Meeting Minutes - September 13, 2006

Call to order 3:30 p.m., V-105.

The Meeting was called to order at 3:30 and a sign-in sheet was distributed.

Three guest speakers

Guest Speaker #1: John Scarpino, Athletic Director, regarding early academic warning for student-athletes

The Athletic Department monitors progress of student-athletes throughout their courses, sending requests for information to faculty in the fourth, eighth, and 12th weeks of class with the hope of early intervention with motivation and tutors. E-mail response rate was initially good, then dropped off. Faculty suggested that he continue to use the e-mail contact system. John said that the printed, hand-filled-in forms that students carry to teachers have had mixed results too. A faculty member said that the athletes come to her with the slip but its questions do not capture what is going on with that student except that they are attending. Also, she said, the form is thrust at me at the end of class, the student is watching, and I don't necessarily know the current grade off the top of my head.

It was suggested to John that he give warning to faculty members during the first week of class about the need for these reports, so that faculty would be aware to watch for e-mail queries from the Athletics Department. In the e-mails, Scarpino was asked to be more specific, asking about attendance only in the first two weeks, then test performance in the e-mail in the second two weeks. The e-mails will come from Courtney Miller, a faculty member.

Guest speaker #2: Dick Hamann spoke about GWAVIX

VP Dick Hamann addressed the situation with the Gwavix spam filter that is blocking student emails. He shared a PowerPoint with salient features of the software. The College gets large amounts of e-mail coming in and less going out - in the last 22 days, more than 500,000 emails came in and only 37,000 left the College. Of the incoming email, 74 percent was spam - including those legitimate e-mails blocked by Gwavix.

Gwavix checks all external e-mail. Internal e-mail is checked by Gwava. Both Gwavix and Gwava check for viruses, spam and worms. Gwavix sends notice of blocked e-mails three times a day: at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. The Gwavix server sits between the Internet and the e-mail server. Things called real time block lists (RBL) - nationally there are about 24 of these - maintained by several companies like MacAfee, Norton, Microsoft - tell Gwavix which e-mails to block. Every time an e-mail comes in, Gwavix checks it randomly against the RBLs. If your e-mail address exists in more than 25 percent of them, a low rating is added to your e-mail and you are blacklisted.

People get listed in the RBL because of viruses reading their e-mail databases and blasting e-mails, which causes the RBLs to think you are a spammer, thus getting your e-mail address blacklisted. Also, a server can get infected--the major freebies such as Yahoo and Hotmail, plus local servers like Road Runner and BellSouth. Their servers get infected. So anyone who sends from those servers gets into that list, because even though they didn't get the virus, the server got it. Seminole State keeps an unfiltered list of domains such as UCF, Seminole State, SCPS and others, that will never get blocked because their servers are safe.

What options do we have? Don't filter any e-mails? Not an option. Modify our settings to allow more e-mails to come through? We've done that.

There is a solution for students. We are in the big leagues now as far as e-mail. UCF, FSU, Harvard ask you to use the e-mail provided from those schools. And students and faculty do not accept anything from the students unless it comes from the school-provided address. All students here at the College are provided with a free e-mail address through MySCC but only a minority - fewer than 2,000 out of 29,000 students -- use it, or fewer than 10 percent of the total. (They don't want to have to check multiple e-mail accounts.)

Advantages to students of using Seminole State e-mail are that it is all encrypted and won't be caught on the Internet by someone and stolen. They will never send viruses out because we scan their e-mail and we also protect their accounts against spam. Hamann asked that faculty tell students to use their MySCC e-mail accounts to avoid being blocked. The student accounts allow about 25 MB at a given time, which is a fairly generous amount.

Guest speaker #3: VP Joe Sarnovsky spoke about parking and construction at Sanford-Lake Mary Campus

Sarnovsky said that it is difficult for people to get in and out of the A building parking lot, especially during peak registration times. The Lynx bus must go through that area as well. He said that attempts to get a traffic engineer to do a study and put together a plan started a year ago. In February the Executive Team looked at options and chose to move forward with some in July, but the contractor said it was not possible to do the work over the summer. We tried to find another contractor, who said the same thing.

That project is going to cause a reduction by about 40 in the number of slots that we currently have. On October 6 the whole parking lot by A will be closed, signs erected, resurfaced, striped, before registration for spring semester begins. We will continue to designate 150 parking spaces outside J for faculty and staff until the A building area is available again.

Overflow and grass parking near T3 will expand by about 200 spaces. After the automotive building is completed in November, we will complete some temporary parking there so students can navigate all the way across. At their last meeting, the Board of Trustees approved $2 million to be borrowed against capital improvement fees, which requires State approval, which we have applied for.

Sarnovsky said, "We knew parking was a big issue on this campus. We are about 800 parking spots short for all of our classroom seats and faculty and staff requirements. That's huge. We will be creating spaces, created about 40 spots when we tore down the P area portables, will have close to 300 by the time automotive is done, but will still be substantially short."

A faculty member said that people who teach on two campuses are no longer able to park in the F building lot because students are taking the spaces in that reserved lot.

Sarnovsky said that this is just one of the parking lots that needs improvement. We have two guards that mostly just navigate people into parking spaces. They are spending their time there instead of somewhere else.

A faculty member asked why Seminole State cannot give parking tickets like UCF does. Sarnovsky said that is not an option yet.

A faculty member said, "At other schools you can't park in the faculty lot...but here the students just laugh at us."

Sarnovsky said, "We are in a Catch-22 now. lt's hard to go to a student and argue with them when you know there are not enough parking places for the students needs so it's hard to say you're parking in the wrong spot. We are not opposed to doing that at Executive Team. The college I came from was a no-parking-fee college but we ticketed people at certain times of the semester. I have a philosophy: at beginning of semester you given them a warning and then you ticket later. Until we get some more parking we can't see how we can do that."

A faculty member said, "You can start a class if two or three students are late, but you can't start class if the faculty member cannot get to class. We have faculty who drive between campuses to teach, and they need places to park when they come. Faculty are very much in favor of some type of ticketing for students who violate restricted lots."

Sarnovsky said that he wanted to add more parking spaces first, providing some more improvement in the parking we have.

A faculty member said, "I have a number of adjunct faculty who come in for 9:30 or 11 a.m. classes and cannot park. What do I tell them?"

Sarnovsky said, "There is a lot of space behind the new automotive building behind the student center, almost all times of day there are about 12 spaces. I know there will never be enough parking where people need to be...the college is not built that way. Also, faculty can park by the D building, where there is a paved parking area and a gravel area. But the main side of campus is absolutely atrocious."

A faculty member asked about the city and county ticketing on the grassy areas across the road from the main parking lots.

Sarnovsky said that the city is ticketing where there are no-parking signs. "We own the land on Broadmoor but do not have the parking authority on most of this campus. We've talked to Lake Mary and they are trying to help us, but if there is an area where fire trucks need to turn, they will ticket."

A faculty member asked whether the College had considered card keys and those arms that go up and down for the faculty lot.

Sarnovsky said, "I have considered them, and we have discussed briefly; the parking areas are so shared and the navigation is so discombobulated that it is difficult to say 'these people only are allowed to park here.' The master plan has parking structures, garages--expensive. Maybe students can purchase parking rights with a particular ID. Right now the navigation is such that it doesn't lend itself to that."

A faculty member said that the parking area in front of the F building is not shared and is designated strictly for faculty and staff. However, faculty cannot park there because the students have taken spaces in that designated faculty/staff lot. An area like that, already limited to faculty and staff, could be blocked off readily.

Sarnovsky said, "Those gate systems cost about $70,000 to $100,000. We are looking at it but first want to get the traffic flow fixed. A parking garage might be easier." He added, "We will have to have garages to have adequate parking. I am going to start looking at first level parking under structures that we build from now on. With these fees being approved for that purpose, now we can try to do that. The state wouldn't pay for parking lots before."

A faculty member asked how likely was it that the future buildings on the plan - the new library and parking garages - would be built.

Sarnovsky said, "We have money in hand for K, I and E renovations. We will have the money for the joint-use facility in the center of campus this year, providing about 100,000 square feet for joint use." He said, "We have not been successful in finding the right partner to make the library what we want it to be, so we may put another arm on this thing someday. The roadway that comes in on Weldon boulevard is being re-routed. We began that work a year and a half ago. Permitting is almost ready, the design is not. I am meeting with the county and city to work out the details. Also we have funding, $2 million, to do parking improvements. The bond is specifically for parking. We cannot use it just for renovating the space. Also we have $3 million for the cheapest next building that we can add. Adding space is difficult, because there is very low funding for community colleges, the lowest in decades. The A building on the student services side was originally constructed to hold two stories so we think it's cheapest to add a second story on that. The Board approved $3 million for that and those things are happening right now."

The college is adding an ice plant to add air conditioning capacity. Overall, said Sarnovsky, "we will spend about $50 million in the next two years when you count the joint use facility." The College has set renovation of L building and the library as second priorities. Also, renovation of J and V buildings is planned, with requests made for money to the state, for because those spaces will vacated with the Altamonte and Heathrow buildings.

President's Report by Dan Gilmartin

UCF-Seminole State conflict

The two organizations are bumping up against each other in classroom use on the Sanford Campus. Apparently no one knows who made the agreement with UCF-that's the answer that Dan got from several places. But that agreement becomes null and void in June 2007, so we can renegotiate at that time. UCF went from offering 29 sections at Sanford to 58 sections in the past year, and that has caused the sciences departments some uncomfortable moments and conflict. We are happy to have UCF's presence but not the conflict. It is in process of being resolved, Annye Refoe is happy with the impending solution; they are meeting next week to start the renegotiations.

Guaranteed annual schedule

Dr. Carol Hawkins wants to move to a guaranteed annual schedule. The details on this are nowhere near being worked out; this is in the gestation stage. The idea, however, is that students could come out here in August and be assured that certain classes that they needed would be available throughout the calendar year. There is a meeting next Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2006 that I need representatives to attend because I am in class. It is a thing that needs faculty input. The group is called the Schedule Innovation Task force. Christine Robinson is the head of this. Alan Kraft said he would check his schedule and e-mail Dan if he could attend.

Committee to Appoint Committees (CTAC)

Committee assignments have not gone out yet. How it works is that CTAC proposes committee membership, then it comes back after a time and we are told things didn't work and then CTAC appoints again. If committees are still meeting - just keep meeting. The new committee assignments are supposed to come out before November. There are quite a few people upset about that because people don't know what committee they're on!

Blue and Gold Circle

Many of you are familiar with the old 4Runner system. The Foundation is changing this to more of a focus towards money for the Foundation. The new buzz word is the Blue and Gold Circle. There is a campaign coming up to get people to give money to the foundation starting October 11. I'm trying to encourage people to donate to that because the Foundation can get matching funds for donations. It helps students a lot, helps them get books, scholarships and other things that students need; it's a great help to the College. So I have volunteered to be the co-chair for the Blue and Gold Circle and I encourage your donations to that worthy cause.

Kay Delk added that when the Foundation writes grants, it is asked the percentage of employees who give to the foundation. The percent is high compared to similar organizations, at more than 30 percent. This is helpful in grant-writing. In fact, the Foundation is more concerned with full participation than with high-dollar donation from staff; they would like to get 50 percent participation. The current campaign will last through the end of October. Payroll deduction is available.

Old Business

Convocation day, October 11; because the hurricane day at the beginning of the semester cost three hours of class for once-a-week courses, there are not enough minutes in the semester for those classes. Therefore, instructors are now permitted to hold class on Wednesday, October 11.

New Business.

Date change for October meeting from October 11 to October 18 (3:30, Room V-105) due to College Consortium.

Announcements

A faculty member invited all other faculty to visit the newly renovated Fine Arts Gallery; "it is out of the 80s and into the current decade, it's well lit, and you don't have to bring your own candle anymore--please stop by and take a look."

Gregg Garrison, who chairs the Benefits committee, wanted to ensure that the Senate knew that full-time employees had to choose new plans in October. The old plan A, the PPO, is now plan E: that is the plan to which Florida Hospital still belongs. He said that all employees should first look at the provider network of the plan they are interested in and make sure that their current providers are still within the plan they select. Human Resources is doing open enrollment coaching sessions where people will sit down with you and help you register.

Adjournment:

The meeting was adjourned at 5:09 p.m.