Minutes of the math dept meeting: 11am 12/2/05, led by Julian Edwards.

1) The Academic Learning Compacts:

Laura De Carli and David Ritter have produced a plausible document for
the Dept.  The rules we must follow are not clear, and may change by
next year.  Laura handed out the Policy Guidelines, which assert that we
need a document the students can read before they  enroll. Step "a" is
to specify our desired learning outcomes, and this is due by Dec 9.
David will email
us a revised version soon for our criticism or approval. Step "b" is
about how we will measure these outcomes.
It seems harder, and is due by the summer. It was not clear whether the
outcomes must include  oral communication skills, but Gerardo stated
that this is required by SACS (accreditation) anyway.   There was some
discussion of creating a senior seminar course for this and/or requiring
it in existing courses. Most other outcomes will probably be measured by
embedding standard questions into our final exams. Laura and David will
keep us advised about this.

2) Various Announcements:

a) Enrique Villamor and Julian are working on compromises with FIU's
Finance Dept to get the "Financial Math" track  of our graduate program
approved. It is likely that the program will have to be renamed,
perhaps  to "Risk Management" (other ideas can be emailed to Julian). He
suggested our program may attract at least  15-20 students paying
"tuition-plus", and  that the instructors of these courses would get
extra pay. Dev Roy said the "tuition-plus" idea has not worked out  well
in our business school.

b) Not much news about our PhD proposal. Julian will meet with the Dean
again soon, but expects the Dean will  push us to include, or explore, a
Math Ed track.

3) An Associate Chair position in the Dept:

The Dean proposed this a few months ago. Mainly the job would be to
supervise adjuncts, but it could include teaching,
course coordination and advising. In the recent past, the compensation
was one course off per semester  (and possibly some summer pay), but
this does not seem to be enough. Julian said the job is now split
between  two instructors, but it would work out better with a single
person. Tony proposed that  the job title be changed (perhaps to Adjunct
Coordinator).

Dev said that one main problem is our low adjunct salaries, compared to
nearby universities, resulting in a lower quality of teaching. There was
some discussion of lab fees, but Julian says they  cannot be used to pay
for a line like this one. He was also pessimistic that adjunct salaries
will be raised.

Gerardo made a motion to "Propose to the Dean a new position of
Associate Chair, elected by the  faculty, and to fund an extra line to
take up his extra duties." Julian said this job should be for  a 3 year
term. He suggested that advising of non-majors be assigned to this new
position. This advising  has been done by the Dept Chair, but Julian
would accept a 6 credit teaching load (instead of 3) as a result  of the
shift. Julian proposed that an  ad hoc committee could work out a job
description for the new post,  but finally he took responsibility for
doing that. After this discussion the motion passed (approx 12-1).

SH