Academic Council
April 8, 2004
1:00 Hunter Hall

• Invitations to the chairs meeting were passed around by Dr. Harmon; also invitations to other session were given out with the request to distribute them to all Graduate Council, TEC and C & I committee members. If faculty members have a conflict on the times, ask them to please send a replacement. Dr. Harmon will send an e-mail to each person invited to each session the notes to review for the meeting. He will also send a list of the committee members to welcome them to campus and WNMU.
• For additional information on the NCATE visit, see the department web site under accreditation. The username:ncate and password:jcdana
• State Site Visit--April 14-16 and National Site Visit--April 17-21. The visitors will tour Deming and Gallup sites.
• The group looking at portfolios may call or e-mail you if they have questions about the portfolios. Cynthia Bettison asked that the committee use subject lines, if they are e-mailing questions.
• Results from the visit will be known by April 22nd.
• Thank You to Julie Miller for use of the furniture.

• Please send Dr. Vowell any items for her report for the May Board of Regents meeting.
• Next Meeting--Operational Plan for the Academic Affairs will be reviewed.
• Recommendations for Tenure and Promotion given to the President
• Faye Vowell reminded the group about departmental goals for next year.
• Faye Vowell asked Chairs to talk to her about non-renewal letters if any are contemplated.

• Regents Row will be wired today or early next week.
• Financial Aid forms can be e-mailed to the university.
• Housing and credit card forms are being looked at for on-line or e-mail acceptance. Software for this is being looked at this current time.
• Summer software request are due to April Matthews as soon as possible.
• Silver server is having problems at this time. This server will be phased out in the summer. New e-mail addresses will be at @wnmu.edu.
• Cynthia Bettison questioned junk e-mail. It was suggested that people use filters or spam filters to block e-mails.
• Dr. Ladner questioned the difference between wireless and non-wireless connections. Duane Elms explained the risk of this. People could log on anywhere on campus. This is a security issue.

• Dr. Ladner would like to see figures on growth of administration and faculty positions. Lloyd Cowling asked how many faculty members there are on this campus. Dr. Vowell stated this question as stated could have several answers depending on whether you were asking for tenure track and tenured faculty, or whether you were including visiting full time faculty and/or temporary positions.

• Barbara Taylor handed out the form for next year’s assessment report. These reports are due September 1st. These reports should be no longer than four pages. Use both the front and back sections when doing these reports.
• Dr. Taylor gave a presentation to Staff Senate in regard to staff unit assessment reports. Dr. Bettison commented that Staff Senate was the wrong avenue for this because it is not a representative body like Faculty Senate. Barbara Taylor will meet with the VPs to discuss this further.

• Dr. Vowell pointed out the Noel Levitz Summary (on the last page of the handout). She would like for this council to take this information back to the departments for discussion.
• Dr. Taylor talked about what WNMU is doing that other institutions are not doing.

• In the agenda packet is a department chair health questionnaire and article on Encouraging Chairs to "Re-enlist". This will be discussed at the chairs meeting next week.

• We need to look at policies and procedures like these for our student workers.

• Michael Metcalf suggested that a zero based budgeting approach would be good as we build the annual budget. Faye Vowell would like for the council to come up with pros and cons to developing the budget in this way.