Meeting & Agendas

Ina stated that Real Estate classes peaked in 2006 and have since declined. The department offered 39-40 sections for fall 2008 and to date approximately 50 % of the sections have been canceled.. Although classes in previous semesters were allowed to make with fewer than 14 students, the college requires 14 students minimum or 70% of class maximum if 20 students or less and 21-22 students is theper section goal. Real Estate section enrollments are not in-line with other departments. This is an area that needs a considerable amount of thought and change. Steve Bradley asked if there was a correlation between the 16/12/8/4/2/weekend classes and Ina responded that it looks like the lower the number of weeks a class is offered, the lower the enrollments. In response to the low enrollments, Ina cancelled the Round Rock classes. Margie and Ina attempted to contact each student from these cancelled classes and placed them in full classes. Margie did a good job of placating these students and this is important when so few classes are making. Ina said that enrollments are low because of the economy and markets and it is cyclical in nature. Phylis Molina brought up the idea that enrollments may have actually been higher than normal because of the credit situation, and TV shows such as Flip This House that escalated enrollments. Scott Simms stated that is might have actually been a real estate fad. Phyllis stated that if there were fewer classes, then we may need to offer fewer classes. Pat Patton agreed with Phylis and asked if weekend Real Estate classes were doing badly. Ina answered yes, weekend classes were not making and Pat Patton agreed and said we should cancel or not offer them. Ina suggested that one solution could be to start rotating classes. One series could be held north and one south: Cypress and Pinnacle in the fall semester, South Austin Campus and Round Rock in the spring semester, for example. Ina asked Ed if the classes are making at HBC. He said that they are down to having one per month and the classes are still not making. Ina suggested that we take a closer look at the 2 hour and 3 hour classes and look at which classes may have more students. Nancy asked if we could check with TREC regarding ACC\'s number of licenses. But Ed said TREC doesn\'t give the source for licensees. Ina said our links have been changed on TREC and now when someone goes to TREC for information it will link directly to the ACC Real Estate pages. Ina will see if someone from TREC might serve on the Advisory Committee. Steve stated that he doesn\'t believe TREC can sit on the board of anyone TREC regulates. Phylis believes that proctored tests are what we should be doing both in the classroom and distance learning because students don\'t have open book tests when they sit for their license test. She suggested that everyone should complain to TREC that there should be proctored testing for all real estate courses. Ina responded that our real estate courses are accredited and should be SAC\'s compliant, college credit classes. Ina explained why IVC is no longer an option for Real Estate classes. Ina directed everyone to the WECM handout and suggested that everyone look to see if we have something that needs to be changed in our course descriptions, courses that we shouldn\'t be offering or perhaps have courses that we don\'t offer and can put back in. Pat suggested that we focus on generating interest and that the department should market the classes. He stated that we tend to have an \'\'offer and they will come\'\' attitude. Pat asked if there was a better format to recruit students such as incentives. Ina said Mario is conducting a fair and that is a good way for us to recruit students. Pat wanted to know if we actually had a marketing plan and if we should put together a formal plan to recruit students. Pat suggested that we focus on generating interest and market classes to other real estate industries and groups rather than just sticking things up on our web. Pat wanted to write the marketing plan but Ina said she would be responsible for any marketing plan written for Real Estate. Gordon suggested that we participate in the Real Estate Round Up that is held annually here in Austin and draws over 10,000 participants. He said the fair would not contain Principles and Intro students but may appeal to the upper level students such as broker and appraisal students. Ed said Continuing Education had plans to have a booth there but they only have the CE logo and not the ACC logo present. Ina said we will look into having a booth at the fair for next year and will try to have it put into the budget. Margie Shelnutt will look into the cost and viability of this for next year. Stacia said that she has had students that are \'\'just looking into\'\' real estate and suggests that we may want to create a starter course with an overview of real estate. She says she gets numerous emails from students on how to make money in the current market. Phyllis says that there are many areas in real estate other than sales and brokers. David said he talks a lot about those things in his Principles class and tells students about the benefits of a real estate degree and the different employment opportunities the degree offers. Stacia said she would volunteer her time to assist with the informational part if we wanted to do something of this nature. David said he would volunteer his time for booths or workshops. David said there were problems with the computer systems saying the class is full but it isn\'t. Steve said it was due to dual enrollments of college and non-college classes. Ina said she has been watching the PCM classes and has been separating the 16/12 week if instructors didn\'t exceed their LEH. She is watching enrollments so those students aren\'t turned away if the LEH will allow it. Ina said that if there appears to be a pattern, then we may be able to start the classes out as separate. Ed said enrollments are down in his area also and they only had 53 students in all sections. Ina said that we stay in constant contact with Ed and watch both CE and credit enrollments in a class before it is killed. Pete wants to know if real estate has a presence in high schools for the Early College Start program since students can get their license when they are 18. Everyone agreed we should have a larger presence in the high schools. Ina said she would follow-up on this.

Many of the items for improvement have been discussed above.

Ina asked for everyone to please look at the courses in the degree plan and send her suggestions on changing it. Gordon suggested that the catalogs should force students to take the Principles class first because he is noticing that he has to review Principles concepts in the Contracts class. Steve replied that some students want to do all classes in one semester, but David said that is what the 2 week classes are for. Ina says we should take the prerequisite into consideration and allow exceptions. He also suggests that a few classes should only be offered in the classroom because some concepts are best presented in a classroom discussion setting. Phylis says that online classes can be structured to mimic the classroom setting as much as possible. Gordon thinks that we are offering too many classes online and that is why the classroom classes are having problems making. Gordon thinks we should have more emphasis on the benefits of taking the college credit classes. Phyllis agrees and says we should encourage students to get the associates degree and the certificates. She says everything needed for TREC within the degree. Margie and Ina asked that all of the instructors make sure to give their students graduation forms after the Law of Agency Class which is the suggested last course. Ina will look into the possibility of making Principles a prerequisite for all other Real Estate courses.

Ina is open to suggestions for book changes and if anyone wants to change books they should let her know. We are currently using Dearborne Publishing for most Real Estate classes. McGraw-Hill will be sending several review copies that will be forwarded to whoever is teaching the classes. Scott Sims asked if each instructor uses the same textbook. Ina replied that yes, the instructors would need to get together to decide on one book for each subject. Ina also said that E-books are available and might be a good alternative.

Ina believes the department\'s PCM guidelines are in good shape and the quality of the classes should be within the departmental and college guidelines when they come out. All of the department areas have more PCM students than classroom students. Currently there are 242 PCM students and 147 classroom students. Departmental Guidelines were created Fall 2008 and sent to all department faculty. The Department Chair stated that all testing must be in the testing center so that we can be sure that the students taking the course are the ones taking the tests. Since we are an accredited institution, we want to be in compliance for everything for SAC\'s.

Portfolios are a requirement of the College. Ina stated that the previous portfolios have been sent back and faculty should contact Margie if they haven\'t received them and want them. Student evaluations will be conducted this fall and everyone is expected to have their students complete the evaluations, including PCM.

Real Estate pages were updated Fall 2008 and will continue to be updated and change as needed. Instructors are invited to have former students submit their stories for the new Student Success Stories area. Ina has received positive feedback about the new Faculty web page because it gives the department a way to showcase the faculty and makes contact much easier. Phyllis Molina stated that the college course schedule can be difficult for students to maneuver because there are many different offerings in the department. The web pages should offer information to assist the students to maneuver through the various schedule offerings. Scott asked if the schedule could be changed. Ina replied that the college schedule format will not change and we will work on the web pages to give students easier to understand information. Ina said that we are within a year of online scheduling and there would be nor more paper schedules. Phylis thinks online scheduling will be better because changes to the schedule will be immediate. Stacia said that she has had several students that do not have computers at home and does not think online scheduling will be better for the students, especially older students. She suggested that we publish flyers and post ads in the newspaper to expand ACC\'s image that appeal to older students. Ina said we have a very small budget and newspaper ads are very expensive but she will ask Marketing for flyers. She said that although we are bound by our budget we can look for alternate ways to recruit students. Ed said that email solicitations were ok if approved but the college does not allow us to go across the disciplines. Pete suggested a bulletin to send to former students that had not completed their license but Ed said we would need to manually check each name with TREC to see who had licenses. Phyllis suggested sending a blanket email to former students with a disclaimer. Ina said because ACC now has email for students, it may be possible to send emails of items of interest to students at some point in the future.

The new Internal page contains the departmental handbook, memos, agendas, minutes, enrollment statistics, policies and guidelines, as well as sections on faculty course information, resources for faculty training and other faculty resources. The internal page is intended to keep useful information for faculty in one place.

The Business Division has a newly created internal page that contains division information. It is also very useful and you should look at the information on the page.

According to college policy, advisory committees must be composed of non-teaching faculty. Members should be drawn from the private and public sector, and part-time faculty who hold full-time positions within their career may be representatives. Pat said it would be good to have input from the Board of Realtors and CTCAR. Ina asked everyone to please send her information regarding any students that would be willing to serve.