Today@Sam Article

Regents Approve New Academic Programs

May 19, 2017
SHSU Media Contact: Julia May

The Texas State University System Board of Regents approved several new academic offerings for Sam Houston State University during its quarterly meeting on Friday, May 19, at Texas State University in San Marcos.

According to SHSU officials, the program changes will help address increasing educational requirements for teaching professionals and better reflect specific areas for which students are being prepared to enter the job force.

The regents authorized SHSU to offer a program leading to the Bachelor of Science degree with a major in environmental science, upon final approval by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The program will utilize existing courses and will offer two tracks—pollution abatement and environmental sustainability. Both tracks will contain a common set of core courses.

The regents also granted approval to offer the Master of Arts degree in mathematics via distance learning.

“More school districts are including dual-credit college algebra and pre-calculus courses in their curriculum as well as maintaining classes in AP calculus and AP statistics,” SHSU President Dana Hoyt told the regents. “Master’s degrees are required to teach these classes. The online format will provide graduate education to working professionals and others who, due to job obligations, geographic location and/or other constraints, are unable to pursue on-campus coursework.”

The university also received approval to offer graduate certificate programs in sociology, American history and English. These new certificate programs will help teachers with master’s degrees or doctorates who are interested in broadening their teaching fields to obtain the necessary graduate hours required, to teach outside their majors at the community college level.

Additional academic items approved by the board included:

  • Changing the name of the Bachelor of General Studies degree to the Bachelor of Liberal Studies and relocating the degree plan from the College of Science and Engineering Technology to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences;
  • Changing the degree titles from the Master of Education in Instructional Technology and Doctorate of Education with a major in Industrial Technology to the Master of Education with a major in Instructional Systems Design and Technology and to the Doctorate of Education with a major in Instructional Systems Design and Technology;
  • Adding two biology courses and two statistics courses to the university’s general education core curriculum course requirements;
  • Increasing the number of credit hours required from 30 to 36 for the Master of Education in Administration; and
  • Changing the name of the Department of Management and Marketing to the Department of Management, Marketing and Information Systems.

In finance and operations business, the regents authorized the university to enter into a utility easement agreement with the City of Huntsville for improvement of existing utilities along the north Holleman Fields at the SHSU I-45 Agriculture Complex.

In other business, faculty members approved for promotion to associate professor with tenure, effective Sept. 1, include: Burcu Ates, language, literacy and special populations; Maria Botero, philosophy; Michael Demson, English; John Harris, geology; Santosh Kumar, economics; Karin Perry, library science; Shani Robinson, accounting; Masahito Sugihara, music; Jeffrey Sullivan, counselor education; and Lawrence Wolfskill, agricultural sciences.

Those receiving promotion to full professor are: Rebecca Bustamante, educational leadership; Rebecca Finley, art; Rebecca Garcia, mathematics; Fidel Gonzalez, economics; Michael Henderson, art; Jeffrey Littlejohn, history; Javier Pinell, music; Laura Sullivan, business administration; Markland Tuttle, economics; Pamela Zelbst, management; and Shuangyue Zhang, communication studies.

Stephen Brown, population health, has been promoted to full professor with tenure.  Associate professors who received tenure include M. Pinar Emiralioglu, history; Dwayne McSwain, accounting; and Cheryl Neill, nursing.

The next quarterly meeting of the TSUS Board of Regents will be Aug. 16-17 in Alpine.

 

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