Meeting Minutes

Hydrological Sciences Academic Cluster ~ Faculty Meeting

December 17, 2003 ~ 1:30 - 3:00 pm

Wetland Center, Seminar Room

Attending: Mike Annable, Ken Campbell, Joe Delfino, Jim Heaney, Jim Jawitz, Clyde Kiker, George O’Connor, John White, Bill Wise, Mark Brown

1. Approval of minutes.

The minutes were amended to reflect that John White was in attendance. Minutes were approved as amended.

2. New Faculty

Dr. James Heaney was admitted to the HSAC faculty

3. HSAC Petitions

Petition by Wonsook Ha as follows: SOS 6932 South Florida Ecosystem from Dr. John White is “said to be a new course in TOPIC 6” and Ha wishes to take the course to satisfy the TOPIC 6 requirement.

Action taken was as follows: the course was formally accepted in the TOPIC 6: Hydrological Policy list of courses. After acceptance the petition became a moot point, but faculty voted to accept the petition.

Continuation of discussion from last meeting regarding administration of petitions…it was decided that petitions would be handled in the following manner:

“Petitions for variances from the published HSAC course guidelines must be submitted by the student's major advisor to the Chair of the HSAC. The Chair will then send out the petition by email to the Hydrologic Science Faculty Coordinating Committee for a vote. Upon receipt of a simple majority vote in favor, the petition will be approved.” This is the statement on the web page and all faculty present agreed that the policy on student petitions should remain as stated above.

4. Course Teaching and Scheduling

Little progress was made regarding the collection of course materials.

It was noted that two of the subcommittees required new chairs. The new list of subcommittee chairs is a follows:

Surface Hydrology – Mike Annable

Subsurface Hydrology – Jim Jawitz

Hydrologic Chemistry – John White/Kirk Hatfield/

Hydroecology - Mark Brown

Analysis and Techniques – Wendy Graham

Policy and Management – Clyde Kiker

It was agreed that chairs of each subcommittee would collect all necessary information for courses in each Topic Area and meet in early February, to finalize

5. Curriculum Additions / Deletions

The following changes were approved by unanimous vote of faculty present:

§ SOS 5235 Ecosystems of South Florida was added to Topic 6: Hydrological Policy

§ SOS 5050 Soils for Environmental Professionals was added to Topic 4: hydrologic Ecology

The following changes to Topic 6, not requiring official action of the faculty, were recommended by Clyde Kiker;

§ AEB 6933 Seminar in Natural Resources and the Environment now has permanent course number and name change (content remains unchanged) new course number and name are: AEB 6413 Ecological Economics:Ttheory and Applications

§ Change the course name of AEB 6453 from Natural Resource Economics to Natural Resource and Environmental Economics

§ Change the course name of AEB 6483 from Environmental and Regional Development Analysis to Seminar in Natural Resource and Environmental Economics.

§ Drop AEB 6106 Microeconomic Principles and Applications. It was felt that the course content is not appropriate.

6. Colloquium Coordination

After much discussion of the seminar requirement it was moved, seconded and unanimously voted to discontinue the requirement for seminar registration as part of the HSAC requirements. The effect will be to decrease by 1 hour the HSAC credit hour requirement for Masters students and by 3 hours for Doctoral students

It was suggested that HSAC policy be explicitly stated in the curriculum guidelines that while there is no registration requirement for seminars, all HSAC students are expected to attend relevant seminars.

7. Water Institute Update

An internal search is underway

8. Other Business

1. Election of HSAC coordinator for 2004-05 academic year.

Mike Annable was nominated, elected by unanimous vote, and has accepted to serve as Chair of HSAC for the Academic years 2004-05 and 2005-06

2. Discussion of the "By-Laws"

It was suggested that a student representative be added/elected/appointed to HSFC (Hydrologic Sciences Faculty Committee)

3. Discussion of student tracking and confirmation of completion of academic requirements

An official list from the Graduate School was passed out. There seems to be no “official” way through the Graduate School to track students once they elect to pursue the HSAC. The new two-part application form may help to track students as they must submit a completed form in the semester of their graduation. We also discussed the possibility of awarding an HSAC certificate (suitable for framing) upon completion of requirements. Anyone up for designing said certificate?

4. Update web page, including an open call for input

Nothing new…

5. Combined Wetlands Sciences and Hydrologic Sciences Seminars

Since the hydrologic sciences seminar requirement was discontinued, this item was a moot point.

6. Anything else?