Members Present: Ed Mullen, Frank Garrahan, Glen Hunt, Marilyn Yale, Gaye Lynn Scott, Jeremy Abrams, Stefan Haag, Lisa Perez-Nichols, Greg Harrison, Steve Williams, Al Belmarez

1. The college will finally be phasing out the old email address "@austin.cc.tx.us" and will be using only "austincc.edu." Faculty will no longer have their mail automatically routed to the new email address. Faculty must change any links leading to "austin.cc.tx.us" to "austincc.edu."

2. The college-wide Internal Budget Committee has asked to receive suggestions for ways to save money around the college, or ways to spend money more effectively.

3. The Moreno-Rangel Legislative Leadership Opportunity allows students to work in the legislature during the 79th session with pay. Faculty are encouraged to make students aware of this opportunity.

4. "Yak 'n Sack" meetings are being held to allow faculty to meet the new ACC president. Wednesday 10/13 at noon, HBC and Wed. 11/17 at 2:00, EVC.

5. The SACS report was generally good in terms of ACC's work on documenting credentials. They indicated that the college still has work to do but the visiting team made no formal recommendations.

6. Christine Berni from the English Dept. is currently leading the English Dept's effort to improve their writing program and develop a writing curriculum that is responsive to the needs of the other disciplines and is asking that faculty from around the college submit to her examples of the types of writing assignments we give our students. Materials can be submitted through inter-campus mail or email and can be sent anonymously if desired. Send assignments, projects, exams essays, etc. to cberni@austincc.edu or C Berni at NRG.

7. Faculty Development Opportunities are available including: History's Emeritus Professors Lectures, "Tejano Legacies" 10/16, 9:30-1:30, NRG Lecture Hall; Learning Communities and Collaboration 9th annual conference, 11/11 though 11/13, Kansas City, MO; International Conference on Social Science Research, New Orleans, 11/11-11/13; Supreme Court and Freedom of Conscience, 11/22, 7-9pm, RGC room A253; and, a new online journal for two-year colleges, "Best Practices" is seeking 1000-3000 work essays. Finally, please remember to take advantage of ACC's professional development opportunities. Access that schedule, and register for workshops at https://workshops.austincc.edu/.

Student Assessment: Frank Garrahan presented the results of our efforts to assess student learning / capabilities. One a scales of 1-5, the 58 artifacts judged received a 3.55 score on writing and 3.01 for discipline knowledge. The faculty discussed the strengths and weaknesses of this assessment method and voted to make some changes to this assessment method for the 2004-2005 academic year. For example, while this past assessment was based on voluntary submissions by faculty, the committee will randomly select US and TX Government sections for inclusion next year. Whether faculty will be asked to submit all 36 copies of an assignment, or a subset, was discussed and will be decided by the Department in the coming months. The faculty also discussed the need to hold Brown Bag meetings where we can help each other develop and refine assignments that will aid this assessment process.

Adjunct Faculty Committee: Two applicants for the adjunct pool have been interviewed.

Faculty Evaluation: Marilyn Yale presented new standards to be used by Faculty Evaluation Committee members in assessing faculty portfolios and input forms. The imperfections in the faculty evaluation process were discussed including concerns regarding: small classes and the ability of one or two students to influence or significantly alter the summary data and the desire of some faculty to have more feedback on their portfolios (in addition to the overall rating of excellent, very good, etc.). The Faculty discussed the need for portfolio training for new faculty. Marilyn moved and Frank seconded a motion to create such a training session. The session will be held in the coming weeks &endash; the exact date will be emailed to all faculty with an invitation to attend.

Faculty Development Committee: Stefan Haag has created a questionnaire to be completed by faculty regarding the types of professional development workshops we'd most benefit from. Faculty will receive this questionnaire via email and are encouraged to complete it and send it back to shaag@austincc.edu Examples of possible workshop topics were given such as "how to create more student-centered learning activities" were discussed.

The faculty adopted the study guide for Maxwell and Crain's Texas Government textbook as an approved text.

Travel requests were approved for Karry Evans (to attend "America Through the Eyes of the World, New York, 10/15-10/17), Kris Seago and Linda Murphy (to attend the Southwestern Social Science Association Meetings, New Orleans) and Judy Nwachie (to attend the INMP Training Annual Meeting, Whittier Calif, 11/4-11/8)