Members Present: Duane C. Anderson, Pamla Armstrong, Bob Feighner, Kurt Jackson, Carlotta Lockmiller, Linda Mitchusson, Kenneth Moore, Jack Paschall, Charles Perry, Shirley Talley, Nancy Thomason, Alvin Turner, C. J. Vires, Bill Walden, Bruce Weems
Others Present: Marilyn Cole
Recorder: Sue Milner

Dr. Talley called a regular meeting of the Academic Affairs Council at 10:35 a.m.

Registry--Ms. Pamla Armstrong
No report.

North Central Self-Study--Dr. Carlotta Lockmiller
Dr. Lockmiller reviewed some of her comments made at the recent Faculty meeting. She reported that ECU's request for Dr. Kietzman as its North Central liaison has been approved. Dr. Kietzman visited the East Central campus as guest speaker at a Faculty Meeting in January.

Approximately 130 faculty and staff are involved in committee work in the North Central Self Study. Of the 130 involved, 80 are faculty. This number does not include persons who have been asked for information.

Department Chairs have been invited to go to the Resource Room and sign off on the five column assessment report and the most recent assessment plan. Two thirds remain to be signed. About six binders are incomplete because of lack of information and are still in Dr. Jackson's office. The due date for the plans is March 24, 2000.

Continuing Education and Community Services--Ms. Nancy Thomason
Lesha Stallons has been hired as coordinator of the Continuing Professional Education (CPE) program. She is a graduate of ECU's Business/Office Technology Department.

Zone 12 will be on campus April 7. Continuing Education will coordinate that conference. Classes will not meet but administrative offices will be open and faculty will be on campus.

The Child Care Center was awarded a two-star rating by the Human Resource Services (three-star is the highest rating). There are only two in Pontotoc County with this rating. This means that the Center will receive more money and is close to NYCE accreditation for child care centers.

Faculty Senate--Mr. Bill Walden
No report.

School of Education and Psychology--Dr. Kenneth Moore
The School is still searching for a counselor. Six or seven faculty in the school have presented papers at conferences.

Data Processing--Mr. Bob Feighner
Wiring is continuing in several buildings across the campus.

Libraries--Dr. Charles Perry
The most searched word of the month is "computers."

The library is continuing its search for a librarian. They are reviewing applications but there are not many responding.

Grants and Research Information Center--Mr. C. J. Vires
Grants proposed are valued at $12,956,723. Grants approved total $6.8 million. The Title III Grant has been submitted for funding.

Assessment and Institutional Research Center--Dr. Kurt Jackson
Dr. Jackson has contacted all departments who are in the process of program review.

The Student Opinion Survey has been completed with a 61.3 percent return rate for full-time students. More information is needed from freshmen and sophomores.

The General Education folio will continue as usual. General Education testing for carryovers is scheduled for March 22. The new College Base Test will be used and will take only one hour rather than the three hours.

Annual Assessment Reports are due April 28. Not only will a notice be sent to department chairs and deans but also to the person in charge of a program.

School of Business--Dr. Linda Mitchusson
The School has hired Dr. Hongkai Zhang to fill the management position for the MIS program that has been vacant. He can also teach in the MIS option, which is to be available in the fall. He comes to East Central from Concordia College in Selma, Alabama.

Mr. Bill Walden will be leaving at the end of the summer session. Mr. Mickey Cowan is retiring at the end of this summer session. The School will be advertising fairly quickly to fill these positions.

The January system-wide business report listed numerous items that business programs in Oklahoma needed to address. ECU selected eight of those items and sent in an action plan of how we would address them.

School of Humanities and Social Sciences--Dr. Alvin Turner
The School had two program accreditation team visits in the past month for Rehabilitation Counseling and Legal Studies, both of which will be approved. The Legal Studies program was highly complimented by the team.

The School has had a tremendous volume of speakers on campus and more are coming in April.

Advertisements for an English faculty and an endowed chair for Human Resources have been published. Mr. Bob Sieg is retiring at the end of the spring semester and a search will begin to fill that position in Art.

A second Templeton Grant has been confirmed and is a prestigious grant for their Political Science Program.

School of Graduate Studies--Dr. Jack Paschall
Dr. Paschall noted that with the retirement of Bob Sieg, he will be the last faculty member hired by President Spencer.

Dr. Paschall is working with a group to add two options to the Master of Education program: Sports Information and Educational Technology.

ECU is trying to expand its offerings at McAlester and Ardmore. Plans are to consider undergraduate offerings in Human Resources Counseling.

According to demographics, the only area in Oklahoma that has shown population growth and projected population growth that are in our service area is the Shawnee/Tecumseh area. This fall, we will offer our first major general business courses at these sites.

April 17, the ECU Foundation and the Alumni Association are sponsoring an "ECU at McAlester Night." A successful evening will make this an annual event. Area high school students and junior college students at the Higher Education Center will be invited to come between the hours of four and seven. Alumni are invited at 7:00 p.m. when the event will be moved to a different location.

ECU will be identified as the training site for a Police Academy. This will bring 20 students to campus for sixteen weeks training. These are college students in Criminal Justice Programs. This program is an important addition to ECU's activities.

Student Evaluations
Dr. Talley distributed a memo to Deans concerning the Student Evaluation of Teaching Effectiveness. Department Chairs will receive the memo.

Multicultural Annual Report
Last year's reports were distributed to Deans for them to see the kind of material needed for this year's report. Reports should be submitted to Dr. Talley by March 22. In the report, include the title of the event, date occurred, a synopsis of what happened, and an estimate of people attending.

Recycling
The Council received a memo of the procedures for recycling. Dr. Talley discussed the necessity of sorting the proper paper to be recycled. Also, no bins will be collected if they contain trash of any kind.

Calendar Dates
March 13-14 Administrative offices will be open Monday and Tuesday during spring break.
March 13-17 Spring Break
March 20 Department Chair/Dean Evaluation of Faculty due.
March 22 Last day to add 2nd 8-week classes.
                Assessment Day
March 27 Pre-enrollment for honors. 8:00-5:00
March 28-30 Summer pre-enrollment. Faculty should be on campus for advisement. April 3 Walk-in enrollment      for summer begins.
April 5 Multicultural Report due to Regents.
April 7 Zone 12 Teachers' Meeting. No classes meet. Offices are open and this is a work day for faculty.
April 11 Academic Affairs Council meeting.
April 21 Classes will meet on Good Friday.

Council on Instruction, January 13
a) A draft of the annual Remediation Report for 1998-99 was reviewed. There is an issue of which institutions should offer remedial courses. It is proposed that four-year regional universities continue to offer the remedial courses but the comprehensive universities, OU and OSU, should not offer such courses.
b) Dr. Talley was appointed as ECU representative to the State Regents Student Retention Task Force.

Council on Instruction, February 10
a) Bryce Fair reported on the budget situation with the State Legislature. Public school teachers were funded an increase of $3000 per year and public employees will probably be funded. There is still hope that higher education will receive its share.
b) A disagreement continues with the American Council on Education in equating courses offered at vo-tech schools with college work.
c) UCO has developed a proposal to warranty their teacher education students. The plan guarantees that students can pass the teacher certification exams but the student must take at least 90 percent of their course work at UCO and it will not apply to students who do not meet that criteria. The second part of the warranty addresses the student in residency who has problems. UCO will work with the student until the problem is resolved. A system-wide warranty is currently under discussion at COI and at the Council of Education Deans.

Spring Enrollment
As of February 21, undergraduate FTE enrollment for spring is down 4.6 percent; graduate is down 11.9 percent; overall enrollment is down 5.5 percent; and the head count is down 5 percent.

International Student Enrollment
International student enrollments total 72 from 32 different countries. Japan represents the largest number of students with an enrollment of 19.

Status of North Central Association Self Study
Dr. Anderson is pleased with the number of faculty volunteers.

Summer School
Documents were distributed to Deans showing the calculation of summer salaries. It shows an increase over last year. This year's allocation is $595,975 and last year's was $586,430.

Academic Year Calendar
The academic calendar for 2000-2001 has been approved by the Regents.

Fall Retreat
Dr. Anderson will be considering whether to have an off-campus fall retreat for the Academic Affairs Council. More information will follow at a later date.

Research Day
This topic was deferred to the Deans Meeting.

Regular and Concurrent Enrollment Admission Tables
Effective fall 2000, admission standards will increase for high school students. The minimum ACT score will increase from 19 to 20. Changes are also proposed for concurrent students.

Student Computer Lab Policy
All labs have posted policies. There are no apparent problems.

Strategic Planning
The final versions of the Strategic Plans are due March 31. These plans will be accepted early as they must be compiled. The plans should not be stapled or bound because copies must be made.

General Education Advisory Committee
The Committee is reviewing syllabi from the fall 1999 semester to determine compliance with the syllabi format. The Committee will recommend whether or not to continue the Part I and Part II syllabus format.

Department Writing Plans
Departmental plans have been given to the English Proficiency Committee.

Budget Hearings
Dr. Cole will be sitting in on budget hearings. Deans should expect some scheduling to be in the evening. Scheduling will probably start in late March and early April.

Undergraduate Class Schedule
This was deferred to the Deans Meeting.

Annual Computer Count
The total count of computers across the campus is 1,313. Academic Affairs area has 1,130 this year compared to 1,044 last year. ECU is continuing to dump the low end computers and add machines at the high end.

There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m.