Winona State University
Long Range Planning And Assessment Committee
1999-2000 Meetings and Minutes
Meetings
Sept 13
October 25
November 8
November 22
December 6
Minutes
This meeting was called (rather hastily) in response to a MnSCU memo we received on Wednesday, August 25th, requesting an update on the name change issue on our campus by August 20th. This issue had been tabled at our last meeting in the spring in order to get an idea of what the other MnSCU schools were going to do. At this meeting, it was still unclear as to who was doing what, except that Moorhead would apparently opt for the name change to Minnesota State University - Moorhead. In light of the fact that Minnesota State University - Winona was not a favored response by our faculty, staff, students, or alumni, Long Range Planning decided to notify the system office that we intended to keep the name Winona State University.
(memo from Dr. Krueger is here)
September 13
Update on name change: Moorhead will change, Bemidji, St. Cloud and WSU reserved the right to change sometime in the future. Southwest and Metro do not want to change.
Challenge Grants: Susan circulated a copy of the 99-00 challenge grants which incorporate the funding for assessment day into the Level 3 grants. The proposal will be presented to the faculty senate as point of information.
Assessment Day: Discussion as to what to do about the General Education examination on Assessment Day. Becky will go back to Student Senate to discuss the idea of requiring sophomores to take one section of the exam (50 minutes) on assessment day. The idea of placing a hold on a student's registration was also discussed. Becky will let us know what the students think of this idea.
Service Unit Assessment Day: It has become apparent that service units are not as far along on their assessment plans and we would like. Most have plans, but are it is not clear what level of progress is being made. It is also apparent that the level of seriousness of the supervisor directly impacts the level of seriousness about assessment on the part of service units. There was a lot of discussion as to what constitutes a 'unit' and who should have plans. We will need to come back to this question. In the meantime, it was decided that November 24th is too long to wait for service units to discuss assessment. A representative from LRP will go to cabinet on Thursday, 9/30 to secure support for a service unit assessment workshop on October 13th, in addition to the 11/24 workshop.
Challenge grants: They will go to Meet and Confer this afternoon. Susan will get the call for proposals distributed.
NCA: Susan, Dennis M. and Theresa Waterbury will work on identifying the data that we collect to determine if we are making effective use of the money we spend purchasing surveys. This will be important for the grant project.
Service Unit Assessment Day: A NCA preparation meeting will be held on October 13th for Service Units. It has become apparent that many units were unaware that they needed to participate in the NCA self study. It is unclear how the communication broke down on this. Susan will send an e-mail to VPs asking them to encourage participation in their areas. SUA Assessment Day on November 24th may need to be reconfigured -- we'll need to think about this.
Assessment Data: Students' written comments from the Graduating Senior Survey were distributed. Comments were divided into general comments, concerns, and comments for departments. Discussion concerned what to do with this data. It was decided that we would distribute the department-specific data just to the departments involved, and that a task force from long range planning would identify the emerging themes in the student comments.
