SSC 032707 Minutes

Minutes

March 27, 2007

9:00 am to 12:00 pm System Office - Room 112

Attendees:  Nadine Jenkins, Chair, KC; Earl Campa, CFC; Jade Borne, MC; Bennie Lambert, NHC; Severo Balason, NHC;  Linda Bilides, System Office; Jason Kot, System Office; Mary Shafer, System Office; Diana Pino, CFC; Terry Sawma, KC; Larry Rideaux, TC; Debra Britton, TUC; Nockie Zizelmann, System Office; Tammy McFarland, System Office- Recorder.

Guests:  Jennifer Newton, TC; Raphael Turner, TC; 

Absent:  Nithy Sevanthinathan, System Office

Opening Items

1. Approval of minutes - accomplished via email

Business

1. Discuss CE courses counting toward full time student status for F1 students- Jennifer Newton, International Adviser, TC Raphael Turner, TC. The CE and ESL Program Managers are recommending that a foreign student can qualify as full load/fulltime with 12 hours of credit courses; or a combination of credit and CE courses equivalent to 18 contact hours per week for 16 weeks; or 18 contact hours in CE courses for a 16 week period (288 contact hours). The CE council is "polling" other councils and committees for comments before submitting the recommendation to CESD for approval.

Jennifer outlined several areas that the international student advisors would like for SSC to consider before approving this recommendation.  Areas of concern include appropriate staff to insure that the federal regulations (code of federal regulations - CFR) related to F1 students are strictly adhered to including documenting and monitoring attendance, academic progress, and adherence to educational objectives.  Concerns include how to assure accountability

Although the Director of International Studies Program Council has given his support of this proposal-many advisors are concerned that if this recommendation passes that they will spend the majority of their time monitoring CE courses to insure the CFR requirements are being met.

Action:  SSC members were asked to forward their questions related to this issue to Larry Rideaux (by 4/3/07) and then will submit these questions to Sunny so that the CE council can respond.  Once all the questions are answered then the SSC will make a recommendation.

2. URRS Report Review - discuss updating and revising responses online-Larry Rideaux. It is important that each college review the URRS report to insure that the information is up to date and accurate.

Action:  The SSC will add the URRS to the upcoming retreat plan for review.

3.   Registration Process Update on Report to EVC - Jade Borne.

Jade spoke to Steve Head about the process for improving registration.  The next move will be to form a committee/task force for each topic of concern.  The task force will be responsible for identifying best practices among our colleges and other colleges (internal and external) and then to formulate recommendations that will be reported to the full group.

Jade also spoke to Steve about the SSC concern that not all actions/ recommendations approved by CESD and EC are being supported by VPAD.  Steve agreed that the process of implementing decisions should be reviewed to insure continuity and consistency.

Action:  Regarding registration process--send recommendations for task force members and specific areas of concern to Jade and he will organize the groups.

4.  Disciplinary Holds-----Nadine Jenkins/Terry Sawma -- Questions about the policy and procedure manuals process for disciplinary holds and how to have all colleges adhere to the holds and not just override them.  Linda Bilides suggested that everyone needs to be trained to uphold the #15 restriction, which should stop students from registering until they receive clearance from the appropriate administrator  as opposed to #70 restriction which is a less restrictive hold.

Sexual Offender holds are reviewed by Earl Campa, Dick Gregory, and Steve Head.  Earl Campa inputs  or releases  the restriction and informs the college president of the offenders.  If you have any questions about this process please contact Earl.

5.  AskOnLine Tutoring Initiative-Terry Sawma-- 

Action:  Terry and Larry Rideaux will organize a committee to review available online tutoring programs, costs, and accessibility and report back to the group at the May meeting.

6.  Testing Fees for Employees- Report from new committee on education benefits for employees-Jade Borne.  At this time there is not a great interest in reducing or "comping" fees for employees.  Currently all colleges are charging fees for assessment center services.

7. My Educational Plan-Jade Borne-included in the registration review process.

8. IT Student Services Help Desk - Severo Balason - Randy Sparks has done an excellent job chairing this group. Severo will forward the PowerPoint report with the information collected. It appears that the students are in favor of an online/web-based help service.

Action:  SSC members should review the report and send questions/comments to Severo and he will report back in April.

9. Staffing and Organizational Structure for Student Services: Review and Recommendations-- Nadine Jenkins. Nadine would like to discuss staffing priorities and needs at each college-especially related to registration and advising and to insure that job descriptions for "like" positions truly reflect the skills and education required. Each college decides how to budget for and fill positions-therefore college budgets and administrations must be on board to insure that the positions

Furthermore, a hiring plan needs to be devised to insure that appropriate skills set and education levels are incorporated into the position description for advisors.

Action:  This will be a retreat topic.  Nadine will plan the retreat for the second week in June and the council members will suggest topics to be included.  (Topics:  Registration Process, MyEducation Plan, Advising, Staffing, Achieving the Dream)

Other items:

Advisors and Advising-- concern was voiced related to the Achieving the Dream focus group finding that students found advising to be lacking at Lone Star College System.  Nockie reminded the members that the students were referring to registration periods and that actual advising does not occur during this time-it is scheduling.  We must be sure to acknowledge that our advisors are only able to offer full service advising during non peak periods and that we must address how to inform the students that they must meet with advisors prior to these periods in order to receive the benefit of full service advisement.
Online Chat-Linda Bilides asked how the online chat features in advising were going at Kingwood & Montgomery-online chat is not available at KC at this time due to staffing limitations.  Jade will check to see how it is going at MC.
Professional Development for Counselors-Diana Pino reported that the conference was well attended and expressed her appreciation for the support that the student services department gave in allowing staff time off to attend.
Nockie announced that Larry Rideaux would serve as Interim AVC for College Services for the next few months.  She will still be on campus intermittently during this period.  Ed Albracht will serve as Interim Dean of Students at Tomball.
Linda Bilides will retire on April 27, 2007-her expertise will be missed.
Next Meeting-April 24, 2007