DATE & LOCATION | ATTENDEES | COMMENTS |
Tuesday, February 10 | Deans of Academic Colleges plus QEP members Van Dyke, Papillon, and Jones | Deans discussed main goals and strongly urged a focus on Goal 1 of the 3 broad goals in February summary documents. Goal 1 was favored because it was seen as the most doable under budgetary pressures. Questions and discussions occurred on budgets, personnel, details of how the QEP might be implemented, and whether our planning was lining up with SACS rules. |
Tuesday, February 10 | Provost’s Council plus QEP member Jones | Jones updated provost’s council on status of QEP. Questions were raised on how the QEP might be implemented and leadership for it. There was a suggestion to choose one of the three major goals as a focus, and one person suggested Goal 3 was most desirable. |
Tuesday, February 24 | Dixon Hanna, Ken Smith of Provosts office plus QEP members Jones, Lewis, Van Dyke, and Cross | Preliminary Budget discussions w/ Provosts office. Began to put bounds on budgets for FY 2011 and beyond, and discussed needs for FY 2010 needed to complete planning. |
Thursday, February 26 | Division of Student Affairs V.P. and executive staff plus QEP members Penven, Papillon, and Jones | Slight indication that Goal 1 should be emphasized. Goals 1 and 2 seen as more concrete than goal 3. Suggestion to make sure practices well-defined and consistent, current plan not sufficiently focused. Suggestions were made for slight wording changes in goals. Questions and discussion occurred on how the plan might be implemented and advertised. The importance of increasing academic advising was emphasized. QEP members emphasized the importance of Student/Academic Affairs partnership in the QEP. |
Tuesday, March 3 | SGA House of Representatives plus QEP members Jones, Mashack, and Papillon | Questions about meaning of research and multicultural goals. Preference for Goal 1 and strong interest in upgrading advising with standards applied to quality of advising. |
Tuesday, March 3 | SGA Senate plus QEP members Jones, Mashack, and Papillon | Strong preference for Goal 1, and interest in upgrading academic advising. |
Thursday, March 5 | V.P.’s Wubah, Spencer, and McNamee plus entire QEP Implementation Committee | Preference for Goal 1 was expressed. The value of goals 2 and 3 were recognized, and a suggestion was made to include all three goals in the QEP document under the sections that relate to the process of developing our plan. The importance of enhancing academic advising was emphasized. |
Thursday, March 5 | Commission on Student Affairs plus QEP members, Jones, Penven, Lang and Brown | The student leaders favored Goal 1, with a relatively large group choosing Goal 3 as the top priority; none thought that Goal 2 was top priority. All agreed that the three goals reflected needs at VT, and supported the idea of wrapping parts of Goals 2 and 3 into Goal 1. This group also emphasized the need for better academic advising at VT. |
Thursday, March 19 | Staff Senate plus QEP members Jones | Staff senators favored goal 1 (65%) and then goal 2 (35%) with only one person favoring goal 3 as the top priority. They felt that all three goals made sense for VT. They emphasized the need for increased advising not only in academics, but also in the nuts and bolts of how students need to engage with basic policies and procedures. A suggestion was made to use freshmen focus groups to make sure the QEP meets student needs. |
Sunday, March 29 | SGA Executive branch, plus QEP members Jones and Mashack | SGA Executive group agreed that all three of the major goals are important for VT, and that Goal #1 was a good choice as a major thrust for the QEP. Many questions were raised about implementation of the plan, and whether existing or planned projects have been considered. For all of these questions, the QEP implementation team had already thought about the issues raised, and some of the committee’s thinking was shared. |
Thursday, April 2 | Academic Advising Afternoon Chat Series open to all VT Community plus QEP members Jones, Mashack, Van Dyke, Lewis, Brown | Prior to this meeting, the QEP committee narrowed the QEP to focus on Goal 1: i.e., engaging with the institution to develop thoughtful academic planning. We presented this new focus and linked it to the AAC&U essential learning outcome “Foundations and skills for Lifelong Learning”, and proposed to include some or all of the AAC&U assessment rubrics for this outcome; i.e., curiosity, motivation, independence, transfer and self-reflection. Proposed operational elements of the plan were also presented.Comments and suggestions from the attendees included: 1) the value of baseline assessments before the QEP is implemented, 2) a hope that investments will be made across all programs to enhance learning for everyone, and not just in programs that have the greatest needs, 3) a need to avoid duplication of effort if students are involved in more than one program that has QEP-related activities, and to pay attention to internal transfers from one major to another, 4) to minimize problems with the previous issue, it was suggested to develop a 2-semester sequence in which the first semester is similar across programs, and perhaps a little more specific to majors in the second semester, 5) need to address how the ePortfolio will exist and be used by students after their first year experience, 6) career services and other student affairs resources should be more explicitly included in the plan. |
Friday, April 10 | Academic Deans & Wanda Dean (Registrar) and QEP members Jones, Lewis, Brown | The plan presented at the afternoon chat (April 2) was discussed. Responses included: 1) a need to articulate a mechanism for evaluating college success (assuming they are delivered resources to conduct QEP activities), and holding colleges accountable for the funding, 2) the need to address the needs of external transfers was deemed “critical”, 3) the preferred financial model is to ask colleges to provide written plans for the QEP, and provide resources to them if and when plans are approved, a preference was expressed for funding using a per student formula, 4) the issue of multiple QEP experiences for the same student was raised again; this issue has been raised by many groups. |
Tuesday, April 14 | Faculty Senate plus QEP members Jones, Papillon, Lang | The same plan from the previous two meetings was presented. Faculty asked how they might be approached to participate when the QEP is in force, and whether all departments will have to participate. It was suggested that QEP investments used toward personnel should include professionals (e.g., academic advisors). |
Tuesday, April 28 | QEP Town Hall Meeting plus QEP members Drezek, Van Dyke, Papillon, Lang, Landrum, Mashack, Lewis, Brown, Jones, Zaldivar, Penven, Haimann | Provost McNamee and the QEP committee presented the latest status of the QEP, including some updates made since previous presentations, and more examples of how the process could work in various colleges. The community was invited to provide input via email, and some prompts and questions to do so have been posted on VT’s SACS web site. Discussions during the town hall meeting included: 1) a suggestion to be careful with costs of training instructors, which may be more costly than proposed in the current plan, 2) it would be valuable to make a decision on whether the QEP-FYEs should be spread over two semesters, or just one, this is particularly important for planning to avoid duplication of efforts, 3) assessment should include a variety of quantitative and qualitative outcomes, and address learning gains over the entire degree, not just in the first year, 4) investments in the QEP will likely reduce other sorts of expenses made later (e.g., reduced needs for tutoring), and these economies should be identified and included in the plan to show net financial impacts, 5) the specific path and procedure for selecting FYEs for implementing the QEP (which is currently planned to be from central administration to colleges and then out to programs) needs to be more clearly defined, 6) the potential value of having some limited pilot projects before the SACS site visit was raised, 7) a question was asked on whether ePortfolios already being used by students at VT would be incompatible with the new approaches introduced by the QEP. |
Friday May 1 | Department of Engineering Education Faculty Meeting plus QEP members Jones, Penven, Drezek, Zaldivar, Mashack, Paretti | The town hall presentation was made again to the key faculty involved in teaching over 1300 of VT’s freshmen. A suggestion was made to integrate QEP activities into existing innovative FYEs already being taught, thus providing some room for synergies. We discussed the proposals that the QEP would not dramatically constrain or replace current FYEs, and that a bank of best practices and faculty development opportunities would be in place to assist instructors in incorporating QEP modules into existing programs. |