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ASU Biology Prof Named to THECB Advisory Committee

February 04, 2011

Dr. J. Kelly McCoy, head of Angelo State University’s Biology Department, has been picked to serve on the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s (THECB) 2011 Tuning Oversight Council for Engineering and Sciences (TOCES).

The 2011 TOCES consists of four advisory committees that will assist the THECB as it continues to integrate the “Tuning” process into the state’s college and university curriculum for biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, biology and chemistry. McCoy will serve on the Biology Committee. The first TOCES meeting will be Friday, Feb. 25, in Austin.

In 2009, Texas was one of only seven states to receive a four-year, $1.8 million productivity grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education to continue seeking ways of making college more affordable for students and the state. Lumina’s “Tuning USA” Initiative is a faculty-led pilot project designed to define what students must know, understand and be able to demonstrate after completing a degree in a specific field. It will also indicate the knowledge, skills and abilities students should achieve prior to graduating at different degree levels.

Over the four-year grant period, with the help of voluntary advisory committees made up of higher education faculty from across Texas, the Tuning process will be applied to 12 academic discipline areas. The process began in 2010 with civil, electrical, industrial and mechanical engineering, and will continue in 2011 with biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, biology and chemistry.

In addition to being head of the ASU Biology Department, McCoy is a professor of biology and curator of the Herpetology Collection in the Angelo State Natural History Collections. He holds a Ph.D. in zoology from Oklahoma State University.

The Lumina Foundation for Education is a private, independent foundation based in Indianapolis. Its mission is to expand access to postsecondary education in the U.S. Its current goal is to increase the percentage of Americans who hold high-quality degrees and credentials to 60 percent by 2025.

The THECB was created by the Texas Legislature in 1965 to provide leadership and coordination of the Texas higher education system.