Accreditation:

This week Acting President Spensin James received a preliminary draft of the site visit report from the Accreditation Site Visit Team Chair Eva Conrad. Acting President James, the Accreditation Liaison Officer and writers of the Self-Study Report were asked to review this confidential report and suggest corrections of any factual errors. When the report is finalized, it will be submitted by the Visit Team to the ACCJC. Deliberations are scheduled for the June 2004 meeting. The College anticipates receiving recommendations of the Commission in approximately late July.

There were no surprises on the Evaluation Report, however, the College is being recommended to immediately provide an adequate facility for student learning at the Chuuk Site.

Chuuk Campus:

Mr. Joakim Peter, Director of Chuuk Site, is on medical leave as he needs medical treatment in Hawaii. Mr. Switer Eter, Assistant Director of Chuuk Campus, is the Acting Director of Chuuk Campus while Mr. Peter is on medical leave.

The purchase or acquisition of Chuuk Star Hotel as the future permanent site for Chuuk Site is still far from being finalized. Because of this the Chuuk Site will continue to use the current site during Fall Semester 2004 and Spring Semester 2005. Additional classrooms are needed at the current site if enrollment management has to be lifted for Fall Semester 2004.

The Bilingual Education Project at Chuuk Site has submitted its Annual Report for the 4th Year of the Project. The report is under review by the President's Office and the final report will be submitted to Washington, DC on April 30, 2004.

COM-FSM Land Grant Program at Chuuk Site submitted its proposed budget for FY 2005 for $100,000. Included in the budget are the five proposed programs and their expected target output levels.

The Acting Director for Chuuk Campus is meeting the Chairman of Ways and Means Committee of the Chuuk Legislature to discuss possible funding for a Chuuk Campus permanent site. The administration of the College is continuing its lobbying efforts with the FSM Congressmen and Executive Branch on securing a permanent site for Chuuk Campus.

Kosrae Campus:

The Upward Bound students from Kosrae Site will be visiting the National Campus during the week of April 26-30, 2004. These students will be visiting classes and listening to presentations from program directors of the programs at the National Campus.

Mr. Morgan Jonas, Coordinator of Upward Bound Program at Kosrae Campus, has recently been elected as the President for Pacific Island Chapter of the Trio Programs. Congratulations goes to Mr. Jonas for his election to this new post.

Pohnpei Campus:

The Director of Pohnpei Campus, Mrs. Penny Weilbacher, has submitted the wish list on the Role of Pohnpei Campus. The list included programs that staff/students and leadership of Pohnpei State wanted Pohnpei Campus to offer there.

Patterson Shed and Edwin Sione attended a FSM Youth Conference on March 15-19.

Rita Hinga and Betson Ifamilik are attending an on going GIS training on campus. GIS training is a program out of PCC in Belau.

CES staff and program are transitioning to Office of Vice President for Cooperative Research and Extension at the National Campus.

National Campus:

In conjunction with 2004 Founding Day, College Bowl was held this year on Thursday, March 25, 2005, in the FSM-China Friendship Center at the COM-FSM National Site. All five Founding Day teams fielded squads to participate in this intellectual competition of academic knowledge. Mr. Jonathan Gourlay served as the master of ceremonies and quizmaster extraordinaire; with timing, scoring and judging assistance from faculty Patty Kelly, Reay Verg-in, and Yenti Verg-in and third year program student Peltin Olter Pelep. The Read Team (Yap) fielded a powerful squad and handily won, although congratulations go to all five teams for great effort, positive sportsmanship, and lots of support as evidenced by a large and enthusiastic crowd of student spectators.

The faculty, staff, and students at the National Campus are busy collecting money and materials for assisting faculty, staff, and students at Yap Campus and FSM-FMI who lost their valuable belongings during typhoon Sudal.

The Student Support Services Program (SSSP) grant application is up for the second cycle competition and the due date is on August 2004.

The SSSP is sponsoring an intensive two-week study summer program. The goal of this program is to help improve individual students' chances of passing traditionally difficult courses at the college during regular semester and to increase the program retention rate and promote graduation rate. This summer program will target 60 SSSP participants starting on May 17-28, 2004.

Words of appreciation and thanks is extended to SBA for sponsoring the clean up activities on Saturday, April 17, 2004. The clean up activities included collecting trash and cutting grass by the main road from the College to the intersection of Palikir Elementary School. I would also like to thank students and staff who participated in the clean up activities that day.

The Education Division and the Instructional Department are working closely with the University of Guam in extending at least two courses to students who have been accepted into the University of Guam 4th Year Program during Summer Session 2004.

The FSM National Special Education Program for Pacific Island Entities (SEPPIE) has agreed to fund a number of small projects developed by the staff of the Education Division. These small projects included: vernacular reading program, printing of Special Education History in FSM, and a physical plan for accessibility at Palikir Elementary School.

During the past few weeks a group of students from Pohnpei Campus and three groups of high school students from SDA High School, Calvary Christian Academy and Ohwa Christian High School visited the National Campus LRC. Each group was provided a general orientation to the resources and collections before they began to locate information about their assigned topics.

Librarian Bruce Robert traveled to Chuuk Campus to provide technical assistance and training to staff there. He assisted with installation and set up of the Follet Library Automation software on the new computers in the library and conducted training in using the various components.

The COM-FSM Information Technology Division continues to repel virus activity from the internet. Efforts have been successful to a large degree. Mentionable efforts include the purchase and deployment of the windows based F-prot antiviral software. Deployment plans are for every connected computer at all COM-FSM campuses, F-prot active deployment for the National Campus is 40% complete. The new software is housed locally on users computers and is configured to automatically download virus definitions from COM-FSM owned servers once a day and scan daily for new viruses.

The COM-FSM National Campus has lost multiple power supplies for network hubs in the last month due to recent power irregularities. The cost of replacing such items is roughly $10.00 per power supply. At the current rate we are replacing about one per day and this is impacting the IT supply budget and sometimes it is difficult to get these locally from local vendors.

Acting President met with SBA officers on Thursday, 4/15/04, and discussed with them the student's representative on President Search Committee. The SBA officers selected Gina Tobin to represent the students on the search committee. The SBA officers also reported to the Acting President that they would like to have more seating benches installed at the huts.

Yap Campus/FSM-FMI:

Part of Yap Campus facilities were totally destroyed during typhoon Sudal. FSM-FMI facilities sustained minor damages. Both campuses were without power and water up to Monday, 4/19/04. Ms. Lourdes Roboman reported on Monday, 4/19/04, that power might be restored to both sites sometimes this week.

It was reported to Acting President that a good number of faculty, staff, and students lost their houses during the typhoon and need time to work on rebuilding their houses. Because of this, requests from both campuses on use of administrative leaves for faculty and staff were granted/approved.

Personnel:

A warm welcome is extended to Mr. Nariano Narios who has been hired as Custodian for Chuuk Campus effective April 05, 2004.

Thank you.