Bryon Clark (Chair), Betty Clay, Jim Cunningham, Jane Elder, Steven Emge, Nancy Hill, Dick Hackett, Brad Ludrick, Linda Kallam, John Mischo, Sharon Morrison, Chip Weiner (ex-officio), Cherrie Wilmoth
Gleny Beach, Debra Haley, Gene Hetzel, Nancy Hill, Shannon McCraw
The meeting was called to order at 2:05 by the chair. The minutes of the previous meeting were approved as posted.
Bryon Clark stated that everyone needs to go back to their advising sheets to make certain they are current. There are some that still have the old General Education requirements. The Chair is meeting with department chairs and will remind them to update the advising sheets. The minimum GPA of 2.0 has been passed by the Academic Council and computer proficiency is now a part of the Gen Ed curriculum.
The Chair reminded members that goals and specific learner outcomes have been approved and need to be on the syllabus. If someone wants to add to the goals, remind them the addition will have to be assessed. A dry run should be made this summer and definitely in the fall to make certain that the goals and outcomes will work. There may be some cases where they will have to be tweaked. Brad Ludrick asked for a final copy of the goals and outcomes. A copy will be e-mailed to each member of the council.
The due date for the assessment report is the second Friday of September (8 September 2006). The Gen Ed report will be part of the assessment. The Chair is requesting a mid-year report due in February for fall 2006. This will give another semester of data for the report. The major report due in 2007 will include Fall 2005, Spring 2006 and Fall 2006. A more comprehensive monitoring report may save us some work later. Brad Ludrick will have an exit survey at the next meeting.
Dr. Polson has agreed to let us use IDEA – Individual Development and Education Assessment – developed at Kansas State. This will give us a student assessment of certain classes. It will be tried first with the Biology classes and may be used eventually by Gen Ed as a whole. It is available on-line.
Michael Miles was chair of the conference committee. Vicki Hudson, Jerry Polson and Theresa Hrncir were representatives of the Academic Council. Richard Hackett, Gene Hetzel, Linda Kallam and Nancy Hill represented the General Education Council. As it stands now, if a student has an Associates Degree, it will be assumed that they have completed the General Education requirements. If not, the student has to meet our requirements. If the student has a “D” in English Comp, it will be forgiven for Gen Ed, but may need to be re-taken for another discipline. Richard Hackett said that he was pleased with the meeting. We will in all probability get English Comp (I and II) and Speech with a “C” requirement. Math and Computer Science may not. However, again, a program may require a “C”, but it will depend on the program. Proficiency exams were discussed at the meeting and there was no conclusion reached. There is concern about lawsuits. Some students are able to make “A’s” and “B’s” in classes but unable to pass proficiency exams. In the Education Department, for example, students must pass a test in order to get a job, but there are still some major concerns about proficiency exams. In general, it would be better to adhere to the “C” requirement and no proficiency exam. The ideal is to develop a standard of commonalities so that, for example, in the event a student has to write a paper for a class other than in an English class, the English rubric would be used to grade the paper. This would apply across the spectrum of classes offered.
The Conference Committee will meet next week (Tuesday, 4:00) to try to reach a compromise on the “C’ requirement for classes. The General Education Council will then need to meet Thursday, March 9 at 2:00 (if a compromise is reached) to vote on the resolution. If no compromise is made then there will be no meeting.
The meeting was adjourned.