Meeting & Agendas

Jose Milan provided the Advisory Committee (AC) background information on the PTA Program's involvement in the Student Success Initiative and the decision to determine whether the admission criteria needed to change. * PTA Program saw a decline in retention rate after the change to the 5-semester program * Overall trend in Fall 1 to Spring 1 retention rates * Compared previous admission criteria for students that withdrew for academic reasons vs. students that were academically successful * Literature review for factors that predicted academic success Following this analysis, it was determined that the new admission criteria implemented in 2011 would consist of: GPA min 2.8, HOBET score, written essay, and Work Skills Assessment Forms. The three-year data for these changes is as follows: * GPA: GPA has increased since 2011 for the entire applicant pool, but also for the entering class. * HOBET: No minimum score has been set, however, scores of admitted students has increased almost 10 points since 2011. * Work Skills: There has been no significant changes in scores for the applicant pool or the class that has been admitted * Essay: This criterion replaced the information session assessment. The faculty scores the essay using an unpublished rubric. The essay prompt is located on the application and includes the general categories used to score the essay. Pat Recek cautioned about not providing a rubric and to check with the accrediting body standards. The new criteria is weighted differently than previously: *Old: GPA-38%; HOBET-38%, Information Session-9%; Work Skills Assessment-15% New: GPA-40%; HOBET-40%; Essay-15%; Work Skills Assessment-5% *These old criteria weights were stated incorrectly during the meeting. The meeting minutes have been corrected from 40%, 40%, 9%, 15% to 38%, 38%, 9%, 15%. These changes were implemented in 2011 and here is the report of the three-year data: * Withdrawal Rates have decreased since 2011 * Cohort that started in the fall of 2013 had a 0% withdrawal rate going from Fall 1 to Spring 1, i.e, 100% retention rate. * Number of applicants had remained steady until 2011 when we saw a big jump, it carried over into 2012, and then we saw a drastic decline in 2013. * Graduation rates have increased since the class of 2011 (incoming 2009). Have not reached the outcome measure (90%), but certainly has increased significantly. * Licensing exam pass rates continue to be 100% (Class of 2008-Class of 2013); these numbers are used for marketing purposes

What prompted these changes? * Small applicant pool for the past 8 years, <45 per year * 2012 to 2013 drop from 41 to 33 (41 being the biggest pool since 2006) * Jose Milan was receiving many phone calls from students that had all prerequisites completed except 1409; these students were mostly from universities wanting to transfer over; all these students were told they could not apply until this course was completed * Jose Milan began tracking the number of students calling with this same problem but realized it would not be possible to accurately track. There were too many other parties fielding the same calls, i.e., faculty, advisors, admin assistant, health science's office, making it hard to get an accurate count. It was a consistent enough issue that it influenced these changes * The only other school in Texas where students could fulfill the PTHA 1409 requirement is at South Texas College in McAllen, TX. * We wanted to compare our applicant pool to a comparable program so we used the OTA applicant pool for comparison. Their most recent applicant pool had 95 students of which 92 were qualified. * We looked at the petition list numbers and every year since we started a petition list, we have had a list >90; we inferred that our applicant pool numbers should more closely resemble these numbers About the old petition process: * This class is offered every semester in a 9-week hybrid format. Students only attend lab twice a week and complete the rest of the work online. * Students fill out an online form to place their name on the petition list. Students were granted petition based on the time/date stamp generated by the form. First come, first served. * During the long semesters, we taught two sections and in the summer, we taught three sections. Each section was full at 10 students. Recent changes to the petition process: * The format of the class is unchanged * Students continue to fill out the same online form * Instead of first come, first served, the petition list is ranked according to how many prerequisite courses students have completed. The more that are completed, the higher they move up on the list. * During the long semesters, we now teach three sections and in the upcoming summer semester, we plan to open as many sections as realistically manageable * A new adjunct faculty member was hired to teach this course and allow a third section to open during the fall and spring semesters * Consider the possibility that the information regarding 1409 being a prerequisite is not being disseminated effectively These changes occurred for the group that started PTHA 1409 in the spring of 2014. We will continue to track data for these students to include: * Unit exam scores * Overall course grades * Number that take 1409 and apply to the PTA program Some unanticipated problems: * We could not verify non-ACC students' completed prerequisites without transcripts * The timeframe to reshuffle the list based on how many prerequisites were completed was not big enough due to not having transcripts for everyone * We are now asking all non-ACC students to submit transcripts and will open the petition list approximately one month before registration begins * The website will highlight the need for non-ACC students to submit transcripts Other items that came up in discussion of this topic: * The ADN program at ACC has a similar model that we can review for ideas * Is there a possibility of doing two 8-week courses per semester? * Since we haven't had a semester with all the seats full, we can also consider overloading the sections with the expectation that 2 or 3 students will drop

* 100% for the Class of 2013; 6-year in a row with 100% first-attempt pass rate

* Patty Collier received the TPTA PTA Educator of the Year for 2013 * Susan Polk (adjunct) received the 2014 NISOD Award * Jose Milan received the 2013 NISOD Award * Class of 2013 had 2 St. David's scholarship recipients; 2 ACC Foundation scholarship recipients, and 7 Who's Who honorees

* 2 new adjunct faculty hires: o Rhonda Wesson primarily to work with 1409 but also brings much pediatric experience o Raquel Currah primarily to bring Neuro experience

* New interim Dean: Pat Recek * New Assistant Dean: Nan Walters * PTA students cannot be placed at a facility where they are employed or under the same supervisor * All Associate degrees are limited to 60 hours; this becomes problematic for health science programs that are typically over 60 hours * TAPTAE has drafted a position statement that has been forwarded to the Dean's office and states that the 60-hour rule is not a realistic possibility for the PTA programs due to accreditation requirements; All PTA schools have agreed to request an exemption to this rule

* UTMB at Galveston is starting a bridge program for PTA to DPT in 2015. * They will begin taking applicants this summer and will start with a small class-20 * The only bridge programs were at Finley in Ohio and at a school in California. The school in California closed recently * The UTMB will be a mostly online program with extended weekends at Galveston * APTA is discussing whether the PTA degree should move from the associate degree to the bachelor degree. Can ACC support this? Pat Recek mentioned that community colleges could not confer bachelor degrees until mandated by the legislature.

* Is it time to consider a different model for clinical education? Something different, rather than having a 1:1 for student to CI for an extended time frame. * There are students from Texas State, St. Augustine, South University, ACC, and out of state schools. * Can we continue to find enough clinicians that are able to take this number of students? * Looking at the number of clinicians in the field vs. the number of students needing rotations, the current model is not sustainable. * Other proposed models is 2 students/1 instructor or PT and PTA to 1 instructor * Some barriers to a change include: o CIs unwilling to take two because it is too different from the current 1:1 model o CIs unable to due to the pressures of documentation of the facility * Schools never cancel spots they do not intend on using leaving several open, unused spots. Can schools coordinate to better communicate what slots are going to be used? * Some facilities were told they could not take multiple students at one time due to productivity. There was too much over time for the CIs and many facilities had to cut down. * Kerri Kallus stated it would be nice if the schools could all have a master list of open spots so they schools could coordinate filling them. * Use focus groups comprised of local clinicians and schools to determine how to best change the model

Mark Pape was unable to attend the meeting due to inclement weather but provided the following comments after reviewing the minutes: Hi Jose, Looks like you had a very busy meeting! Wow! That board exam pass rate is tremendous!!! Keep up the good work! My only comments concern two items that I noticed in the minutes. 1. I agree with Dr. Recek that a rubric for grading the essay is necessary and needs to be posted so that applicants know what components are part of the scoring criteria. 2. Also the APTA's interest in moving the PTA degree to a bachelor's degree is a somewhat controversial proposal and Dr. Recek is right; that type of academic change would need to occur at the state legislative level. The APTA has no authority relative to those kinds of academic changes. It reminds me of the APTA's initial mandates back in the late '70's and '80's when they wanted all PT programs to change to Master's degrees. I personally think raising the educational level for the PTA is a bad idea. I have yet to hear anyone say that the PTA is not able to perform competently with their current level of training. Thanks!!!