• Home
• About the Board
• Colleges & Universities
• Academic Policies & Programs
  • Academic Programs
  • Policies & Handbook
  • Advisory Committees
  • Academic Calendars
  • Initiatives
  • Faculty Development
• Initiatives
• Statistics & Reports
• News Releases
• Publications
• Employment
• Offices & Departments

Home » Academics » Advisory Committees » Chemistry

Meeting Minutes: Committee on Chemistry

April 24, 1998 Meeting

The Chemistry Academic Advisory Committee (CAAC) of the USG Board of Regents held its annual meeting at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia on April 24, 1998. The meeting was held just prior to the Georgia Academy of Science Annual Meeting, also held at Armstrong Atlantic on the 24th and 25th of April. The CAAC meeting began at 9:00 a.m. and adjourned at 12:15 p.m. Twenty of the 34 schools were represented at the meeting. Leon Combs (outgoing chair) conducted the meeting as follows:

1. The minutes of the previous meeting were unanimously approved.
2. Leon Combs gave a detailed presentation on the web site he created for use by the members of the committee http://stern.kennesaw.edu/%7Elcombs/caac http://stern.kennesaw.edu/~lcombs/caac/. The purpose of the web site is to provide a mechanism to conduct business within the committee and to share information and ideas concerning our common areas of interest. Leon agreed to keep the site active for the foreseeable future. The minutes from the 1997 meeting are under Course Info on the WEB site. You get to the WEB site from the above site. The 1998 minutes will also be placed there. Current topics of discussion on the web site involve:
   1. Course outlines to include topics to be covered in the three different General Chemistry Courses (CHEM 1211/1212, CHEM 1151/1152, CHEM 1101/1102 ) and in the Organic Chemistry Course (both semesters). The consensus of the committee was that each school would post their outlines and/or syllabi for these courses as well as the textbook currently being used. The intent of this posting is to allow all committee members to see what specific topics are being addressed in these courses as a benchmark for their own use. It was generally agreed that there would be no attempt by the committee to standardize the topics of these courses beyond the broad spectrum of topics already approved by the committee last year in the course descriptions developed for the General Chemistry Courses.
   2. A lengthy discussion was held on the number of contact hours/credit hours (workload) assigned to faculty members in the chemistry discipline. The American Chemical Society recommended standard of 15 contact hours per semester was used as a benchmark during the discussion. It rapidly became clear that most schools exceed this standard. Further it appeared that there are as many different interpretations of workload as there were schools represented at the meeting. The consensus of the committee was to have each school post on the web site their final approved workload figures (contact and credit hours). Leon Combs agreed to set up a separate page on the web site for this topic. The Semester Conversion Subcommittee will compile and review the data. The results will be a topic of next years meeting. The committee also approved sending a recommendation to the Board of Regents concerning workload. This will be essentially the same recommendation as last year's, but will include a reference to the American Chemical Society's standard (See Recommendation below.)
3. An overview of the Board of Regents faculty development grant obtained by the committee was given by Leon Combs. The grant will be used to sponsor a faculty development seminar on creative laboratory techniques. The seminar will be conducted on the GSAMS network. As currently planned, two guest speakers ( Dr. Melanie Cooper from Clemson University and Dr. Preetha Ram from Emory University) will each show a fifteen minute video of their problem based aboratory experiments for Freshman chemistry. A panel will then discuss the presentations with the guest speakers, and entertain questions from all of the participating schools. Dates and times for the presentation were discussed and finally agreed upon. There will be two presentations given on May 20, 1998, the first from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. and the second from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Committee members were asked to coordinate with their respective schools and to inform Leon Combs as to their preferred times for participation. Students should be asked to participate to obtain their input and suggestions.
4. Subcommittee assignments were discussed and it was agreed to keep the current committees: Assessment, Faculty Development, Placement, Safety, Semester Conversion, and Planning. A copy of current subcommittee assignments is attached to this report. The new chair of the CAAC (Dan Jackson) will coordinate new subcommittee assignments in the near future.
5. It was agreed that a half day meeting was too short to adequately address all of the issues of concern to committee members. With the advent of the committee web site, it was further agreed to use the web site to gather items of interest during the year, to have the subcommittees use that information to provide recommendations and ideas to the entire committee at next year's meeting and to meet for a full day next year. Next Year meeting will be held again in conjunction with the Georgia Academy of Science and will meet the afternoon before and morning of the Academy meeting. The host school committee member will make arrangements for an evening dinner social to allow members to become acquainted with each other.
6. Leon mentioned a NSF grant which KSU's new dean (Dr. Larry Peterson, organic chemist) has obtained. The grant is to develop several modules called Chem Cases which will be stand alone modules accessible from the web for anybody to include in their freshman chemistry courses. The site for the first one involving Gatorade is GOTOBUTTON BM_1_ http://science.kennesaw.edu/%7Emhermes/gatorade.htm http://science.kennesa w.edu/~mhermes/gatorade.htm and the general site for this grant has the home page of GOTOBUTTON BM_2_ http://science.kennesaw.edu/%7Emhermeshttp://science.kenne saw.edu/~mhermes /. We hope that they will be of help to anyone teaching freshman chemistry.
7. A discussion was held on the future of the Qualitative Analysis course (3rd Quarter of the Principles of Chemistry course). Various opinions on the usefulness and timeliness of the course were offered. In the end, it appeared that the course will no longer be offered at any of the schools as a separate course under the semester system, but elements of the course will be included in semester Principles of Chemistry course.
8. Dorothy Zinsmeister, a faculty member from KSU on a one-year assignment to the Board of Regents (BOR), gave a presentation addressing the Board of Regents vision of the Academic Advisory Committees. Highlights of her presentation included:
   1. The BOR wants the Advisory Committees to lead and take charge in their areas of interest. As examples she cited common course numbering and course descriptions.
   2. An overview was given of the ten principles of Teacher Preparation as approved by the BOR. She cited the BOR desire for more involvement in Teacher Preparation by the Arts and Sciences faculty. Several questions were raised concerning a previous program that would allow college graduates to expedite their certification as secondary school teachers. Several committee members indicated that this program had lapsed. Dorothy agreed to investigate the issue.
   3. She provided the committee an overview of the BOR faculty development program open to the Academic Advisory Committees. A copy of this years program was also provided. The suspense for proposals has been set as the end of May, 1998. Leon Combs, Dan Jackson and Jesse Spencer will meet and address this issue.
9. As time ran short for the meeting, separate reports by the subcommittees were not given. The essential information from each of the subcommittees was given during the various parts of the overall meeting. People were asked to let Dan Jackson know on which committee they would like to serve.
10. Vickie Geisler, from the State University of West Georgia, was unanimously selected to be the chair of the committee for the 1999 - 2000 term. Leon Combs completed the meeting by introducing Dan Jackson, the incoming chair for 1998 - 1999, from Gordon College. After a short introduction, a brief review of the subcommittees and plans for the upcoming year, and an expression of gratitude for Leon Combs for his leadership this past year, the meeting was adjourned.

RECOMMENDATION: In accordance with the guidelines established by the American Chemical Society, the Chemistry Academic Advisory Committee recommends that chemistry faculty course load be measured in contact hours rather than in credit hours with an equivalency of credit hours and contact hours for the purpose of workload assignment.

Submitted by:
Leon Combs and Dan Jackson
30 April 1998