SSC 013007 Minutes
Student Service CouncilMinutes
January 30, 2007
9:00 am to 12:00 pm System Office – Room 112
Attendees: Earl Campa, CFC; Diana Pino, CFC; Terry Sawma, KC;; Bennie Lambert, NHC; Severo Balason, NHC; Larry Rideaux, TC; Debra Britton, TUC; Linda Bilides, System Office; Jason Kot, System Office; Mary Shafer, System Office; Nockie Zizelmann, System Office; Nithy Sevanthinathan, System Office; Tammy McFarland, System Office- Recorder.
Guests: Priscilla Milam, System Office; Jen Murillo, System Office
Absent: Nadine Jenkins, KC; Jade Borne, MC
Opening Items
# Approval of minutes – accomplished via email
# Guests: Priscilla Milam, Jen Murillo
Business
1. Purpose and Leadership of SSC - Nockie Zizelmann – Nadine Jenkins has accepted the role of chairing the SSC meetings beginning in February.
2. Religious Holy Days - Bennie Lambert—Bennie asked for guidance in determining religious holidays and granting students excused absences. Religious holy days are granted for recognized religions defined by the tax code, Nithy suggested that when in doubt to ask him to poll the faculty members or community religious leaders that are knowledgeable about the religion and may assist in defining appropriate holy days.
Faculty should be aware of the difference between holy days and religious activities—excused absences are not granted for conventions, pilgrimages, retreats, etc.
Decision: A change should be made to the proposed policy regarding notification of faculty concerning the need to be absent for a holy day. Mary Shafer will submit the proposal to change the notification time from 15 days of the start of class to no later than the second DAY of class.
3. Official Transcripts – Linda Bilides. The Advising Council’s Proposal on official transcripts—basically that an official transcript must be on file before registration. The SSC approved adding a statement to the online application listing the benefits of having an official transcript on file prior to registering BUT will continue the practice of allowing the student to register for one semester and then placing a 71 hold until the transcript is received.
Decision: Continue our current practices and only a place a hold beginning with registration for the 2nd semester of classes.
4. Imaging Student Records at the Colleges—Mary Shafer. The district is buying a high quality scanner and will continue to offer the service of scanning required documents for all colleges. However, Mary will send out the specifications and cost estimates for the colleges to review if any/all of the colleges would like to begin scanning documents in-house. All costs of scanners, staff, etc would need to be in the college’s budget with the exception of the site license which district will continue to pay. Costs will vary depending on the quality and style of equipment purchased – from $30,000 for high end to $10,000 for moderate and $3,000 for basic for just the scanner and then personnel and training may have additional costs.
Each college may make the decision to purchase equipment and scan transcripts, etc onsite. This can be done on a site by site basis and no matter what—district will continue to offer full service to anyone that requires it.
5. Proposal for Help Desk Assistance - Priscilla Milam – the purpose of the help desk is to assist staff and students with technical difficulties—however an ever increasing percentage of calls are for assistance in registering and discerning why there are holds on the students’ records. Priscilla is recommending that the help desk number be removed from the My Records page and instead a universal number for student services assistance listed. Logistics on how this will work—call center, rolling distribution to the next available line, etc. will need to be decided.
Decision: SSC is in agreement that this problem must be addressed but members are concerned about staffing and other logistics. A committee was formed to work on how to manage this proposal. Members: Smitty Harris, CFC; Jackie Brooks, TC; Jade Borne, MC; Nadine Jenkins, KC; Andre Perez, NHC, Jen Murillo, System Office and Randy Sparks, System Office.
6. URRS Report Review – Larry Rideaux. A brief discussion on how to determine answers to the URRS report. Bennie suggested that Achieving the Dream will address many of the areas of concern in the URRS.
7. Employee and Student Health Concerns – Bennie Lambert—The problem has been addressed. When public health concerns are expressed at the college it is best to allow the county health department to assist in addressing the questions and logistics of the problem.
8. Disciplinary Holds-----Nadine Jenkins/Terry Sawma—place on the February agenda.
9. Registration Debriefing- all including Jen Murillo’s report on web experience. Registration went fairly well at each campus. Jen distributed campus specific reports to each of the colleges present and reviewed some of the highlights. She and her staff conducted an informal survey of students and tried to view the process from the student perspective—this information will be used to help improve the process. She also suggested that we develop a text messaging service that the students will need to register for—once registered the student can receive messages alerting them to the need to pay before de-reg (this would only be sent to students that had granted permission for this service and then only to students who have not paid.) Jen believes this service should be reserved for necessity messages and not “nicety” messages. However, other areas could offer subscription text messaging outside of the registration process.
Greenlight: The SSC members approved the investigation of how to implement a text messaging service including logistics and cost.
Registration Debriefing Meeting: February 20, 1:30 -3:30 pm; Jade Borne will organize and each college will designate personnel to attend. (tentatively at Parkway Room 306)
NOTE: Nockie voiced the council’s appreciation of Jen and her staff’s efforts to improve the online registration process. Jen stated that significant changes are in the pipeline.
10. Achieving the Dream Update- Nockie Zizelmann—Terry Sawma and Nockie Zizelmann reported on the recent Achieving the Dream Strategy Institute in Albuquerque, which was an excellent source of information especially the opportunity to meet with Round 1 & 2 schools that have already completed the process that we are just embarking upon. The decision was reached at this meeting for Lone Star College System to focus on developmental math to college math transition due to the overreaching problem of all students no matter what their ethnicity difficulties in successfully maneuvering from DS to College Level.
Although math will be our focus—it will go beyond the efforts of the math faculty and will include auxiliary student services, orientation, and other plans to provide support to these students.
February 9 will be a district wide math faculty meeting at Lone Star College–Tomball from 1 – 3 pm. RSVPs are required since lunch will be provided.
Open items
Diana Pino announced the Counselor Group will host a professional development event on February 23. She will distribute an email announcing the event.
# Next Meeting—February 27, 2007
