General Education Meeting Minutes April 9, 2018
Attendees: George Dehner (GD), Shirlene Small (SS), Aaron Rife (AR), Amy Drassen Ham (ADH), Steve Oare (SO), Kathy Delker (KD), Sally Fiscus (SF), Rick Muma (RM), Rannfrid Thelle (RT), Mathew Muether (MM), Becky Nordyke (BN), Kamran Rokhsaz (KR), Chris Broberg (CB).
KD (chair) recognized and thanked George Dehner for his five years of service on the general education committee. George Dehner’s term expires after this semester.
KD recognized two new members of the committee beginning next fall:
• Rannfrid Thelle, the LAS Humanities representative who is replacing George Dehner.
• Mathew Muether, the Natural Sciences/Math representative
Although not in attendance, Kathy acknowledged and commended Shelby Rowell, the committee’s student representative for her service during the spring semester on the committee. Shelby was recently elected as WSU’s SGA vice president.
Meeting minutes from the March 26 meeting approved
Curriculum Change Forms:
The general education committee is still expecting a revision of SOC 540 and PHIL 365. The committee reviewed the curriculum change forms for these courses previously but identified several concerns and requested that they be revised. However, the committee has yet to receive a response from the faculty requesting that the courses be granted general education status.
KD is going to send out instructions again to instructors of these courses
GD commented that you can express the concerns of the committee but the committee cannot dictate what the faculty do.
Criminal Justice (CJ) 315
After some discussion CJ 315 was approved by the committee.
GD: We had concerns if the course fulfilled requirements for written and oral assessment
KD: We wanted a fuller catalog description but they lengthened it. Thought it went overboard.
SO: Course added three short papers but they did not mention oral assessment
AR: liked that they added papers and feels that fulfills the requirement for written assessment
SO: Does assessment need to be formal or informal?
RM: probably up to the instructor’s prerogative
SO: discussion is there but then there is nothing addressing assessment.
SF: thought that some of the verbal was included
GD: class room discussion is up to the instructor. Do not need a formal assessment of how discussion and participation is assessed.
SF: We will make sure that the course is further study.
The committee approved CJ 315 as a general education course.
ID 300
There was some discussion if ID 300 was an I&P or further study. ID 300 is requested to be an I&P general education course.
It was noted that the course added the description of research paper and lots of discussion
The committee approved ID 300 as a general education course (I&P)
FYS Fundamentals of Diversity
Committee discussion noted that the course instructor made it much clearer on how she is going to assess general education goals.
The committee approved FYS Fundamentals of Diversity as a general education course.
Election of New Chair of General Education Committee
Shirlene Small volunteered to serve as chair of the general education committee for 2018-2019 school year.
The committee voted and elected Shirlene Small chair of the committee for next year.
Review of committee’s annual report to the Faculty Senate
List of things that should be in it from Faculty Senate president – Kathy submitted but Rick said the committee has never done an activities report for the Faculty Senate before.
Rick has put together The Gen Ed Cmte Annual Review of Student Learning Outcomes each year for the committee to review and approve
First part summarizes what committee did over the year
Rest of the report is the documentation that supports the first part of the report
What is missing – on last page – dashboard. The English pre and post test course. We did not get those from the English dept. This data is currently being tabulated.
CLA ( collegiate learning assessment) results are lower this year but they are still at or near expectations.
The committee should continue to track and assess this.
The CLA is taken by 100 seniors and 100 freshman evaluates for critical thinking. Freshman are more compliant than seniors in taking the CLA. This is different since we moved to Shockers.wichita.edu .
A weekly email is sent but it has been difficult to get students to take it.
Not all students get to self-select into the test
There is a lot of national controversy regarding the CLA as not being adequate.
Difficulty for an institution such as ours to move measures on the NESSE data.
RM: What this shows is that we are performing where we have been over the last several years. We have set high targets so it may be difficult to get a green light or red light.
RM: There would be not changes to the GE program suggested for this next year. Since we recommend that the senate to relook at the GE program
KD: back in the fall we looked at the description of what the GE comte does and we decided that we would update the description. We .need to edit it. It must be approved by the faculty senate.
We are going to postpone the final discussion of the learning outcomes report until our April 23rd meeting so that we have longer to review all the parts of it. We will put this on the agenda
General Education report for the faculty senate
Carolyn – we need names of committee members when we met, what we did.
Kathy discussed the summary of the library’s contribution to the . FYS Program. Rick will add this to his report - in his learning outcomes report. Kathy will send to Rick this afternoon
Vote on three-page report on General Education Committee to faculty senate – is approved.
KR: When are going to revise the committee description?
Committee reviewed and revised the document “Description of the General Education Committee’s responsibilities”
There is not a general education coordinator any more. There are 12 members on the committee. Rick considers himself as a staff member
One non-voting member is the ex officio member. The student member votes
The committee reviewed the general education description and agreed the following changes to the old description:
Eliminate b, c, d, & e.
In #3. replace “develop and implement” with “review and monitor”
Delete #4
Keep #5
Eliminate #6 because we do not work with advising
Create a new number #1 review gen ed proposal
Eliminate 6c, 6e.
Eliminate 6f as it is covered by #5
Meeting adjourned at 1:40 pm
Next meeting on April 23 is the last general education committee meeting for the semester