Committee on Academic Quality
November 13, 2006
123 Penfield

Present: Joan Carroll, Jean Chambers (Chair), Sue Camp, Mary Beth Bell, Audrey Rule, Mary Loe, Mark Morey, Michael LeBlanc

1. The Committee approved the minutes of 11/3/06.

2.  Announcements: Jean reported on the Ken Bain’s presentation “What the best college teachers do" and passed out handouts from the workshop.

Jean reported that she had contacted Rhonda Mandel about the possibility of creating an Office of Assessment. Rhonda indicated that she was supportive of the idea and will present to the CAQ on assessment in the next meeting (11/29/06).

In regard to the committee on assessment, several committee members raised concern about the possibility of committee overlap. We should proceed with caution in recommending a new campus wide committee on assessment be formed.

3. We continued discussion of the MORESO and EGAD projects. Mark Morey gave an historical background of college wide student assessment initiatives on this campus. He also discussed the possibility of creating a local student outcome measure and validating it by correlating it with a more widely normed measure(s). The committee again voiced concern about how assessment data would be maintained and used, e.g., would it be used for departmental feedback or individual faculty assessment.

4. Jean recommended an assessment coordinator that could work with different departments and had familiarity in creating and validating assessment measures.

Audrey pointed out that the Liberal Arts & Sciences Test (LAST), which is required of most School of Education students, could be used to evaluate most general education learning outcomes. A discussion of its use and cost followed. The possibility of recommending that the campus pay for student assessment on measures such as the LAST could be a cheaper alternative than paying for an assessment coordinator.

Jean called for a draft of a proposal for our recommendations to boost assessment on campus. Mark volunteered to create a rough draft of the committee’s proposal with recommendations for assessment.

4. The meeting adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,
Michael LeBlanc, SOE
356 Wilber Hall, SUNY Oswego
x3684