PROGRAM REVIEW AND ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE                   
 
Minutes of: February 3rd 2005
 
Present: C. Coron (co-chair), K. Cummings, M. Kennedy, R. Mugno, H. Podnar (co-chair), E. Schmitt, W. Shyam, L. Yacher.

Started: 10:10am.

At the beginning of the meeting, members expressed their excitement about the recently awarded Faculty Development grant. Members agreed to extend their commitment and take necessary steps to continue with planned assessment workshops over multiple semesters. The discussion about the workshop scheduling, theme and possible speakers followed. Some theme suggestions included: course embedded assessment and assessment of critical thinking. It is planned for the workshops to feature SCSU successful assessment practices. The first workshop is going to be organized towards the end of February 2005. PRAC will continue with the related discussion by electronic means. The organizational efforts are to be finalized at the next PRAC's meeting.

A short report was given about the activities of the CSU Assessment Conference planning committee.

The meeting continued with a discussion about the current assessment process and required documentation. A member suggested that the clarification of the process, data collection, and final reporting is necessary. Members engaged in a dialogue about difficulties in decoupling assessment and evaluation, and SCSU perspective on it. No conclusions were made at this time.

Dr. Kennedy reported that SCSU has been accepted as a 'Campus Program' Affiliate of the Carnegie Foundation for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) and the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) (carnegiefoundation.org).  Affiliates connect with the Campus Program Clusters to collaborate efforts in support of the scholarship of teaching and learning on their campuses.  Dr. Jean Breny Bontempi will be SCSU's liaison to the SOTL project. SCSU has also received preliminary results from the NSSE's 'Beginning College Student Survey' (www.iub.edu/~nsse/). The results will soon be distributed to SCSU community. The next part of the survey will be distributed to our students electronically. The faculty is asked to encourage students to participate.

Adjourned at 11:15am

Recorder: H. Podnar