GE Committee Minutes
October 15, 2007

Present at meeting: Mary McGuire; Joy Hendrick; Nancy Aumann; Susana Davidenko; David Miller; Mark Prus; Donna West; Mark Worrell; Ron Conklin, Merle Canfield

Minutes from September 14, 2007 � motions made to accept minutes. Approved unanimously.

Review of Professional Writing GE Proposals.

Writing Fiction (GE 8) and Writing Poetry (GE 8) recommended unanimously with limited discussion.

Writing Creative Non-Fiction (GE 8) recommended with one abstention and limited discussion.

Rhetoric (GE 7) recommended with one abstention and some discussion.

All four proposals will move on to the Provost.

Merle Canfield raised the topic of making changes to the GE Assessment Process as an agenda item.

Discussion started with the issue of whether faculty should assign credit for doing an assessment. Our results showed no difference in scores for assessments when faculty giving credit for the assessment versus assessments without credit given.

There was some additional information provided to us about the State�s view of how we are performing our assessments. Merle Canfield and Mark Prus indicated that Patricia Francis said the State will continue to accept our methodology as long as we continue to provide statistical validation showing that there is no difference in results for credit v. non-credit assessments.

Mark Prus said that our campus had starting doing assessments prior to state required assessments of students. Faculty had looked for assessments that related to their own areas at the time.

We picked up some of our discussion from the last meeting about the assessment instruments and who grades them. Typically, adjunct faculty grade the assessments using a rubric.

It was suggested that faculty could include some assessment within the course that identifies the students are meeting the GE requirement.

Joy Hendrick suggested the GE course proposal form could include a check box that it is understood the course may be included in assessment of the GE category. It was agreed that this is a good idea even though departments should already be aware of this.

Two questions were asked about verification of results by using second readers. Who are the second readers? Again, adjunct faculty. What portion of the assessments get verified? Twenty percent of the 20%.

Currently only 2 of the assessments done on campus are not essay form.

Merle handed out his proposed revised plan. There were a few comments about some of the wording about the responsibility for the GE committee. Merle said he would make changes and then request that we vote by email to his revision. He was concerned about getting the proposal before the Faculty Senate so the notification to faculty who will need to perform assessments in the courses next semester get adequate advance notice.

We agreed with this process.

Prior to adjournment the issue of Review of FE Proposal Form was put off until our next meeting. Nancy Aumann said she had received our suggestions and sent the most recent proposal to everyone. She made note of the suggestion by Joy that there be a check mark indicating that a course could be included in an assessment, and will add it to the form revision.

Meeting adjured.

Respectfully submitted,

Ron Conklin