STEERING MINUTES – JANUARY 7, 2009
Submitted
Sue Barry

In attendance:  Bob Locy, David Cicci, Kathryn Flynn, Dennis DeVries, Sue Barry, Sharon Gaber, Joe Molnar, Bill Hames, Claire Cruthchley, Linda Glaze (non-voting), Nancy McDaniel (non-voting)
Absent: Ruth Crocker
The meeting was called to order at 3:30 p.m. by Bob Locy, Chair, and the minutes from the last meeting were approved.
--Bob Locy, (Chair) asked the members of the Steering Committee to submit their new schedules to Sue Barry, (Secretary) for this semester.  Currently, Steering has been meeting on Wednesday, the day before the agenda for the Senate meeting must be posted.  This poses a problem for the secretary because she has to post the agenda and all information for the senators to read with only a one-day turn around.  Therefore, Bob suggested having two meetings a month.  The first Steering meeting would be to discuss the items that the committee may want to present to the Senate, and the second meeting would be to review the items and to vote on a completed agenda. 
Action Items:  (discussion)
--Bob Locy, Chair, announced that there was a problem with the summer calendar for 2009.  Robin Jaffe, Chair, of the Calendar committee had informed Bob that there was a conflict between what the AP Handbook says about holidays occurring over weekends and the current summer calendar.  The Faculty Calendar shows Monday, July 6th as the day that there will be no classes. However, the AP Handbook says that Friday before a holiday will be the official day off when the holiday falls on a weekend.  Therefore, Robin Jaffe will move to amend the calendar to make the holiday fall on Friday, July 3rd.  This will be the first action item.
--Roy Hartfield, Chair of the Welfare Committee, will present the Consulting Policy as the second action item.  It was decided to split the policy into two parts – 1) Consulting Policy, and 2) Conflict of Interest Policy.  The committee decided to call for a vote on part one, the Consulting Policy, but to give the Senate several months to look over the second part, the Conflict of Interest section before asking the Senate to approve part two. 
__Linda Glaze, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Affairs, explained the proposed Degree Enrollment Cap Policy.  She told the committee that a few programs create caps by using a fluctuating number based on the available seats in a given program to limit enrollment.  These programs are Nursing, Building Construction, Early Childhood and Elementary Education.  In each of these programs the cap is based on available resources.  Other programs and colleges would prefer to control enrollment with a required GPA.  However, if most colleges and programs require a GPA of 2.3 or higher, it will be possible to have students with a 2.0 GPA who are in good standing according to University policy but who will still not be able to graduate.  After doing research on the problem, Linda found that the enrollment cap procedures at the University of Georgia were best suited to our situation here at Auburn. Therefore, the policy that she will propose is an adaptation of the Georgia Policy.  A key component of this policy will be to put GPA requirements only on gatekeeper courses for specific majors.  For example, the calculus courses required by the College of Engineering are good indicators of success in engineering.
Information Items:
--Nancy McDaniel, Executive Director of Education Support Services, will present information concerning the Living & Learning Communities that the leadership along with the administration hope will provide more academic support for freshman and therefore, will improve our overall graduation rates.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:55