Academic Council Minutes

ACADEMIC COUNCIL

(Minutes)

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

I.            Introductions and Approval of Minutes (8/14/2012) – Odin Jurkowski

Minutes approved as circulated.  

II.           Announcements

A. Provost Deborah Curtis - Thank you to all the folks who worked with dealing with the tragedy this week. Special thanks to Shari Bax and Jeff Murphy. Very impressed how the team came together and keeping the focus on our student’s safety and comfort. Thank you for implementing the ideas put forth for Student Success this fall. Joy Stevenson did a wonderful job lifting up the UCM name at the event with General Petraeus. Moving forward with dialogue developing useful performance based metrics that we decide on and the program review is being revisited. Need both qualitative and quantitative input sent to APRC (Academic Program Review Committee). Time frame is driven by the board of governors, and reinforced by meeting with MDHE suggesting great interest in performance based funding. Would like to have the metrics available by spring and have something in place by the following year, rough timeline.

B. Vice-Provosts

Enrollment Management Rick Sluder - 2 handouts. Blue bar chart - Shows where we are at compared to the same point last year. We would like to have seen 12,000 but we are a little shy. Head count will come up. In terms of credit hours we are 1.7% up from last year. 1,800 new freshman or a 6% increase. Transfer 4.5% increase. Retention is down. Freshman retention rate will be about 69% down 3%. Will break this down by college and departments to compare to last fall and see where we did or did not hit the mark.

Student Success Committee, split off into rapid response teams. Concentrated on what can be done to improve retention this semester (in the box). Last year, persistence was down 2%. The difference that you make the first semester, predicts the difference you will make on the next year. Good group with good spirit and good input. Next month is longer term measures for retention. This will be an ongoing process as all good retention efforts are.

Institutional Effectiveness/Assessment Mike Grelle - Meeting with the Deans for HLC and figure out a better way to collect information. Colleges have identified those that will collect the data. You should receive soon a template for requests of the courses in new Gen Ed program.  To propose a new course we feel are better at meeting the criteria, yes submit to this committee while it is in the curriculum review. Make sure they are identifiable. The template will be out as soon as possible. Current debate in Jeff City on what we will be held to concerning the MO constitution requirement (especially transfer students from outside the state). We are required to offer the course, but no test requirement. The statute requires student comprehension and understanding but is ambiguous in its application to Higher Ed. Gen Ed committee meeting Monday to finalize the form.

 

Student Experience/Engagement Shari Bax - We are hosting a program Dr. Miller in response to last week's events. Dr. Miller will answer questions tomorrow afternoon at 3:00. Set up to be predominately a Q&A in the Wood/Twomey auditorium. West Point Ethics conference this semester. Short time line for nominations, due tomorrow. Really need to get them in to proceed to the interview process. It would be very helpful to have more than the handful of students we have now. Next week is the American Constitution Week. Daily activities will be on Central news. Overwhelmed by requests to have voter registration presentations. Over 175 classes and have registered a couple of hundred students. We do this program every 2 years.  

Technology Jim Graham - absent 

 

C.  Deans - MO Business Conference September 26 ucmo.edu/bizof 7:30-4:00 is official timeline.  Big Idea contest.   Deadline extended to right about now.  Good prizes for student entrepreneurs.  Have recourse in small business and entrepreneur center for students.  Honors - Ofin handout Lecture series

D. Faculty Senate President Cheryl Riley - Thank you for helping to get faculty over to the back to school social. Next year will be out at Pertle Springs. First meeting tomorrow. 

E. Other Announcements and Updates - none

 III.           Information Items

A.  Dept Chair Professional Development Topics (managing hiring processes) - Mark FulfordManaging effective hiring processes. Everyone has been involved in a hiring process. This makes us think we are qualified using the process used to hire them. Lack of attention to the makeup and experience of those on a search committee is an issue.  Take away #1 - Chose your search committee wisely. Objective for search committee is to hire the best fit for position, institution. Take away #2 - Identify the right person for the job. Can they do the job and do it well are they a good fit. Maximize the likelihood of retention. Performance, Fit, and Retention are the key criteria. Must pay attention to all three criteria to make an effective decision.  Fit is newly assessed. Retention is more difficult, but can get a cue from their work history given the culture was similar in the previous environment.  Trying to predict the right person for the job, and minimize the percentage of times we are wrong. Do not force feed answers to the candidate. Utilize the technology that is available to us. Conducting an interview via Skype can be extremely beneficial and cost effective technique. Great at providing information about fit with limited use of resources. Take away #3 use the technology we have available. 

You can ask any question as long as it is not specific to a federally protected group.

B. Faculty mentoring program - Skip Grigsby - (handout) Primary purpose to significantly impact student success and retention by providing pedagogical assistance. Expanded and revised new faculty orientation and mentorship. Mentorship process involved meeting with each new faculty individually, go over syllabi etc, and set up an observation time. Post observation conference with feedback provided. Initial discussions wanted to make sure this was a supportive not evaluative process. New faculty orientation - budget changed significantly but did align with the outcomes and purpose to train and retain new faculty and improve student retention. In planning sessions, wanted the focus to be strongly on student focused teaching. Looked at what had traditionally been done. Thought about who on campus had expertise and who would keep the focus on student  learning. Each area had a coordinator who oversaw the area, presentation and selecting the experts. Roughly 20 hours of meeting time planning the overall, with additional efforts for each area. Response was overwhelmingly positive. A few were initially uncomfortable since it was so different from previous experiences. Suggested having the meetings a little earlier with more work time built in so they could implement. More information on grading and knives at lunch.

 This is not mentoring program this is a student retention program. Good faculty equals good student experience. Another goal is to support faculty with proper strategies for student learning. How do we measure, assess and use the data of student performance to improve student success. October brown bag lunch for new faculty over a two day period to meet their schedules to support the morale and energy that came out with the original sessions. Mentoring piece - Deans purchased Teaching Tips. Every one of the new faculty members received this book. Also using the feedback form to plan for next year and next semester. Meeting with each faculty member to have a pre-observation conference, an observation of the class, and a post observation conference. Has been well received and self-driven. This was for all new full-time faculty. What percent of our faculty are adjuncts that do not get this training? Any opportunity for this to be available to adjuncts possibly in an online format? We will have to match our resources to see what we can offer. CTE adjuncts all go through the Quality Matters. Commendations to those who participated. Have heard very positive feedback from new faculty.  Thoughts of offering a focused seminar on the teaching aspect in January  for those who need a refresher? Could be referred by Chair based on PDP. Recommendations and feedback from chairs are very helpful, as this was just a pilot. Developing a depository of information that will be available for faculty  as soon as the bugs are worked out. Feedback piece of data-set from our participants that has proved very helpful. Can contact Melissa Wilson in CTL now and set up training for any number of faculty. 

C.  Judicial Software - Corey Bowman - Maxient Student Judicial Software - designed to track policy violations, are we following process, and in compliance. We are hoping to use it is to push the boundaries of the software. Whenever there is a policy violation anywhere on campus it records it and how we are working with the student, along with past history. We are integrating the early alert system into the centralized data pool including concerns about student mental health. This will allow us to see a full history of the student's history here on campus whether it is suicide prevention or academic dishonesty. Relies very much on what we put in.. Looking for an easy way to input info into the system. Looking for an easier, revamped early alert  system. Right now taking all the early alerts and putting them in Maxiem. Will include enrollment validation, midterm grades. Allows us to intervene before the window has closed. Identify who is the best person to communicate with the student to help  them be successful after the issue has been identified. Improve interaction with the students. Will there be training? Students will also be able to input. Have identified a strategy on how this can be handled at different levels. Faculty will have specific training that is designed and tailored to how they will use. Advisors and others who will interact with students will have different training. The early alert piece is intended to be in place next semester. This semester early alert will be pushed out next week. Right now  just email Patrick Streck. Who will have access to all the information once it is input and how will it be disseminated? So of this is protected confidential information. Only identified folks will be able to get information out and it will be tiered based. Students would be able to report issues with faculty, but the system is not designed to deal with HR issues. It does have capability to upload video and attachments to your concerns as you submit them instead of walking items over to the student success center. Prioritizing what concerns need to be addr4essed first and will add other capabilities in the future. 

IV.          Discussion Items

Wait lists - Odin Jurkowski - tabled