Cabinet Minutes

24 September 2002

Present: Cissy McAndrew, Christie Miller, Peggy Lankford, Jerry Harmon, Steve Reed, Donna Rees, Chris Casey, Chris Farren, John Counts, Faye Vowell, Arley Howard

C and I will meet this afternoon. On the agenda are issues related to the freshman seminar and writing intensive classes.

Graduate Council met last Thursday. Patricia Cano was elected chair.

Faye Vowell participated in a conference call with the Graduate Deans in the state. Issues which they discussed included a statewide graduate program review cycle, conversion to new CIPS codes, flagging of graduate program.

The Foundation is vigorously pursuing fund raising efforts to off set the decrease in investment income occasioned by the stock market.

The Foundation has a full time temporary secretary currently.

The first meeting of the Gallup Alumni will be held this Friday. The first meeting of the T or C group will be next Friday. The Albuquerque chapter meets monthly. The next alumni chapter to be organized will be in Deming.

Arley will be going to the meeting of the Faculty Senate presidents in Albuquerque this Saturday.

Faculty Senate will meet next week.

The CDC ribbon cutting was very well done. Thanks to all who made it possible. Jerry Harmon's speech focused on the history of education at WNMU.

Jerry Harmon was in Gallup for a meeting yesterday. He presented a draft alternative licensure plan to the Gallup community as well as James Ball of the Professional Standards Commission.

Richard Rodriguez' classes are being covered by a number of wonderful volunteers. Thanks to all who are helping Richard in this difficult time.

Institutional Research is working on the list of student majors. Judith Lawrence will be attending a CUP assessment

A statewide Internet 2 management issue was resolved last week.

Steve Reed is researching a third T1 for the campus. It would give us a 50% increase in bandwidth.

MCI long distance pin issues are being addressed. Steve will draft a telephone acceptable use policy.

The new furniture for the GRC labs and classrooms has arrived. April and her people moved the furniture in over the weekend. Problems with the furniture vendor are being addressed.

The portal implementation date has been set for Jan 13. It will be called the Mustang Express. The vendor will work with Julie Morales on a marketing campaign for faculty, staff, and students.

Audio streaming of football games is being discussed. Athletics has asked that Stee Liebhart to examine this.

Auditors will be on campus tomorrow for about a week and a half. Banner Training for HR will take place today and tomorrow.

Chris Casey will be in ABQ for a Business Officers meeting at the end of the week.

The football team lost last weekend. This week they have a long bus ride to NW Oklahoma.Volleyball will travel to Texas.

Chris Casey is meeting today to address the issue of bad carpet in the GRC.

Spring schedules in Deming and Tor C being created. Donna Rees is working to get them on the same production schedule as Silver City.

Donna Rees is working with Americorps-- similar to Peace Corps and Vista-on their reimbursement of student tuition. Their bureaucracy is a nightmare. It is taking up to 9 months to get us paid.

Sammy Johnson's retirement party last week was well attended: 50 people from the T or C community as well as Peggy Lankford, Vivian Myers, Donna Rees, Becky Estrada, and Andy Hernandez attended.

Graduate programs in Gallup have never been marketed. We are starting a marketing plan. We will begin with an NPR story time for children sponsored by WNMU.

Donna Rees is still working on getting Deming to be able to print from Banner. The circuit is on order for T or C.

The addition to Deming should be finished by mid October. The addition to Gallup is moving along. We are in discussions with the landlord about a lease.

Donna Rees and Mary Billings met with people in T or C from the local library. There is a long range the plan is to build a collection to support our students. Western will also be working with them to write a grant for a new library building.

In regard to the CDC in T or C, Larry Rucker is working with the architects to get bids out.

Our enrollment increase story was in the Sun News on Sunday.

Students on WIA cannot get scholarships so that is freeing our scholarship money for other students.

Arizona has $1 billion dollar short fall. There are 176 students on Arizona waivers. We may be more attractive to Arizona students because of the budget difficulties that higher education is facing there.

Chris Farren is doing a process review with Financial Aid. They are challenged to educate the campus community in regard to special problems our students face in regard to financial aid: foster children, wards of the state, split families. Special circumstances cause staggering amounts of paperwork. Additional information is often needed. We are looking at changing the process so that we can do financial aid counseling to deal with these kinds of problems during orientation.We are also looking at changing the way we are informing students of what they are still lacking in regard to financial aid.

The recruiting season has started for Admissions.

A donor has given the cheerleaders a sound system and microphone. Originally he was donating the uniforms and the coach but has decided to do the sound system instead. We have seven cheerleaders: two males and five females. Immediate challenges include creating Western specific cheers. They will be mimeographed them and distributed to the audience so they can join in the cheers.

This year student government has two advisors Dennis Miller and Chris Farren.

Multicultural activities have been quite successful. The recent lunch on the patio was the largest cash event we have had in the cafeteria.

The Registrar is working on the new catalog.

Processing the Spring schedule is moving along. We have a problem in that we have scheduled more classes for certain times than we have classrooms for them. The schedules are being returned to chairs to put the classes at a different time.

A team is still working on degree audit program.

Some of new freshmen are not computer literate. Academic Support is putting on evening workshops to jumpstart word processing and email skills. This service needs to be front loaded to help students earlier. Computer lab hours will be posted on the outside doors of buildings.

Chris Farren, Roland Shook and Faye Vowell will be presenting at the NACADA national meeting next week. There will be a run through on Friday in SMB at 3:00-4:00 for any who are interested. Their session will feature a sample advising session demonstrating Laura Rendon's theory of student validation. The advising vignette starring George Ambriz, Monica Mitchell, and Magdaleno Manzanares was produced by Garth Gerstein. Many thanks to all who worked to make this come together.

There will be a push for graduate assistant recruitment. A poster will be created.

Betsy Miller, Stuart Moore and Judith Lawrence went to an assessment conference last week.

Cabinet had a good discussion of spring break timing for 2004. The issue is complex as we attempt to coordinate with Cobre and Silver City schools in the timing. The State Department of Education is also a player because it sets the testing dates for schools. The schools need spring break after their student tests. Cissy McAndrew mentioned a need to set the date because the Mimbres Regional Arts Council is trying to schedule performances for spring of 2004.

We had a major gas leak which affected dorms and CDC this past weekend. Compliments to maintenance for their hard work. A neighbor was doing some digging and accidentally cut the gas line.

NAFTA meeting is on campus the end of the week. On Wednesday from 6 to 8 there will be a reception in the Student Memorial Building. Cabinet is invited.

The next cabinet meeting will be October 8.