Program Review Committee

Minutes

Jan. 19, 2012

Present: Dinora Cardoso, Alister Chapman, Savannah Kelly, Barb Kennedy, Tatiana Nazarenko (Chair), Debra Quast, Ray Rosentrater, Tim Wilson,

Special guests: Tom Fikes and Phil Ficsor

Tatiana Nazarenko opened the meeting with prayer.

Tom Fikes and Phil Ficsor attended a WASC Workshop on Program Review in Long Beach in November. Soon after their return, they briefed the Department Chairs on what they learned. At this meeting they gave the PRC a recap of the workshop along with some suggestions about ways to excite faculty about assessment. They related that one of the speakers, Michael Weber, Dean of Social Science at USF, was particularly helpful to them as a speaker and in looking at their departmental assessment plans. They gave us 5 take-away points:

  1. Help faculty to make assessment more purpose driven. Don’t treat Program Review like the G.E. courses which students tend to check off.
  2. Clarify the difference between Program Review and Assessment.
  3. Citing the book by Ben Ginsberg “The Fall of the Faculty –The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why it Matters”—if program review is done well, departments can influence what the university is doing. Departments should show us how they have a good program!
  4. Find ways to excite faculty...send them to workshops, have workshops and special speakers like Michael Weber on campus and systematically help faculty in weak departments.
  5. Consider a little change in the 6 year Program Review Cycle…giving 4 years to Assessment, a pause year for program self-study and then the 6 year Report completed before working with external reviewers and submitting their final 6 Year Report.

The minutes from the 11/29/11 meeting were reviewed and corrected.

Copies of the Philosophy M.O.U. were handed out to place in PRC binders. Departments are being instructed to create action plans based on the 6 Year Response and M.O.U.

Tatiana will be away for the next meeting. She asked the members to read the Program Review Guide from John F. Kennedy University. What strategies and techniques are aligned with our process? We should compare their guide to the information requested in our templates.

PRC members were encouraged to attend the presentation next Tuesday, 1/24 from 12-1 on Task Stream software.

Recorded by,

Barb Kennedy