Meeting & Agendas

Ina stated that Financial Management enrollments saw a significant decline this fall. The college requires 14 students minimum or 70% of class maximum with limits less than 20 students. The college wants 21-22 students as a per section goal.

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. Charles explained that the role of the Advisory Committee is to help with curriculum decisions. Ina mentioned Meetings are held once a year and that there was the possibility of using(?) wikis for advisory meetings and feedback. (?) Ina encouraged the faculty to submit advisory committee recommendations. Please email all recommendations to Ina@austincc.edu .

Ina asked if anyone had any thoughts or suggestions regarding increasing our enrollments? Ina close research on what is being offered , when and where. It seems that enrollments peaked in 2005 @491 then dipped in 2008 to 366 and summer 66 and Fall 114. Regarding future scheduling Ina mentioned that she has increased #of night classes offered in hopes of drawing a wider broader student body. Vance requested earlier notification for teaching assignments. Ina agreed to consider that when building the scheduled however we are required to comply with the deadlines specified by the Estaffing Process.. discussed the “Cool” factor of some of the new programs and asked if anyone had Ina also asked the group if we should offer different courses and what they thought about visiting the idea of revamping the Mortgage Banking Curriculum. Jason Ahreholtz questioned if there was need for Insurance courses and has ACC ever offered them? Dean Quinn stated that at one time another area was considering offering insurance courses and when they looked into the course offerings

Ina explained the process that she is using to schedule courses which includes, reviewing previous schedules, comparing enrollments with the semester, dates, times and places courses are offered. Ina presented the WECM Handout listing all the courses taken from the THECB site. She encouraged everyone to review the List along with the courses ACC currently offers and to submit any requests or suggestions to the department.

Ina presented several handouts to discuss the Financial Degree Plan and courses offered. Included in the handouts were the WECM Handout listing all the courses taken from the THECB site along with the ACC Degree Plan for Finance & Mortgage Banking. . She would like for everyone to review the WECM List, along with the courses d the current Degree Plan offered by ACC. and Faculty were encouraged to submit suggestions and request.

Ina announced that the Textbook Inventory has been added to the Departmental Web Page so that instructors may go online at any time to verify the textbooks by course. Instructors can request desk copies at any time by contacting Ina or Margie Shelnutt. Suggestions for new textbooks are always welcomed and encourage. Courses that offer new, revised &/or updated textbooks are noted below. BNKG 1358 Secondary Markets, BUSG 1303 Prin of Finance, BUSG 1304 Intro to Fin. Advising: Personal Finance, IBUS 2339 Int’l Banking & Finance.

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 75 PCM students and 39 classroom students. Ina asked Charles to discuss the background of how Standards and Guidelines for PCM courses was established. Charles said due to the increase and demand for online courses it appeared that there were strikingly diverse teaching styles for the online courses. Styles varied from primarily studying from the textbook to minimal engagement of students. Ina mentioned that when she conducted Evaluations 2 years ago she was surprised at the vast difference in Faculty who were teaching DL and not utilizing the internet &/or Blackboard. Charles felt that part of this diversity in teaching was because most of the instructors who were teaching DL PCM courses had never experienced an online course. Without the experience there were not any guidelines or standards for instructors to follow. He stated that in Business Studies there are areas where students can obtain certification and/or an Associates degree by taking only DL courses and never a lecture courses. In Financial Mgt., almost all of the courses are Distance Learning and in Marketing and Real Estate students can obtain a Certificate &/or an Associates Degree without every stepping into the classroom. Therefore, after consideration of the diverse styles and the demand for the online courses college he felt that Business Studies and the College had the responsibility to adopt a philosophy of providing the same quality of instruction in the DL courses as is provided in the Lecture courses. In order to support this philosophy some reasonable guidelines and standards were established by faculty members in Business Studies. Departmental Guidelines were created fall 2008 and sent to all department faculty. The Department Chairs 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 always be in compliance with the guidelines required by SACS. Distance learning also adopted a Standard of Best Practices which incorporates the SACS guidelines for Distance Learning courses. Each Department can specify the degree of standards that will be adopted. Charles also informed the group that there is an Administrative Rule regarding DL which is coming up for a vote. If passed it will be implemented college wide by Spring 2009. To review additional information regarding the Distance Learning Policy on Best Practices go to the following link. http://dl.austincc.edu/faculty/#BestPractices. Ina also reminded all that the PCM Guidelines are noted in the NEW Departmental Handbook.

Portfolios are a requirement of the College. In addition to student evaluations, full-time and adjunct faculty member\'s instructional performance will be evaluated through portfolios. The creation of a portfolio will help faculty assess their own efforts at effective instruction. . The deadline for Fall 2008 portfolios was November 3rd, 2008. Ina stated that the previous portfolios have been sent back and faculty should contact Margie if they haven\'t received them and want them. Along with portfolios included in the evaluation process all instructor must let their students participate in the evaluation process. Student evaluations will be conducted this fall and everyone is expected to have their students complete the evaluations, including instructors who teach PCM courses. If you do not receive an evaluation packet please contact the department immediately so we can track down your Packet.

Finance 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. Ina and Margie mentioned that we have already had positive feedback from entities outside ACC regarding our web pages. These entities would like have links to our pages. Ina mentioned that suggestions are welcomed regarding the web pages.

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 Studies Division has a newly created internal page that contains division information for faculty, staff, and students. It is also very useful and everyone should take some time to look at the information on the page. To view the Business Studies web page go to http://www.austincc.edu/business/ .