Dr. Delugach reported he met with Don Halverstadt, the new Assistant V. P. for Information Services. He comes from Texas. Dr. Delugach was impressed with his knowledge and understanding of the needs in Academia and with the fact that Don Halverstadt called to arrange a meeting with Dr. Delugach. This could be a good opportunity to have someone near the Provost Office to provide support for the non supported units, to provide training and ready access to the SIS to faculty, students, and staff, provide a platform for other units, and restructure the Information Services Advisory Committee. Don Halverstadt will come to the next meeting. There is some talk of a campus wide calendar and scheduling software, perhaps it will be looked at via volunteers and advised on the proper choices. It was suggested that we get students to try it. Use students from student organizations or from the lancers.

Dr. Delugach also reported the Academic Council met yesterday, August 26, 1998. The main issue was retention. One of the examples given was that out of twenty scholarships given to the best students, 3 flunked out. Dr. Franz is very interested in intervention strategies. Dr. Franz is very interested in progress reports and having more details involved with those. The Senate has been asked to investigate the possibility of administrative withdrawals. There is concern with how withdrawals are treated. The Scholastic Affairs Committee will pursue this issue. We need to come up with a proposal to help students and help faculty. If you get ideas from your colleagues, please let us know. This is not a single issue problem but we need a set of suggestions. We need to find out what is already being done that is effective.

Dr. Delugach reported Dean Raines talked about the Student Outcome Assessment Task Force and their recommendations for developing some questions and suggestions. Give your questions and suggestions on this issue to Dr. Comfort. She also discussed the Annual Reports and developing connections to all databases.

Homepage and web page development was discussed and the need for consistency. There is a Committee of three (Rochowiak, Lonergan and McCullars) to serve as webmasters to oversee the development and updating of web pages and home pages. Send your suggestions to Dan Rochowiak.

Dr. Johnson distributed a list of on-line forms. She also announced the AGSC new course requests and approvals are due by October 31. She distributed some information on this as well.

Dr. Delugach discussed the change in the Senate Calendar with the Senate meeting every third week. The idea is that the Committees would meet the week after the Senate, and then the Senate Executive Committee would meet after the Committees meet in order to discuss business and set the agenda. If there are items where bills seem appropriate please get those to the Committee Chairs early.

We are trying to eliminate some paper for the meetings. This will save money and paper. It will also save some time. The information will be sent via email and will also be available on the Senate web page. The email messages will contain the URL addresses for the web page information. We may still have hard copies of the bills available at the meeting.

It was requested that Peggy obtain Adobe to send the files as PDF format.

The Faculty Issues were distributed and discussed. Dr. Delugach pointed out that they are not mandates but starting points. A full detailed listing is available on the web page.