SPIG Minutes for Wednesday, June 9th, 2004

10 - 11:30 AM

Attendees: Deborah Bordelon, Bart Everson, Lanny Foss, Susan Fredine, and Todd Stanislav.

Lanny presented notes from a conference on Supplemental Instruction and asked for this topic to be placed on a future agenda for consideration in the strategic plan.

The minutes of the 6-2-04 meeting were reviewed, amended, and approved.

The group reviewed draft seven of the mission-program-values document, with particular attention to the section on values. The group agreed to the deletion of the point which referred to "institutional initiatives." The group agreed that supporting examples were not needed for the final document, although thinking about examples might be a useful exercise in formulating the value statements themselves.

The point about "constructive, confidential feedback" may be worth revisiting when we discuss the programmatic elements of the Center's infrastructure.

The group agreed to the following other changes to the bulleted statements in the values section of the document:

move the statement that begins, "provides constructive, confidential ..." to just before the statement that begins, "values assessments as a means ..."
replace the word "values" with "promotes" for the statement that reads, "values effective programmatic ..."
combine the last two statements into a single statement that will read, "values making public, inasmuch as possible, its policies, processes, and outcomes of its work."

The group engaged in a discussion of the differences between assessment and evaluation. The group confirmed the deletion of the reference to evaluation.

Lanny suggested that the Center should promote a broad range of assessment practices and tools that faculty can use for the improvement of teaching and learning. He noted that one way the Center could do this is by providing more workshops and information on a range of assessment methods. He also suggested the Center could help faculty understand the difference between evaluation and assessment.

Lanny requested that the members consider two additional value statements at the next meeting:

promotes/values an effective and substantive academic support system
values opportunities for students to explore academic careers.

-- Minutes respectfully submitted by Bart Everson and Todd Stanislav.