PRAC Meeting Minutes 2.14.08

Attending: Karen Cummings, Tom Radice, Susan Felsenfeld, Ray Mugno (chair), Patty Kahlbaugh, Kathleen Rondinone, Mark Cameron (secretary). Guest: Marianne Kennedy

1. The group reviewed proposed edits to the Academic Program Review Document Draft #7. There was discussion about a proposed amendment to the document calling for peer review and group members said that this was already happening in their departments and might be acceptable to faculty. There was a recommendation that information about faculty attendance at faculty development workshops be requested. The challenges of measuring effectiveness and how this differs from the evaluation of quality of instruction were discussed. Both outcomes and process measures might be useful. Marianne stated that she will work with the proposed edits and return with a new draft for our consideration.
2. There was a discussion of the glossary for the draft. Recommendations were given to Marianne for edits. There was a good amount of discussion about the need to include a definition of "objective." Marianne will edit and return with a new draft.
3. We briefly discussed making attempts to minimize or eliminate redundancy for departments doing evaluative work for external reviewers/accreditation bodies. The current position on this is not to simply accept evaluative work done for external reviewers but to allow/encourage departments to use this work to meet university requirements.