Fred Antczak’s 2014-15 Goals
sorted under Strategic Objectives of CLAS

1. Enhance Quality and Rigor (NCA 1-5; GVSU 1, 5, 6)[1]

Goal: Continuously improve high quality, student-focused, undergraduate and graduate education.

* Deepen and foreground our commitment to teaching and academic advising.

* Received and began to move forward on recommendations of our college Advising Taskforce; work to make recommendations on advising, workload implications and student outcomes relevant to and supportive of the teaching of all faculty. First step: criteria to assess unit advising

* Continued to support Student Success Collaborative; train faculty and staff to participate.

* Expanded faculty use of the SSC advising tools, continue to work with SSC folks to upgrade the database

* Work with units to implement General Education changes and adapt to effects on enrollment.

* Developing schedule of Issues courses

* Extendbest practice of inviting in external consultants for response toself studies.

  • Geography & Planning had external consultants in Fall 2014.
  • External consultants for History scheduled for late March.

* Further develop and better publicize College “research clusters”; extend their effect on scholarship.

* Provide support and development opportunities to faculty groups designing research projects.

* Continue to enhance ways of enhancing the professional development of APs and PSS.

  • Develop CLAS Staff Roundtables—polled for topics, increased attendance.

* Increase educational opportunities that appeal to diverse and global student constituencies.

  • Encouraged experimentation with hybrid courses especially for the Spring and Summer terms; encouraged faculty to seek training in this kind of course provision if interested.
  • Worked with the campus Internationalization Task Force to foster more global learning in each CLAS major.
  • Advance proposed transcript designation in Modern Languages—done.
  • Supported the reconfiguration of journalism and broadcasting to a new program that supports multimedia journalism and that will have a global appeal.

* Foster use of technology.

  • Continued to foster interest in online course offerings for Spring/Summer courses among the CLAS units

* Enhance on-campus communication and accessibility.

  • Continue to extend the collaborations with the College of Education related to programming for undergraduates, student teaching programming, summer Hispanic Center programming, and new program development.

* Support the development of a minor in Big Data in collaboration with CIS--underway

* Support the changes to the online curriculum system and provide unit head training on use of the newer system to assist in student program development.

* Work with university on strategic positioning 2014-2016

2. Enhance Diversity throughout the College (NCA 1, 3, 4, 5; GVSU 1, 2, 4, 5)

Goal: Increase and support diversity at all levels in the College.

* Increased ournumber of Inclusion Advocates and Champions

* Increased our participants in Allies and Advocates.

* Increased our participation in the VetNet program.

* Continue to be a visible participant in inclusion advocacy; invited the DSR office to present to unit heads in Fall

* Continued support of LGBT Resource Center events (e.g. Lavender Graduation)

* Increase intellectual diversity and vibrancy of Faculty Colloquium, Teaching Roundtables, Sabbatical Showcase, and other inclusive College events--underway

  • Continue to be inclusive in various ways (posting menus, accommodating dietary needs, etc.)

* Encourage leadership development in faculty and staff.

* Assist Programs and Departments in data gathering so they might see their own student and faculty diversity.

3. Assure Sufficient Resources (NCA 1-4; GVSU 1, 5, 6)

Goal: Explore means within departments, the College, the University and beyond the University to address funding and resource constraints guided by the values of equity and productivity.

* Initiate Gretchen to her new duties, and integrate her contributions to the work of the office and the life of the College.

* Launch a new Unit Head Development series--done

* Help units identify and address workload issues.

  • The Advising Task Forcetasked to address workload issues related to academic advising
  • Continued to reduce use of reassigned time in CLAS, more reliance on stipends where needed

* Continue to work with related units (CoE, Nursing, CHP, etc) to bolster and streamline curricula and to enhance budgetary accountability and predictability.

  • Developed a communications course for the new Master’s in Public Health; provided support from BMS on CHP’s new dietetics master’s program proposal.
  • Consult with CoE faculty to develop an early childhood undergrad endorsement program, and to create collaborations in data reporting, classroom and other topics.
  • Collaborate with Brooks on cross listing courses for area studies as well as women and gender programming.

* Worked with Records to use Banner more effectively for tracking workload--underway

* Continue to reallocate and manage budgets for maximum educational effectiveness.

  • Receive and move forward on Principles of Equity in Allocation Task Force (PEAT).
  • Units have been given target budgets for summer instruction to manage Spring/Summer expenditures.

* Support the University in identifying new financial and space resources, especially where their absence aggravates bottlenecks.

* Increase grant applications and successes over records set in 2013-14.

* Continued to cultivate new proposal writers through our program of workshops and mentoring.

  • Implement improvements in first and second year faculty development seminars.

* emphasized grant applications that include student research.

  • Continue to provide tailored distribution of grant announcements to the faculty and appropriate APs—done
  • Foster communication and best use of resources between Sponsored Programs and our college.

* Advertised new Allendale location of Grants Office to encourage greater consultation.

  • Work with CLAS Faculty Development Committee to explore ways to support faculty seeking to renew/rekindle existing or new directions in research; mounted a webpage in support.
  • Grow the CLAS Fund for Excellence—always underway.
  • Continue activities to raise money for CLAS Scholarship Fund.

* added alumni of Student Advisory Committee to distribution list for CLAS annual reports.

* Support campus sustainability efforts

  • Implement electronic process for disposition of all incomplete grade processes; adopt and test the university-led creation of a secure web based incomplete grading system--underway

4. Assure an optimal learning environment (NCA 3, 4, GVSU 1, 2, 4, 5, 7)

Goal: Build and sustain an atmosphere of inquiry, integrity, engagement, curiosity and creativity among students, staff and faculty.

* Clarify curricula and work to remove bottlenecks.

* ExpandedGRCC-CLAS collaboration for transfers and facilities.

* Began to exploresimilar collaborations with other community colleges, especially Montcalm and MCC.

* Link new early childhood teaching endorsement for undergrads with existing work at local CCs--underway

* Streamline BIO and NRM programs to reduce bottlenecks and clarify programming; in the queue.

* Implement unit review of syllabi from Lake MI CC related to education courses for elementary to link syllabi to our current courses-done

* Reconfigure EXSCI, Physical Education, and Sport Leadership programming for clarity and to reduce bottlenecks and redundancy in fieldwork related opportunities.

* Facilitate implementation of new General Education program--undeerway

* Implement recommendations from Advising Task Force (the ATF)—underway.

* Enhance professional and faculty advising so as to minimize obstacles to graduation--underway

* Integrate data and strategies from Student Success Collaborative into advising process--underway

* Foster student retention with high impact activities within and beyond the College.

* Continue to develop more internships for CLAS students; assist units in compiling meaningful metrics.

  • Featured internship fairs offered by GVSU and CLAS units.
  • Worked with units on the emerging state to state constraints; working with the Provost Office to identify a single internship reporting system for state to state programming and related needs

* Work with departments and University on optimal design of newly available space and the ensuing shuffle of occupants—underway, mostly done I hope!

* Explore ways of expanding Spring/Summer instruction.

* consider mid fall advertising in other Michigan universities’ newspapers.

* Work with departments to improve advising and increase specific credit in transfer.

  • Use new articulation agreement with GRCC as a model to expedite this request; identify next programs that could benefit from this action--underway
  • Offer at least 1500 advising appointments to potential Laker transfers for whom credit review was part of the activity-done

* Gather data on impacts of course cancellations--underway

* Support the Student Success Collaborative--underway

* Contribute to GVSU effort to expand and enhance Living Learning Centers Program on campus—several faculty members loaned to support the effort.

5. Engage with Community Partners/Collaborators (NCA 1, 3, 4, 5, GVSU 1-7)

Goal: Foster partnerships with relevant external constituencies which enrich the education of our students while enhancing the quality of life for the people of the region, the state, the nation and beyond.

  • Prosper the Grandparents/Grandkids/Grand Valley Camp--underway
  • Design and implement modern language collaborative idea leveraging the capacities in language instruction of various local colleges--underway

* Work with Ruth Stegeman to invigorate community engagement throughout the College.

  • Work to generate faculty buy-in for the new data reporting for service learning and link it to other service learning/HIP data gathering efforts.
  • Work with community partners to find more engagement and research opportunities for students in the humanities.

* Work with more units to explore broader service learning opportunities.

* Work across units to find meaningful ways of assessing student work in service learning.

* Work with Ruth Stegeman and Nancy Giardina to systematize data gathering, analysis and reporting

about student impact of internships and service learning---underway

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[1] NCA refers to North Central Criteria for Accreditation and GVSU here refers to the GVSU Strategic Plan.