Present: Don Bowers, Co-Chair, Fran DiRosa, Co-Chair, Clint Gould, Connie Love, David Watters, Bob Garofolo, Betty Cannon, Victoria King Garwood, and Steve Simons

The minutes of the August 29th meeting were distributed and reviewed. Clint Gould moved to accept the minutes, Betty Cannon seconded, and the minutes were approved. Victoria King Garwood will email the minutes to Sharon Thompson and Kathy Smith.

The primary themes that emerged during the committee's meeting centered on the Mission Statement, the use of research in assessment and decision making, and the Strategic Plan.

Within a Mission Statement, the statement itself, the goals, and the objectives are fundamental to Middle States. The committee discussed the priority in the mission and the connection between the mission, ideas, and reality.

With regard to the Strategic Plan, the committee focused on Strategic Principle 4 and a spirited discussion ensued on data and assessment. Specifically, the committee questioned how it was the College listened to research and learned from it.

The committee recognized the importance of being able to document improvement and renewal and discussed how assessments are developed in order to conduct evaluations, determine quality, enhance or change programs rather than recycle them, and assign resources in order to do so.

At the suggestion of David Watters, the group agreed to review College initiatives since 1995 to determine the correlation between planning, the initiative, outcomes and allocations.

Clint Gould will contact Sue Piergallini to secure a list of all grants received since 1995, and Fran DiRosa will secure a list of all offices/departments that were created since 1995.

Additional committee assignments were given to Steve Simons who will obtain copies of the Operating Plan, Victoria King Garwood who will obtain copies of the Marketing Plan and Environmental Scan, and David Watters who will gather information on the Mission Statement review conducted during Professional Development Week.

The committee was asked to review the Technology Plan for the next meeting, which will be held on Wednesday, September 25, 2002, from 2:30pm - 4:30pm in the W1-1 conference room.

Minutes submitted by: Victoria King Garwood