To: Standard 9 Middle States Committee
From: Tom Ott
Subject: Minutes 10-22-02

Present: Huizhen Ren, David Freeman, Kathy Harter, Theresa Tsai, Cheryl Nelson, Girija Nagaswami, Pat Scoles, Tom Ott, Liz Speakman ( Theresa Grady has a class conflict)

Theresa Tsai distributed the results of her conversation with Clemmie Solomon regarding student grievances and shared written information from Si Brown regarding policies governing sexual harassment and discrimination. A question was raised whether some of the grievance procedures that find their way to Solomon's office might in fact be discrimination issues that should be forwarded to Brown's office, given the relatively low number of harassment/discrimination cases handled by Brown's office. Theresa agreed to write her findings so far in report form for presentation at our next meeting.

Cheryl reported that she was waiting to hear from Savannah Jones' office for an appointment to discuss issues related to student grievances.

Dave presented a revision of his cover letter and form for addressing charge # 3, Support Services Assessment Plans. Our discussion of this lead to a sense that if we can decide which support services offices hould receive this request for assessment plans, we should also then know which offices/areas should be the focus for our work relative to charge #1. To that end, the committee is charged with review of Kathy Harter and Kathy Mulray's outlines for support services areas for discussion at next week's meeting.

Tom committed to asking Sam Hirsch to meet with us to discuss charge #1.

Tom agreed to review the 1993 Middle States study to see if any recommendations specific to the assessment of student support services emerged from that report. Chapter X of the 1993 report addresses Outcomes and Institutional Effectiveness. However, that section of the report appears to focus on student outcomes and not the effectiveness of individual Support Services areas. There is, however, a recommendation on page 178 that "Student Services should become more proactive in developing its student outcome data bases, and engage in more formative evaluations of their practices in order to improve these services' impact on student outcomes". Therefore, while there appears to be no action plan for implementing this recommendation prior to the 2000-2003 Strategic Plan, where, in Strategic Principle #4 the assertion is made that "At present, the College does not have a set of institutionally-sanctioned, College-wide performance indicators with baselines which could serve as a basis to measure improvement [of all college areas], there is reference to the need for this specific to student support services areas in the 1993 Middle States report.

Next meeting: Tuesday, October 29, 12:00-1:30 in W1-1N

Agenda:

• Report from Theresa Tsai
• Report from Cheryl Nelson
• Continuation of Dave Freeman's charge with discussion of which support areas to should be our focus.