General Education Council/Teaching-Learning-Assessment Committee Joint Meeting

March 26, 2008@ 3:00 p.m.

VH243 Room

Minutes

PRESENT:      Cynthia Akers, Tony Ambrosio, Paul Bland, Barbara Bleeker, Gary Bleeker, Tim Burnett, Alexis Downs,  David Edds, Ellen Hansen, Kevin Johnson, Carol Kohr, Neal Luo, Steve Neill, Dennis Pelsma, Jonathan Rivers, Jim Roach, Dennis Schmitt, and Gary Wyatt.

I.          Minutes of General Education Council Meeting March 12, 2008 were approved.

II          Announcements:

• Wyatt announced that the General Education Program Proposal will be up for second reading and a vote in the Faculty Senate on April 1.
• Ambrosio reminded members of the CAAP/VSA Webinar to be held on March 27.

III.       Old Business:

• None

IV.       New Business - None

• After brief explanation of TLAC’s responsibilities and role, Ambrosio

distributed two resolutions that TLAC had previously sent to V.P. Schwenn (11-8-06) and to V.P. Schwenn and President Lane (5-3-07).  Ambrosio invited the General Education Council to join forces with TLAC in co-sponsoring a strategic plan to implement and support university-wide assessments activities.  Ambrosio would like to develop an infrastructure which would help generate a defensible assessment system.  He also distributed two documents—VSA Website Data and The Voluntary System of Accountability—and highlighted several sections in each.

• Akers gave a brief update concerning ideas being considered to assess information literacy skills.
• Luo & Ambrosio reviewed and summarized NSSE data for VSA and CAAP data and discussed how we might use these instruments to get meaningful data, not just politically expedient data.
• Ambrosio asked members to look at pages 19 & 20 in the Voluntary System of Accountability document.

As a homework assignment, Ambrosio asked members to come up with other items that might appear under the “Fighting Chicken Community” section on page 19 and to consider other options (CLA, MAAP) under item Q on page 20.  He also asked members to review KU’s Assessment of General Education (on the orange page) in VSA Website Data.

The meeting adjourned at 4:35 p.m.

                                                     Respectfully submitted,

                                                     Gerrit Bleeker

                                                     Director of General Education

 

            These minutes are only recommendations by the Council on General Education to the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and any actions taken are not official university policy. All changes in the General Education Program are announced by the Dean of the College.

 

Last Updated May 7, 2008