Minutes from 10-20 QEP Meeting

Alan has put the meeting schedule is on the QEP team blog. We need to have a discussion about meeting on November 22. Our regular meeting would be November 24, but that, of course is Thanksgiving. Will there be enough people here on the 22nd to have a meeting?

Data Analysis Document

Alan distributed a table mapping our data sources to the identified outcomes/goals. These goals need to be fleshed out. At this point, they are vague. A small groups will work on this.

We still have concerns about the quality of the UNILOA data. We have not received back the additional information we requested from UNILOA. Taiwo will follow up on this.

The team discussed the data analysis and the goals. Our current list of outcomes/goals were not derived from any data. They came out of the conversation of the whole group during our August meeting, and they have been refined since then as a result of our continuing discussions.

There was discussion about where the data seem to point in terms of a focus for the QEP.

We discussed the 7 outcomes/goals and agreed that #3,4, and 6 could be combined under the broad heading of Liberal Arts

How do we measure these? What are the actions we will see students taking if they truly understand the importance of Liberal Arts? We can make sure they have the skills that a Liberal Arts education requires, such as critical thinking and communication.

We also discussed the processes that are involved in these goals. Some are academic; others, co-curricular. We agreed that we should have a combination of both.

Tim asked, "What is the one thing missing from our first year experience that we want to see?" JoAnn responded that she felt students aren't able to do critical thinking, that they want to memorize not analyze.

Katie commented that Career Services is seeing a lot of freshmen who, because of AP credits, want to go ahead and declare a major. They seem to think they must declare a major because they have the specified number of credits. We want them to think critically about what their major will be.

Alan said he sees 3 aspects of the First Year Experience at UMW -- orientation, advising, and FSEM, but we should explore different models.

Christina said that one thing she did not see in the outcomes/goals was engaged citizenship Does this go in number 7? The could be rephrased as "Develop and act upon standards of personal integrity and engaged citizenship."

The discussion continued, with several reminders that the QEP cannot be expected to address everything. What we need to do have to address a demonstrated need, and we have to be able to assess student learning outcomes and demonstrate that we are making a difference in these outcomes over time. Our time for completing QEP development is limited, and we need to start bringing our topic into focus. We also have to keep in mind the reality of the resources available to address the needs we identify.

We agreed to focus on the following five areas:

Liberal Arts Communication Critical thinking Collaboration Integrity

A small group will take these five and work on developing specific student learning outcomes. There is still some concern that, with the 5 areas, we will be trying to do too much.

Another small group look will look at the processes we currently have in place -- orientation, advising, and the FSEM.

A third group will try to thinks outside the box and to come up with something really different.

Groups:

Outcomes: Alan, Jason, Brad

Processes: JoAnn, Marsha, Rosemary B., Katherine

Outside the Box: Christina, Megan, Lynne, Rosemary A., Stephen T.

Alan will ask those who were not at the meeting which group they would like to join. The groups will confer and report back at our next meeting.