Meeting & Agendas

Meeting was called to order at 7:00 pm by Kerry Coombs

Robyn Hoge motioned for approval. Suzanne Williams seconded the motion carried and agenda was approved.

Suzanne Williams motioned for approval. Robyn Hoge seconded the motion carried and the March 25, 2015 minutes were reviewed and approved with a type O correction on page 2 item # 4 replacing the word “Radiology” with “Large Animals”. Send out minutes via email as soon as possible so that we can get them approved via email and include them with the self study.

a. Building Update –Sara will speak on this as she sits on the committee that will oversee the construction of the building. We have had meetings. We have met with the architectures most of them have built Veterinary facilities. The committee has made its recommendations; it goes before the board of trustees (BOT) in November to approve an architect firm. Then use the same process to select a contractor. Once the committee has made its recommendations then it goes to the BOT for their final approval. The building will be shared with the Sustainable Agriculture Department of the Continuing Education department. Working with Evelyn Rosas, the Director of the program will share some of the farm animals. The spaces will be separate but in the same building. b. The second year cohort has 8 at this point. This will be the first graduating class. The 2015 cohort admitted 13 but are down to twelve now. There were more applicants than seats available, so had to make selection to whom was admitted. c. Student Association recently received recognition from ACC Student Life as the ACC Veterinary Technology Student Association. This will help with resources available thru student life. The students also applied for and received the National affiliation (NAVTA). The association has set up boxes to accept donations for Bastrop Shelter. The students are in the process of making some T-shirts with their logo on it. Sara is the sponsor for this student association. They are planning an event in Elgin on January 23, 2016. The project plans have not been finalized but plan for community involvement. d. Self- Study is to be submitted to the AVMA, due on December 9, 2015. It is almost to the point where we are starting to look at some final edits. On February 3-5, 2016 the site visit team will be here. They want to meet with the advisory committee on Wednesday Feb. 3, 2016. The date is not final yet, it might change. Once we get the confirmation date we will send you the information. The meeting will be at 6 pm. It will take place either at Highland Campus or Highland Business Center or a restaurant. e. Update on Clinical Sites: • For anesthesia and surgical assisting - we are using Emancipet Pflugerville for our surgical lab. It is not the ideal situation due to having to move an entire surgery site in our cars to the location. The facility meets our needs. It is going very smoothly. It also demonstrates the variety of work environments that our students will face. • Lab Animals - Dr. Otto of UT Animal Resource Center has put on a quite a “show” for our students. We were very pleased with what the students experienced and my feedback from the students is very positive. We would like to keep using their expertise even after our building is built. The knowledge and experience our students received was amazing. • Radiology - we started the semester using the labs here at the Eastview campus. We have brought in dogs, cats, reptiles and other animals to radiology suite. The students have been taking film based radiographs here. In mid-October we made the transition to the Emergency Animal Hospital of North West Austin. The students have brought in animals for radiography. The students have gotten to see film and digital based radiography. The students went to a clinic in town and got to see dental radiology that was an outstanding experience working with a dental specialist. • Large Animal, Equine and Food Animal. The student got to process some cattle and the students got to see how that works. They also brought in some heifers and steers that the students have had a chance to draw blood, do rectal palpations, just a wide variety of experiences. They learned how to run the manual squeeze shoot. Next semester there is a clinical Management for Equine and Food Animals. There are a couple of practices that are willing to work with us with the Equine. The Food Animal not so much, we are struggling with that. So if you know of any place we are open to suggestions. The ideal would be a facility that works with Food Animals that would allow us to rotate the students thru the practice. We have made contact with a poultry farm and a goat farm that a student suggested. • Clinical and Practicum seem to be in good shape at this point. The students liked where they went for their clinicals. We received good feedback from the students and from the clinical sites.

a. Second Cohorts Admissions For 2015 cohorts 13 were admitted but are now down to twelve. We had more applicants than we had seats. b. Update on Selection Criteria • The program is looking for selection criteria so that the committee does not have to work quite so hard to select the candidates to accept. Some of the things the committee would look at is the grades for the prerequisites and give points for the letter grades. The higher the grade the more points the student would get. The idea of giving points for the 80 hour of volunteer or paid work were that we would give points for working/volunteering at a clinic versus at the humane society socializing cats. We want students to have actual clinic experience. Another thing looked at is doing a survey of the students. The survey would not be weighed for the contents but more in the line of can they follow directions. This was tabled. The committee will work on this some more and once we have final selection criteria we will email it to the committee to get approval. The suggestion was made to look into age limit to go into the Radiology lab.

The Veterinary Technology Department has been approved for a full time faculty to start this Spring of 2016. Human Resources has just adopted a new process. However due to the time constraints of advertising, sitting an interview committee, selecting the candidates to interview and having them start in January is just not going to happen. Dr. Coombs will have the ability to hire someone on an “emergency” situation so that person can start this Spring 2016, then the person hired will have to apply and go thru the whole selection process of being hired as a full time faculty. This should happen after the site visit in February. This will allow more time to hire a full time faculty.

Next meeting will be February 3, 2016 (pending the approval of the site visit agenda) this meeting will be with the Site Team during the site visit. The date is tentative and may change depending on the last agenda that we receive once the committee. As soon as we confirm the date we will email the committee members