Council of Deans
Unapproved Minutes
February 10, 2003
Members:
McKellips
Buckley (Represented by Bob Ziegler)
Burgess (Represented by Suzanne Clinton)
Dawe
Goode
Neale
Soelle
Young
Also Present:
TonyPokomy
Keith Mitchell
1. McKellips stated the PLUS scholarship program is going to undergo a rather dramatic change in the sense that we are going to weed out many applicants on the basis of grade point and
ACT and not even offer them the opportunities for interviews. The new criteria will probably result in the award offewer PLUS scholarships this year than have been awarded in the past. The President will be announcing anew approach to fee waiver scholarships and probably this change in the PLUS program will free up a little more money to use in that program. Right now the PLUS and Laura
Fields scholarships take a significant portion ofthe fee waiver money that is available. While they are both very good programs, theyjust continue to consume more and more ofour fee waiver money_
If the tuition goes up anything like we are expecting it might next year, without our budget going up that will mean fee waivers of that type will consume that much more funding because those students get 18 hours waived in those programs. All those extra dollars will count against our allocations and we won't have as big an allocation next year as we had this year. Some change will have to be made. The final decision will be made short ofthe President's Office this year. We have not put a structure on how the final decision will be made but the President does not wish to participate in deciding who gets PLUS scholarships. Discussion followed.
2. McKellips asked Mitchell to talk about the Spring Recruitment Day. Mitchell stated that a Spring Recruitment Event has been scheduled for March 8. This is what we call "It's About You at Cameron." What was learned from the Fall and last Spring events has been fined tuned to make the event more student friendly. He does not have a final schedule of events but after the schedule has been finalized he will get it to the deans. Mitchell gave a lengthy presentation about what is planned for this event and what has been done to accommodate the feedback that was received from previous events. Discussion followed Mitchell's presentation.
3. McKellips distributed a document, "Second Round of Fee Waivers." In order to try to understand the PLUS scholarship award system and the other scholarship award systems that are run

primarily through the recruiting area, he asked for quite a bit of data on what has been done so far this year and what was done all of last year. There are a remarkable number of students with fee waiver scholarships that were awarded through the recruiting program that have ACT's in the 14,
13, and 12 area. Our baccalaureate admission standard is supposed to be 20. He is not sure how all that came about, but that is the fact of the situation. The award of all scholarships was halted until that process could be reviewed. With regard to the PLUS scholarships, those are going to be moved into an area where faculty members are the ones making the recommendations as to who gets those awards. From this point through the rest of the year, the other awards that are given on the basis of applications the students submit, will be governed by the following program: a.
If the ACT is 22 to 23 they will get $500 for one year only - $250 per semester - that will be called Freshmen scholarships b. Then there will be a program called Academic Merit Scholarships where anyone with an ACT in the 24-26 range will get $1,000 per year for four years.
c. Academic Excellence Scholarship - if the ACT is in the 27-29 range they will get
$1,500 per year for four years. (Question was asked what if a student had over an ACT of 29.
McKellips stated that was an oversight but the largest one that will be awarded out of that program is the $1,500. (probably should say 27 and above.) d. There will be a Valedictorian scholarship to all valedictorians in Oklahoma at $1,500 a year for four years. If a school has more than one valedictorian, which is common today, it would be awarded to the one with the highest ACT score.
e. The Salutatorian scholarship is the same except $1,000 a year for four years f.
Scholarships will be awarded to transfer students with high GPA's and will be based strictly on their GPA's at the time of transfer. 3.0 up to 3.25 they will get $500; 3.25 they will get
$750; at3.5 they will get $1,000; and at 3.75 they will get $1,500. These are one year scholarships.
g. Western Oklahoma State College associate graduates - if they have their associates degree and have the grade points that are shown in the handout, they will be awarded one year scholarships at Cameron.
h. Career Technology Center Scholarships - there will be some scholarships awarded through Red River and Great Plains but it is not clear how this is going to be done yet. Criteria for those have not been developed yet.
i.
Called attention to the asterisk at the bottom of the handout. There is no idea how many students there are that would be attracted to this program. When the limits of the amount of money that is available are reached, we will just have to say to the students that we would like to have them but we have run out of scholarship money for this year.
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j.
Question was asked where do the $800 scholarships from the President's Partners fit in.
McKellips replied those are not listed on this document but those will be awarded by departments and by recruiters. Halfwill be awarded by recruiters and half by departments. These can only be awarded to incoming freshmen. Recruiters can award those on the spot. McKellips stated he is wondering how departments will manage their part of it. The recruiters are not going to be able to meet with the deans until they complete their training which will be next Monday.
Deans might want to say to the recruiters, if you can fmd somebody who is coming to Cameron to major in whatever the fields are and who has some criteria - whatever the departmental criteria is going to be for those scholarships - bring their name and address back to the department.
There will be two of these scholarships per program. Discussion followed regarding what has been identified as "programs." McKellips stated he will furnish deans a list of what is being called a
"program." k. McKellips stated the whole scholarship program needs some thorough examination and will be subject to some evaluation in the future.
It has been learned through data gathering that scholarships are controlled from allover campus and there are large groups that are controlled in some places. There is very little coordination of that. McKellips stated there will be a person assigned as Scholarship Coordinator and there will be channels established so that all the information on scholarships will go to that office and be put in a data base and looked at weekly. Further discussion was held about management of the whole scholarship program.
4. McKellips asked Dawe to talk about his item.
a.
Dawe stated that last week he met with the Regents' Council on Research to make plans for the Regional Universities Research Day activities for next year and where to get funds. The date has been set for November 14 and it will be at UCO again this year. They talked about expanding the various modes of delivering research to include liberal arts. They were able to come up with two periods of 6-7 concurrent paper presentation sessions. The only way that will work is to limit the paper presentations to 15 minutes per presentation. They are going to set two cutoff dates - initial cutoff date for those who want to make an oral presentation is September 26 which is the date to inform the Council that they want to give an oral presentation. Then all those who are going to do poster presentations and the paper presentations would have to have their abstracts in by October 10. They are hoping this will increase the participation, particularly in English and humanities. Discussion followed.
b. The Council was given some funds this year to document the scholarly activities that are going on at the regional institutions. They are going to publish a book that will be distributed at the Regional University Research Day with a section for each of the regional institutions. What they want is for us to document all ofthe scholarly activities for our students and faculty for the past two years. We can include pictures of students engaged in various activities. They could be doing some kind of research or making presentations and this includes any awards or grants that faculty have. We are to have it all together by this time next month. Dawe will start on it right away next week and will be contacting all the deans to get their cooperation to try to get the information together for it. Question was asked what scholarship is. Dawe replied that it has been defmed very
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broadly. USAO had a publication last year that was very similar to our Academic Bibliography.
In the area ofliberal arts they had recitals and a lot of other scholarly activities that you find in music, etc. It is not just scientific research, it is more scholarly activities that we will be collecting.
It is our hope that they can reinstate the matching funds program. Two years ago the Regents withdrew their matching funds for research grants and then they reinstated it last year for the two comprehensive institutions but they did not reinstate it for the regional institutions. They are hoping to show that the regional institutions have a lot of research going on and that we should be getting some ofthose funds. Discussion followed.
5. McKellips stated that Tuesday, February 25, is Higher Education Day at the Capitol.
Registration starts at 8:30 and lasts until 9:00 in the morning.
In past years w~ have relied mostly on the Executive Council to attend the lobbying sessions and eat lunch with the legislators. The
President wants a more mixed group than that this year. She wants local business people and faculty members but she wants faculty members that deans think would do well because the purpose of this is to lobby the legislators for higher education. She also doesn't want someone who has to miss a lot of classes to be there. If the deans have people who fit that category, send their names to
McKellips and he will get them to the President. The President will be selecting some students.
There will be three vans from Cameron going. Discussion followed.
6. McKellips stated that some of the faculty members received an e-mail from him on
Friday afternoon assigning them to teams. His e-mail was not clear on what those teams will be doing but what they will be doing is developing the Enrollment Management Plan for Cameron.
Virginia Reasor will be here at 1:00 until 3:00 on this Wednesday here in this room to talk with them on how they go about developing this plan. McKellips realizes that with notification at this late date there will be some that cannot attend but McKellips is going to get Mark Norman to video tape it for those who cannot attend. Discussion followed.
7. McKellips stated that the deans have probably seen what was in the Reasor report. The
President is serious about recruiting. A three person team consisting of Brenda Dally, Donovan
Grahn, and Jamie Glover has been established. McKellips gave a bit of information about each of these people. Several training sessions for these recruiters have been arranged. They will be at
Rogers State all day next Monday for training and then they will work with Virginia Reasor. The
President wants the recruiters to each have an automobile, a cell phone and a laptop computer.
Apparently that is the way most schools equip their recruiters and they will literally live in those cars.
How soon that will happen McKellips does not know because the budget is not there, but that is where we are headed. McKellips mentioned that he would like all those here today to meet all of the recruiters and talk to them about how you can support recruiting. They will be welcoming people to go with them. Discussion followed.
8. McKellips stated that the President, Dean Buckley, and Mitchell attended the Powell
Board meeting recently. David Carter said that Buckley had approached him some time ago about a sculpture for the new Science Building and never did come back and talk to him about it.
It was not clear whether they would be interested in funding something like that. Ziegler said he will check on that but that Buckley has not mentioned it to him. David Carter was curious about the status and
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McKellips will need to track that down. Soelle stated that she has talked to Buckley about it but she has not talked to Leslie Powell; however, they do have a mechanism in place for requesting money to do something like that and if we wanted them to do something, we would just simply write them a grant proposal. McKellips also said they did express they would like to have an internship with their gallery and maybe with the Foundation. They said if we had a student who wanted to do an internship there, that ifthey enrolled in three hours ofinternship, they would pay the tuition for that.
The other thing they said is they want to open their gallery on Saturdays for five or six hours and they would like to hire a Cameron student at minimum wage to open it for them on Saturdays.
9. McKellips stated that Tom Sutherlin mentioned to him that in a number of departments the assessment program has gone into neutral at best and in some places it is declining. McKellips is not going to be available when the consequences of that come about but we are two years away from owing North Central a report on our assessment program. If that is what has to be reported, we can be assured it will trigger a visit. McKellips stated his advice to the next Provost will be that it is past the persuading time - it is time to drop the hammer. Those assessment programs have to be here and they have to work.
It appears to him that Cameron has a problem, one that could lead to serious problems.
If he was going to be here, he would be recommending things like no positive personnel actions in departments that don't have acceptable assessment programs.
require strong action in some departments.
It is going to
It is time to start thinking about this. Lengthy discussion followed.
COMMENTS
Clinton (Representing Burgess) - Stated that Burgess had told her there were no announcements.
Soelle - Asked for clarification about Academic Plans. At one meeting deans were told they would not be doing them this semester but that there might be something develop to take its place. She just wants some assurance that is the case. McKellips stated the reason the deans are not being given a clear answer is because he was told by the President that she thought the new Chancellor was going to stop the requirement that we submit academic plans to the State Regents. If he is going to he hasn't done that.
McKellips' comments to Sutherlin were that he should at least work with departments to get them up to the point that they have their PQIR's done and then if at the last minute we have to fold those into some kind of academic plan we will have most of the information we need. Soelle asked ifthey have their assessment documents completed then they don't need to take it to the next step right now unless she hears something different. McKellips replied, that was right, he doesn't think so. Soelle is still concerned because one part leads to another part and when we get to our budget requests in the spring, we don't have that middle piece. There is nothing connecting what we need for our programs in order to plan. McKellips replied she has every reason to be concerned about that. The strongest part of our assessment program was that we had that loop closed from the point of view of the people who come here to accredit us. Several agencies made comments that they had never seen an institution that had that loop closed as well as we did. He has told Sutherlin that if we get away from the academic plan, we at least internally, have to close that loop. There has to be something that is done with the PQIR's to enable, within departments and schools, for that loop to be closed. To operate schools internally you need to take it up to the point
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where it would be like you would be doing it anyway - just don't have to publish it. Discussion followed.
Neale - Agrees our assessment programs need some improvement, particularly in certain departments but how can we get them to Level ill? Sutherlin has worked with departments, she has worked with them and they are still not there. McKellips replied that a moment ago he gave his thoughts on that and that is, it may have to come to saying there will not be any positive personnel actions in departments without acceptable assessment programs. McKellips stated one thing he believes about assessment is that faculty members can put together a solid assessment program if they will. Also, there are millions of good assessment programs around the country that can be copied and used.
Lengthy discussion followed.
Pokorny - Two quick announcements. Next Tuesday, Feb 18, there will be a Cameron Appreciation
Day in Frederick from 4:00-6:00. About 500 invitations are being sent out to graduates of Cameron
University. This is being sponsored by Bank First. On Thursday, Feb 20, will be the Dr. Diamond lecture for Festival V.
There will be a dinner at Cameron House at 5:00. The invitee list includes
Biology professors and their students. Also about eight doctors from the community will be invited.
We are trying to get the medical doctors interested in supporting Cameron.
Dawe - No comments.
Young - No comments.
Ziegler (Representing Buckley) - No comments.
Goode - No comments.
Adjourned 12: 18 p.m.
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