Meeting & Agendas

* Exemption request from the 60-credit hour rule was filed with the state in early fall 2015 * The request included a 65-credit hour degree plan; an additional 60-credit hour degree plan was also drafted in case of a denial of exemption * Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board called a meeting/workshop for Feb. 2-3, 2015 to come up with a justification for the exemption requests * At the end of the meetings, the PTA schools asked for a 66-credit hour exemption * This number was decided on by leaving the technical portion as intact as possible and removing hours from the general education requirements; the only changes to the technical program for ACC are a one credit hour reduction in Functional Anatomy and a one credit hour reduction in the final clinical rotation course * The new degree plan will require BIOL 2404 Intro to A&P instead of Human Anatomy (4 hours) and Human Physiology (4 hours). If students opt to take higher level courses, we will accept and substitute these courses * At the end of the workshop, schools left optimistic that the exemption request would be approved * There were no objections by the AC to these changes * Final ruling by the Co-board in late February

* There continues to be high demand for this course * It is still a petition course and students are still ranked based on how many additional prerequisites are completed * There have been some minor changes o There was an arbitrary time frame for when the list was opened o Now it is opened for 6-weeks and closes two weeks before registration starts o No petitions are awarded until after the six weeks has passed * This is to ensure that we don't miss students that have all prerequisites completed that add their name at the end after petitions have gone out * Opened a fourth section in the spring 2015 semester; this is the first time we have had four sections * This required hiring two adjunct faculty

* Hired two new adjunct faculty to help with the new section of PTHA 1409 Intro to PT * Brian O'Neill, PTA (graduate of the ACC PTA Program) * Darless Majeski, PTA (graduate of the ACC PTA Program); Darless has worked with us as an hourly employee for several years

* New Evaluative Criteria has been published and will go into effect January 2016 * These criteria were used to help build case for exemption to the 60 credit hour rule * One major change is that employment rates need to be 90% over two years * This is being tracked via online surveys * There have been several content changes that will need to be addressed

* Patty Collier is the 2015 recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award for ACC * Class of 2014: 3 ACC Foundation Scholarship recipients

* 100% first attempt pass rate again (7 years now)

* Class of 2015 = 19 students out on rotation currently; started with 20 but lost one after spring 1 for grades * This cohort remained intact from fall 1 to spring 1; this is the semester in which we historically have lost the majority of our students * Class of 2016 = 19 students; started with 20 * Lost one student due to grades in Functional Anatomy * Lost one student due to failing Human Physiology; she did not fail any PTA courses but was unable to move forward due to Human Physiology being a co-requisite for Pathophysiology

* All health science students need to carry health insurance * 2 of 3 bond propositions passed and used to expand the HLC and Elgin and Rio Grande * ACC Nursing satellite campus is closed

* Employer survey has historically had poor return * AC suggested to make it a Survey Monkey and to ask students to report their employer contact information when they report salary information; the program can then send a link to that person * The employer can they rate that specific employee and is timely with a recent hire