MELA Meeting Minutes 2003 - 2017

iii. Audra sent USM a new Memorandum of Agreement. There have been some frustrations from Southern Miss. A lot of grades were not put into the ET by the due date, and they had to do a lot of grade changes. One college put Incompletes for the entire course in the ET, and did not send in a grade change for those. 1. Audra asked if there is a need to add a policy about how we operate for grade changes and late submitted grades. The agreement between the colleges is that a grade change form should be filled out after the ET grade feature is turned off (which is 2 days after the due date). a. Keri Cole made a motion to include the following wording in the Policy & Procedure Manual. “When a grade change is necessary, the required state form will be submitted by e-mail from DLC to DLC after the ET grading window is closed.” Phyllis Johnson seconded. Motion carried. 2. The group talked about the lack of communication between USM and each community college. Colleges agreed that they would communicate better with USM. Also, USM should attend the monthly ELC meetings online or face- to-face, to stay informed. i. One ‘con’ of SARA is that there could be more competition in the state. However, it has not been regulated prior to this. ii. SARA is a state-membership, not an institutional membership. Institutions work within SARA. If Mississippi joins SARA, then the institutions would have to join SARA. IHL, for-profit, and community colleges have to be on the same page. IHL hasn’t been concerned about SARA because they only have approximately 3,000 online enrollments university wide, so it isn’t critical for them. The for-profits may be against it, because it would force them to remove some of their W-2 and advertising policies/procedures. 1. Audra e-mailed a document titled “State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA) which details - Regulations – page 2; Definition of physical presence – page 3; etc. iii. Currently there are only 2 SARA institutions (Indiana and North Dakota). 28 are in the process (which requires legislative action). Many states are just waiting to see what others are going to do – join SARA or not. SARA could be a 2-3 year process because of the legislative action required. iv. The reason State Board has been handling this – there was supposed to be some work done, that wasn’t done (before Audra came). Some states require major documents and major fees. If you had to apply to all 53 states it would cost over $30k annually, not including the manpower it takes to communicate and apply to every state. Because it is similar to SACS, it would have to be institutionally handled. It is in the States best interest to become a SARA state. Presidents should let Dr. Clark know their stance on SARA. 1. IHL will get a vote, Community Colleges, and Proprietary Colleges will get a vote. If the community colleges want this, they will lobby for the legislation for this. This is on the docket for the President’s Legislative workshop in June.

d. SARA presented by Audra Kimble

a. Audra stated that we could share the document with our Presidents, or give them portions/highlight most important topics. ELCs should do their homework on SARA and present it to the decision-makers of the institution prior to the June 8 th meeting. Decide what your stance is on this to encourage them one way or another.

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