now.

Follow up with drop outs. System wide graduation rate was 58% from 95 cohort. With student clearinghouse found more than 50% had enrolled in other schools. While it looks like 58% are completing can really assume half of ones not completing here are progressing elsewhere. Resident students bar far had academic difficulties were 2.0% were going to community colleges. For non residents less true. More of the non residents stop outs enrolled in colleges elsewhere - 4 year publics. Continue to follow up with this. Reconceptualize graduation rates.

Trend for big ones is opposite from small ones. Local folks staying at regional Universities?

McDonald. Lot going on in the MBF. Packet of materials from Susan Weeks.

MBF Process update. Held meeting Monday to continue to refine the activities and thinking of MBF. Next meeting April 3-5 at OHSU. Submit to board for approval 4-5 concepts that will forward as legislative packages. SOme of which have some funding requests. On 2 April meeting want board approval of those to work with DAS to submit material on proper timeline. Activities See http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ifs/dir04/dirMBF/MBF16Mar04.htm

•  State wide student data system. Use link to ongoing K-12 initiative and CC. Student centered data system. Download directly to banner. Provide students much better turnaround. Students at early stage how well prepared may or may not be. Earlier signal to take corrective steps to make progress. Faster better feedback with CC and High schools as to relative success of their students. Buildup of existing process. Prototyping sharing data already existing. Include information from Path? Part of data to be included. Traditional transcript + other information. LG.. One of question related to assumptions concerning some of the data. Don't want to force decisions. Raise caution early on. Will retain all information have always had. Pull up more information -- single unified transcript. Will know exactly what field goes where. Not a way to force anyone to do anything. Will they increase enrollments? Trying to find ways to do that. Did not discuss anything that would increase enrollments. Most of participation on committees is community college present. Stay connected with board meetings from this point forward. I am worried deeply about cynicism in faculty notion of MBF as sound bite. Would have an advantage if took off documents. Flying in face of growing reality. Majority of faculty are working. Worried about underlying current getting in way of being successful. LG. - take 2 of the above. More work and faster treadmills. Developing cynicism. Earl. General comment that applies to other initiatives. Assume IT folks are involved in these commitments. As our folks get acquainted with what systems CC have in place. Wide array of different infra structure. Those campuses that don't have same that is being driven out of center - their costs will be higher. Doesn't affect us. Our infrastructure is a good match. Will affect CC partners and make it more difficult. Hope IT folks are really engaged.
• Dual enrollment framework and common core. Facilitate articulation. Dual enrollment framework is a best practices or minimum piece to successful practice. Driven by current arrangements in place. Ask JBAC to look at have successful models. Share information on financial aid. Communicate before changing any general ed so partners can make changes - avoid blind siding students. Statewide common core. Needs to be outcomes based approach. Study disciplines. Take bite sides pieces. Move students through without missed levels. Not new issue. Breakout session in February. Make sure faculty are actively involved in process. Not everyone has same course curriculums - outcomes based. Students walk through series with comparable levels. LG.. Couple of things came up. Really have to be careful that we don't regrind the wheel. The JBAC is working very hard on this matter. And this kind of proposal comes is almost parallel or duplicative. Seems as if this going to statewide meetings for faculty is really misguided based on all work being done by JBAC. Common core & transferability of general ed is issue? Our issue is more that major requirements prevent transferability rather than gen. Seem to be equating two when don't need to. Major worry about regrinding something that is already being processed in another committee. Duplication of parallel committee. We want to empower that group with more faculty. Absent more than 1 provost and faculty. Have stronger academic participation on JBAC. So has a chance to have good thinking on it. John Minihan. Stand to lose a lot here. If we could get people asking the question for a chemist - what does it take for some one to get into chemistry major. Can we identify those in common core. That is different from what it takes to have liberal education. If those perquisites were part of common core. Could back into a common core. Drive from major. Get that discussion going. gilkey and Turner felt better to go to discipline based. Could move that ahead quickly. Earl. Echo John's sense of this. OIT had conversation with CC in Southern Oregon. That is what we are going to do together. Can't overstate upset upset by CC on Oregonian articles for state board taking charge of CC. Conversations about JBAC. If honored that work explicitly is important to relationships. Based on competency and student learning as opposed to course numbers. Chart does not involve all relationships.
• Online education. Different from distance. We define ways in which we can take advantage of technology or instructional capacity to adjust some of log jam courses that slow down students progress towards a degree. Online can provide excess. Has cost associated with it.
• Student retention. One of things we have to address.
• Accelerated menu for high school students - better prepared for college. AP, IB, and whole menu. Simply taking AP course isn't enough. Need good score. LG.. Concerns about that. Faculty would say that if high school would concentrate entrate that what they should be offering in high school is at quality level it should be rather than trying to offer college level. That is probably the emphasis is what we would prefer rather than that assuming everyone is offering college credit in college classes. Challenge better students - not every one should have college course before leave high school. Cynicism on most faculty parts. Bill Portland State. Echo that. This point conversation generated conversation on our campus. "Students need to grow up educationally. Need to be in high school and have challenging high school experience not college experience. Don't push students to grow up too early. LG. question as to whether need it as an initiative. Tim White and John Monahan. On low end of list of initiatives. Bob Kieran. Point out some of statistics. Some students who are more advanced in high school. Washington State Running Start students are more likely to stay in state. Opportunity rather than a channeling. Tool for high schools may benefit Universities. Question. Utility. How many are we are talking about? What we have got interim of budget to maximize dollars. Other initiatives directed to 80% and not 3%. Students coming in at Freshman are coming in with 26 credit. Almost 2 terms. About 60% of students have advanced credits. LG. Are we already catching those that need to be caught.
• Incentives for earlier graduation? Controversial. Not going to move forward as a top priority.
• Whole scholarship issue. New - try make sure does not siphon existing dollars away. Move to affordability? Restructure awards to get a bigger bang for the buck. Support more funding for transfer students. LG. you listed no cost. There is nothing that has no cost. Time and energy and effort in all these has costs affiliated with those. FOcus must be non just CC transfer and getting people here. Lets focus on retention on h honors programs and honors colleges.

Legislative Options. Lisa and Gratten. Couple of items to report. Last Tuesday 9 March. Filing date for Legislature and other political offices. 20% of State Senate has gone away choosing not to file again or has resigned. In House 20% of the members have chosen not to return. 10% are seeking a Senate Seat. Pretty significant turnover with a lot of new faces.

ORP:Board docket item to recommend placeholder legislative concept to DAS by 15 April for yet to agreed upon amendment to ORP project. Problem with linkage to PERS contribution rate. There are 3 principles - it should be competitive for faculty and unclassified staff, that it be sustainable, and it be relatively stable and have some predictability for plan participants. None of those are true today with linkage of PERS rate. This will be in the board docket and we hope the State Board of Higher Education will vote to advance place holder -- later in the summer we hope to come to consensus on the precise language. The current administrative action provides some interim relief for some of problems that we have had -- it provides a little breathing room.

Warnings regarding political activities - some limitations during work day. Can't post bumper sticker on University Property. Can't do political advocacy via email or office mail. Be alert and remind folks. Don't send advocacy through email or campus mail. Its illegal. Don't post other stuff on anything other than your person.

See Diversity report.

Housekeeping measures.