Priorities, Priorities and more Priorities!
Thank you everyone for a lively faculty meeting, despite that steamy room we had! After all our conversations, deliberations, consternations, and salutations, I think we achieved some REAL progress in moving towards our External Review Response. Below are the main points we covered during the meeting, and then I'll try to provide some next points of movement.
BearCOM Speaking Lab
Ryan Childress spoke to the group about his proposal to test a speaking lab in spring 2008. He was responsive to the many questions that were posed by the faculty meeting. Dare I say, he was extremely resilient in the face of some very strong opinions and assertions by the faculty. Based on the feedback from the faculty, Ryan has agreed to work on the following items to revise his proposal:
- Meet with the Basic Course Director and discuss how to better coordinate with that program in light of the item that involves using a couple sections of public speaking in spring 2008 test. Efforts are underway to secure such a meeting.
- Survey a sample of COM 115 students to clearly establish a need for this service by those very students. Taleyna Morris has offered Ryan some specifics on that in a follow up email. This also relates to a related element that Ryan is working on and that's to assess student satisfaction and faculty satisfaction with the performance of students seeking this assistance.
- In order to ensure proper instruction, training of the tutors is of paramount importance. This can be discussed with the BC director.
- Include research on other university speaking labs of similar shape and purpose. Jeff Ireland volunteered his services in this endeavor and will work with Ryan to sufficiently include such information in the follow up proposal.
- One suggestion was made regarding the future of the lab and that involved realizing the research opportunities with such a speaking lab. Depending on future staffing and support, it could be of benefit to some faculty members who could use the lab for scholarship purposes.
External Review Response by the department
I reiterated that the response to external review is going to be a more specific task that was originally envisioned. I spent some time discussing the current format of the report based on Provost McCarthy's comments to Dean Adams. There was significant concern that completing such important prioritization by the faculty, by the end of the semester, may be unattainable, but not impossible. Many echoed those concerns, especially with three searches currently underway.
I layed out two essential elements of the report. One, priorities for change. Two, actions steps and timeline those items.
PRIORITY AREAS FOR CHANGE (these have been discussed in previous faculty meetings and will be refined in this process)
1. Strategic recruitment: The report recognizes that our current enrollments are strong in all programs, we want to focus recruitment efforts in strategic ways. In doing so, we will need to develop a set of recruitment goals for both undergraduate and graduate recruitment. Goals will be different for each. Examples include increasing diversity of students in our programs (groups such as Hispanics, Native Americans, and African Americans can be reached from a variety of local communities). High school students are a ripe group from with to recruit as well as transfer students from local community colleges. We may also work to develop relationships with other 4 years schools to encourage students to apply to our masters programs. development of recruitment goals will need to be based on faculty discussions in several areas. Some of these discussion points would likely include (a) consideration of our capacity – how many students at each level can we effectively serve (b) consideration of matches between recruited student interests and faculty expertise/interests (both teaching and research); (c) university priorities such as increasing diversity.
2. Strengthen research focus: The report encourages us to identify priority research areas and focus energies in those areas. We agree and want to build on our current strengths to develop those priorities. The main areas of research are a) applied communication with an emphasis in conflict, public relations, and political communication, and b) scholarship of teaching and learning. These areas would also allow us to synch our teaching with our research areas.
3. Enhance CDR support: The report notes the excellent work of the CDR as well as the need to enhance its funding. It’s clear that the CDR needs to develop research areas that fit with fundable projects and that correspond with the department’s existing teaching, research, and service projects and abilities. Doing so would enhance collaboration opportunities for faculty and student in the area of research as well as teaching.
4. Strengthen online programs: Our online programs are places of great strength as well as promise for future enrollment growth. We need to continue to support these programs and find ways to support faculty in development of online courses as well as finding new audiences for our online courses and programs. Solid faculty support is essential to this priority.
5. Balance faculty workload demands: Applegate clearly identifies our department as providing essential service to the university. This assists us in being known for engagement at the university and community level and we want to maintain that presence. However, in order for us to increase our research profile, we need to become strategic in our service. This should involve an inventory or service and deliberations about how to engage in university governance and how to possibly streamline departmental committee service as well as "time in" for activities like advising sessions, colloquia, etc.
6. NEW PRIORITY ITEM: Enhance Student Experiences: This area evolved out of discussion on a variety of issues. For instance, our students aren't happy with, nor are some faculty, with the internship for credit experience students currently receive. Jim notes this in his report after talking with our undergraduate and graduate students. We also discussed how instructors may contribute to advising on a more consistent basis, and in other areas. One of those areas may be coordinating internships. Faculty felt it was an important enough experience for students that a full time faculty member oversee the process. Moreover, with the earlier discussion about a speaking lab for all students, IF that is something the department gets behind, then that's an additional commitment to student experiences. It must be explored in much more detail, however. Another area that this topic relates to is the student portfolio assessment. In order to make it a meaningful task for students and meaningful data to the faculty about our curriculum, it needs revised considerably. It is within this area that we need to explore, as a department, ways to utilize the resources we have, including the full time instructors and how they can contribute in more meaningful ways to this department priority. We want to enhance the student experiences within and outside the classroom in order to provide a rich and varied learning environment that will augment their classroom experiences with faculty.
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Now I need your feedback. I've heard from a couple of you already (THANKS). Please review and consider the 5 original priorities outlined above. How does these sound? What can you add to them in terms of clarification and examples? Then, how did I do with beginning to flesh out the 6th priority area? What suggestions do you offer here by way of examples? Finally, is there an area here that we have not explored yet? Keep in mind, these are priority areas of change (not what we do well now).
Footnote; I think we will be better off, in the long run, to put these areas in order of importance to the department. The dean and provost will definitely ask us which comes high on our list and which are less significant. We can think, short term importance and long term importance and nest them in priority.
And ultimately, the discussion will need to identify what we are not prioritizing (that will come later with a revision of our strategic plan). So, if we say we want to strengthen online courses offerings, then those faculty will teach more online sections. What are the opportunities we have now to allow this to happen? How can we mentor new faculty in this area? What holes in our department will that create curricular-wise? Is that an opportunity to have an instructor pick up a non 115 section? If that happens, how do we cover that 115 section? Do we then go with more per course instructors for 115? These are the ways we'll have to think about how we will contribute to the positive change by reorganizing our workload, reducing some service, while also creating more collaborative research projects to keep our research moving along.
NEXT? We have another faculty meeting Dec 5. My plan is to take your email or verbal feedback between now and then, have a draft of a report for you to "in advance" of the meeting for us to discuss. By that meeting, we'll still have time to craft our final response, and possibly have an additional faculty meeting, if necessary. I'm hopeful we can complete this by the end of the semester. And if necessary, give the dean a draft for feedback if we aren't ready. I feel good we can accomplish this.
NCA is next week. Have fun, meet people, get good ideas and recruit people for our jobs. I have invitations in the office for you to take.
Kelly