Brown Bag #2 (IE Committee Meeting)
April 1, 2004 @ 3:30 p.m.
Main Campus – Boardroom

In attendance: David Martin, Jacqueline Addington, Veena Sallan, Greg Labyak, Nick Brake, Mike Gore Stacy Ellis-Edds, Linda Taylor, Vickie Curtis, Christy Eversole, Greta McDonough, Vicki Boyd, Julia Ledford, Peggy Howard, Renee Durand

Nick: Over the last several weeks, articles have been distributed to all faculty and staff of the college.
1. Only Connect: The Goals of a Liberal Education

2. Building a Leadership Vision

3. An Inventory for Learning-Centered Institutions

4. Learning Centered Institutions: Ideas and Observations

In the brown bag meetings, we are providing faculty and staff the opportunity to begin a very thorough and insightful discussion of some of the critical issues that we face as we go into two very important steps for our institution.

1. Five Year Strategic Planning Process

2. SACS Reaccredidation

The college has been so focused on consolidation that we have not taken the opportunity but need to take the opportunity to step back and look at ourselves as an institution and plan appropriately. This counts as one of your brown bags but we encourage you to discuss these articles with people in your building or attend one if you have not already done so. I serve as the facilitator of the brown bags and Mr. Beardmore serves as the recorder. Today, Renee will serve as recorder and she is going to tape the session. This is for her benefit.
Identify one key idea from these articles and how you think it relates to the kind of learning that we value at this institution.

Go round:
The Goals of Liberal Education - They read and they understand - Over the last three or four years, we have really focused on reading skills.

Building a Leadership Vision - Emphasizing Connected and Lifelong Learning – responding to the needs of the workforce. Industries really need people who can adapt and who know how to learn and problem-solve. We have to look at what we are doing in a different way.

Building a Leadership Vision - Removing Boundaries – on-line learning and career pathways initiatives: globalization of the way we do business and the way we put programs out there to students.

Building a Leadership Vision - Removing Boundaries – Advising is so integral to what we do in terms of student success but it is so campus bound. We really need to look at the way we register.

An Inventory for Learning-Centered Institutions - Identifying and Agreeing on Learning Outcomes – In the math department, we try to do that for all the courses. We have a list of what we want every student to know and we test the students to see if they know the material. Clearly communicate to the students what is expected of them.

An under girding value present in all articles is the individual and individual learning. I think this is one of our strengths.

The Goals of a Liberal Education - I would like to see students do all ten items. In the classroom, the students want the instructor to tell them what the need to know, they will try to learn it and be tested on that information. Don’t ask them to think beyond that because this is suppose to be Technical Communications and they do not want to think about anything else. Many students have boundaries on them and we are trying to break down these boundaries but we are fighting a culture that is very difficult to fight.

Taking our students where they are and make sure that before they leave us that we have taken them to the next level where they can truly connect what they are learning. They need to be able to take this information and navigate through an increasingly complex world.

Building a Leadership Vision - As you read each of them, you feel so proud that we do so many of them so well. There are things that we can improve. If you really look at it from SACS’ point of view, we do a lot of these things in a good way. Redesigning and Personalizing Student Support Services in terms of advising – this has been concern in the past with faculty, staff and students. We have come along way but need to continue working on and redesigning the way we reach the student and provide support. An area to work on is on-line registration.

Building a Leadership Vision - Investing in Technologically Competent Faculty – the complexity of the world is certainly increasing the needs of the students in terms of what they need to know and to be able to do. We are facing some real challenges there but maybe the greatest value of instructional technology, at least, is that it enables us to have a lot more tools in our box with which we can reach students and connect with them given their learning styles and individual needs.

Building a Leadership Vision - Emphasizing Connected and Lifelong Learning – Our college encourages lifelong learning. Our advisory committee members also talk about the need for lifelong learning. The members see that we are improving in this area. Also, students need to have the attitude to be lifelong learner. We are in the business of transferring skills and knowledge and we have done extremely well. In the future, we want to emphasize the attitude factor. When those go together, we have a winner. We are working in that direction.

Learning Centered Institutions - Element of time – We need to take a different attitude in using our time getting to know the students and talking to them. In times of change, we must continue to serve three meals a day while the kitchen is being remodeled.

Building a Leadership Vision - Emphasizing Connected and Lifelong Learning – As our mission, we need to instill some value and appreciation for a liberal education so that they are not just focused on one area. “How do I know what I think until I hear what I say.”

Nick: Let’s enhance and feel free to enhance anything that you have said or that was said. Let’s begin to talk about a few issues related to our values. At the first brown bag, Dr. Addington asked the question, “What kind of learning do we value and what do we value?” We want to begin talking about our values as an institution and how our mission can enhance those values. Then we need to start looking at some of the barriers that we need to address that may impede us fulfilling our mission.

Dr. Addington: Dr. Bird made a comment this morning. There is no way we can teach our students everything that they need to know. So if we teach them how to learn then we have taught them to learn for a lifetime. We have to teach people how to learn and our students don’t know how. With the volume of information that is coming at us, we have to know where to go, how to get it and how to use it. How can we assure that our students leave here fully understand how to learn?

The importance of improving basic skills. I was involved when Sally Lake reassessed the reading program. They got the numbers up but not near the numbers that they were expecting. Now that I am spending time at the Adult Learning Center, she find it very interesting dealing with students that are working on their GED. I see how important reading is. We have a lot of students that have not had the opportunity to read and as a result do not understand what they are reading. Barrier – they don’t get credit for developmental courses.
When we teach them how to learn, we are teaching them how to connect the dots. It’s not only how to learn but where learning can ultimately take you.

Nick: The Brave New World discussion and is an example of how effective that book and other books can be where we look at common reading on campus and we assign it in everything from a Sociology class to a Workplace Principles class. The ideals are penetrating enough to deal with occupational issues, world issues and so many other issues. That leads back to what Mr. Gore was talking about – attitude.

Nick: Ms. Wallace had a doctor’s appointment but emailed her comments to me. The Goals of a Liberal Education – her issue is how do we measure our educational system based on those ten qualities. How do we know that we instilled those ten qualities in all students that we touch?

Strategic Challenge #9 – Measuring Program Quality. This is a challenge. How do we measure the program quality? Are you preparing graduates that are fit for employment and meet all the requirements of the employer? Are they meeting the requirements of the instructor and the college? You can produce a product that makes everyone outside of the college happy but, in the academic environment, is the instructor happy or just checking the boxes.
We don’t want to take the same path as the K12 system. We don’t want to go down that road measuring everything and making everything based on some kind of statistical outcome that in many cases hollows out the hole. You can apply that to No Child Left Behind. Are they really connecting?
Small liberal arts colleges are better than other institutions at achieving all ten goals. They have the students for four years. They often have an international or service experience. We only have our students for two years. What are the most critical things that we can do? Where should we really focus in order to make sure we are giving them the very best of what we can give them?
What is being done with Brave New World is a nice step in that direction. It is only one step. As an institution, we need think and talk more about the learning process and less about the nuts and bolts, the facts, dates and places. This is easier said than done. Faculty, as a group, talk too little about how they do what they do. They don’t have a lot of opportunity to do that. We do have a large amount of expertise and things to share. In one of the articles it talks about training the faculty so that they are better trained technologically than the students. It has a lot of merit in this day and age. We need as a faculty to share our expertise. We have so much to offer each other. We have the most incredible faculty on this campus. Faculty care deeply about students. They really do put their entire heart and soul into what they are doing. They could share more with each other.
It is not enough to know terms. We can test them on terms and they can do very well. This does not mean that they would be productive in the workplace. We are interested in how we apply the knowledge. We can test but it doesn’t always tell us what we need to know.

Nick: To sum up the trends we are discussing:
1. The need for more inter-disciplinary connectivity.
2. The trend of needing collegiality.

Is the student better now than two years ago? We are not going to get there unless we some how address the culture that we are up against. There are students that are ostracized by their families because they are attending college.
I have had numerous female students that get close to where they want to go and their husbands stop them from attending college. I don’t know how we can change the culture of the state of Kentucky.
This is a community issue.
Suggestions: public relations task force or an open house. This is a hard thing to address.
The Citizens Committee on Education and the local P-16 Council are embarking on this learning community process and is trying to make Owensboro into a learning community. The surrounding counties need to be included.
Two elements of the college’s mission: 1) Out reach element, 2) Partnership element
One thing that helps cost only $125.00. If you have a 2.5 GPA, you can get $125.00 out of the state. It says to the kids, what no one else has ever said to them, someone thinks you could go to college. It is called a scholarship.

Let’s address challenges:
Resources
Dealing with the diversity of learners
Culture

List things that we might be able to fix:
Fill Blandford Hall and call it a freshman assembly with special speakers that may cause them to look at things differently.
A major goal of Title III is to make GE100 so meaningful that every student will want to take the course. We need to connect with our students. GE100 doesn’t work as well for students on the branch campuses. We need to reform the program so it fits the whole campus community.

Technology is a huge challenge. Title III will help us with this issue financially. Money is there to pay faculty to develop curriculum and to hire an institutional person to help them.
Another challenge is on-line advising and registration. We need to continue to support students that are technologically challenged.
Students’ first experience should be a very positive one. If they have a good experience it will carry them far. We are doing well but need to continue to improve.

Nick: We have discussed student affairs issues, the importance of advising, contact with students, and the importance of all students having someone on campus that they can connect with.

We talk about what the students need to do but we need to also do those things too. We need to take time to connect with our students. We cannot expect our students to communicate on the job if we didn’t take the time to talk with them.
Our students are mostly non-traditional, very nervous and often told that they are not college material. So what do we do - put them in developmental courses. We know what the courses are but it says to them that others are right – they are not college material.
I recently read an article that discussed academic forgiveness, which is what we call academic bankruptcy. Isn’t forgiveness a much nicer words? Maybe we don’t need to emphasize the developmental aspect so much with the students because many are taking a big personal risk when they start college. If we have a strong GE100 course to go along with the developmental courses, we can send the right message to them.
Another challenge is that some of our students do not have a sense of responsibility. The student has to meet us half way. This is very frustrating. How do we get them to take responsibility?

Nick: Let’s bring this discussion to closure. SACS – How do we know that we have added value. SACS is going to ask that question. What can we build into this process of saying that we are going to add value in these ways? How do we know this? It begins with each program area. Each program needs to come up with some type of measurement. It may be a portfolio, exam, or Work Keys. It can be different for all program areas. What might be helpful, as we begin to think about it, is to know what kinds of things are acceptable to SACS. It would be nice to know what measurements other institutions are using. At a later meeting, I will present some research that he has done in this area.

If we are assessing the success of or the value of that, we need to be very conscious of which audience we are assessing for. Are we teaching because SACS says we have to or are we assessing what value the student is getting or are we assessing just to prove to business?
If we value what we ought to as an institution, then we can determine what is important and we can assess it. It will pass SACS.
The first brown bag felt that Cronon’s list of ten items are what we value. These items are the outcome. Outcome is what we want students to be able to do. We value the entire learning process.

Nick: Please continue to think about what it is that we can articulate to anyone that asks us what are values are. How does it tie to our mission? Our mission says that we provide stuff. Is that what we want to say. In the next three to four months, we need to come up with what we value, how we put it into action in our mission and what do we want our mission to be. We need to develop our QEP. There will be a meeting with community members on June 2, 2004. They will help us develop our five-year strategic plan. We will want to have some of our questions answered by then.