Meeting & Agendas

Committee Chair Bill O’Hara welcomed members and attendees and noted how the equipment in the lab has been updated since the previous meeting.

ACC Adjunct Professor Adam Long discussed the program review from March 2019. He covered the SWOT analysis, student demographics, enrollment and award numbers. He added that the GE department now has a new portfolio option for the internship students. He included the new equipment that has been approved for Perkins-funded purchases for the department: Trim Station SX10, Trim Data Collector Tablet and Trimble Digital Level with 2 rods. He also included the equipment that was not included for purchase with this years Perkins funding. Bill expressed concern about the faculty having sufficient knowledge to teach the new technology. Committee Member Bobby Hempfling stated that he’s been training ACC Adjunct Professor Mike Ritter. Adam concluded by stating that he and Mike will still need to support the students with equipment borrowed from their places of employment. Department Chair Sean Moran began a discussion about the proposed calibration site to be used by the GE department for calibrating equipment and will also serve as an additional education site. He said there are 3 options: Hays Campus, Elgin Campus and the new unbuilt Southeast Campus that will be near the Austin Bergstrom International Airport. Committee Member Carey Johnson shared his opinion that the airport location would be convenient but flying a UAS near the airport is difficult due to FAA regulations. He also shared that in a few years, 95% of his job will be aerial. The airport site also got voted against because of the possibility of GPS interference due to its close proximity to the airport. Committee Member and ACC Adjunct Professor Anna Rios expressed her preference for the Elgin site because of accessibility. The committee discussed the Elgin site and it was suggested that it’s not a suitable location due to the bad soil causing the monuments to shift, but it was argued that might be an opportunity to teach a real-world problem to the students. The Elgin campus is approximately 84 acres. The committee agreed that the order of preference is 1) Elgin campus 2) Hays campus and 3) SE Campus.

Mr. Moran discussed the changes that the committee voted on during the last meeting and how they’ll be implemented starting in the Fall 2019 semester. He also discussed the unavoidable substitution that was made for Trigonometry due to the college no longer offering Trig. Sean and Adam discussed and agreed that the best replacement would be Math 1414 College Algebra for Precalculus and Math 2412 Precalculus: Functions and Graphs.

Sean mentioned that he’s on the Del Valle High School Career and Technical GE Program committee. The DVHS committee has discussed having dual tracts for students and hopefully introducing the program by Spring 2020.

The committee discussed the 2019 Texas Legislative Session and proposed legislation that impacts the land surveying profession.

Adam discussed the new portfolio option that is now being offered for students enrolled in the internship course. The committee’s feedback included having more than 1 project in the portfolio. During the last meeting, Committee Chair Bill O’Hara requested that the committee review ACC’s GE website and provide feedback. The feedback included adding updated equipment imagery to the website as well as moving the Surveyors information under the Geodetic Surveyor section.