DATE:	03/11/2003
TIME:	3:30 to 4:45 PM
PLACE:	W2-56
PRESENT:	Deb Rossi, Warren Berman, Marcia Epstein, Emilie Harting, Madeline Marcotte, George McCasland, Joan Monroe, Lynne Sutherland, Mark McCormick

1. Reports of Progress

   • Members reported on what they have been up to since our last meeting.

   • Warren passed out an explanation/summary of each of the institutional research documents that he and Joan reviewed. The first two pages of the document contained summaries of each of the IR reports and the last two pages presented the information in relation to our action plan.

   • Lynne and Mark, who looked at the Math Department documents, also handed out their findings thus far. Like Warren and Joan, they described their report as a "work-in-progress." They structured their notes after the action plan, answering the relevant aspects of questions 1 & 2 in regards to the Math documents they reviewed.

   • Deb reported that she had evaluated five courses in the Art Department. She reviewed the prerequisites and sequencing of the courses, course goals, and looked at the different sections of the course documents recording all information regarding student assessment and grading and course evaluation.

   • Marcia reported she has been reviewing the music documents and has found a great variety of assessment tools, noting that there was diversity within some aspects of grading.

   • Maddy reported that she thought the psychology documents (dimensional approval documents) were very interesting. She questioned the scale for evaluation of student papers, remarking that, while the course objectives included mastery of content, such was not mentioned on the rubric. Further, the rubric may be too vague or may not be widely enough used as to provide outcomes assessment that could be called systematic.

   • Warren offered an explanation as to why the scale didn't specify content and only touched on stylistic elements of the writing assignment: applying for dimensional approval makes the course document lopsided; that is, say, you are applying for scientific reasoning-the document will emphasize that "dimension" of the course. Therefore, the dimensional documents may not be truly representative of what is actually happening in the course. He further noted that there are three kinds of course documents, "old" (like the one mentioned earlier by Marcia), "new" (the ones constructed for Act 335), and "dimensional." All the old and dimension documents will need to be rewritten according to the new design for course documents over the next couple of years.

2. Interviewing Issues

   • Marcia commented that the interview turnout for curriculum coordinators was low, mainly because we were "Johnny-come-latelies" and many faculty and administrators feel they have already participated in interviews for other Middle States committees. One interview had been conducted today with a curriculum coordinator and the second set of interviews are scheduled for Wednesday, March 12th at 11:15 AM. After discussion about scheduling problems, it was decided that phone calls would me placed to several of the curriculum coordinators and encourage them to attend Wednesday's meeting. The group concluded that, given there are twelve curriculum coordinators, four or five interviews would be a representative sample. Representatives from the following departments would again be contacted: Early Childhood Education; Paralegal; Criminal Justice; Behavioral Sciences; Culture, Science and Technology and Liberal Arts.

   • Emilie and George are interviewing department heads and they have conducted two interviews. They have three more individuals who are scheduled to meet with them. The department heads are from the English, Paralegal, Nursing, Physics, and Automotive Departments. Given that there are 27 department heads, it was decided that we needed to obtain 25 percent representative sample. Emilie will contact additional people to meet that requirement. The next department head interviews are scheduled for Thursday, March 13, 2003 at 3:45 PM.

   • Another question arose about how we would format and synthesize the interviews. Warren suggested that Ruth Baker could get an objective look at the interview results and synthesize each grouping. But Marcia pointed out that interviews had a special subjective quality-nuances of meaning-that would be lost if someone other (than the one who conducted the interview) interpreted the results. We concluded that the interviewees should type up the interviews in "question and answer" form, with a synopsis at the beginning. We anticipate including the interviews in some fashion in the appendix section of our forthcoming document.

3. Miscellaneous Items

   • Warren will work with Emilie on the Paralegal documents.

   • Maddy will still interview English faculty in the upcoming English meetings.

   • Warren and Marcia suggest that we make sure to construct a thank you letter, thanking all the various people who have granted us interviews and given their valuable time.

   • Mark and Lynne will work on the Electronics' documents.

   • Deb told the group that Sonya agreed to work on the Automotive courses.

4. Homework

   • Continue to work on the documents and syllabi with action plan and interviews, if scheduled.

   • Student interview questions must be compiled ASAP. Please bring to next week's meeting.

Next meeting: Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Location: W2-7 Conference Room

Recorder: Maddy Marcotte