PRAC minutes for December 9, 2010

Attendance: Susan Clerc, Scott Graves, Tom Radice, Charlie Dellinger-Pater, Susan Felsenfeld, Karen Cummings, Patricia Kahlbaugh

Not Present: Jane McGinn, Marybeth Fede

Meeting began at 9:40 a.m. in ASC 229

Geography's review: The committee reviewed the Geography department's self-study. Some comments on the standards had been circulated via email before the meeting with the intent to help time management. Even thought this was done, we were only able to discuss as a group standards 1-12 before 10:30 when members of the Geography department, Leon Yacher, Eric West and Patrick Heidkamp, came to the meeting. Between 10:30 and 10:55 we went over our comments for standards 1-8 with them . Given that we were unable to fully consider and provide feedback for all 17 standards during this meeting, we agreed to meet again with Geography on January 27th to complete our evaluation of their program review. After the meeting, Patty wrote to Geography with a summary of PRAC's feedback and suggestions for standards 1-12. These comments were also circulated to all PRAC members. The Geography department plans on making suggested revision by December 15th and will meet with us again on January 27th.

Clearly PRAC's process needs to be re-examined. We are very rushed during the first meeting in the review cycle (i.e., a department/program submits a self-study and one week later we review the self-study from 9:35-10:30. The department/program representatives come at 10:30 and we have 20 minutes to provide feedback to them. The department / program has 12 days to revise and resubmit based on that meeting, and then PRAC reviews the self-study again and makes a formal recommendation to UCF). We are working on ideas to increase PRAC's contact time prior to the initial meeting with the department/program so that we can give the best feedback possible to them when they meet with us.

Meeting was adjourned at 10:55.

Minutes respectfully submitted by Patricia Kahlbaugh