Committee on FYE Classes MINUTES

October 7, 2011

Members Present:Jane Coplan, Brenley Devlin, Bradley Dilger,Casey LaFrance, David Lane,Stacey Macchi, Caryn Morgan, Nancy Parsons, Craig Tollini,

Members Absent:Katrina Daytner, Mark Hoge, Russ Morgan, Rachel Smith

Minutes from 9-2-11 approved

Welcome to New Member

  • Bradley Dilger

Review of FYE Program – Discussion of Surveys

  • Updates from subcommittees
  • Survey – Craig
  • Freshmen survey
  • Sending out to committee next week for final review (as well as Faculty and Peer Mentor surveys)
  • Scantrons being used and paper surveys given in packets to faculty members
  • Can hold up to 150 questions, 10 categories per question (no open-ended questions, so there is no data entry involved afterward)
  • Approximately 10-15 minutes to complete
  • Need to send faculty a warning email in advance so they are prepared for the 2 weeks when surveys should be administered
  • Dates: send out by Monday Oct 31, due back by Friday Nov 11)
  • Faculty survey
  • Got rid of reimbursement questions for this semester because still going through a trial period – revisit this next semester or have the reimbursement committee compile info at end of semester
  • Stacey – add question about ‘did you attend training’ either this semester, or ever, or faculty members
  • More details on FYE vs non-FYE courses – can get some of this data from focus groups next semester
  • Fall/Spring differences in FYE courses – most of this is in the previous survey done last year, so most questions will be removed from current survey
  • Craig working with Katrina to add question about priority of funds from faculty perspective (1-5 ranking of various ways we could use FYE funds)
  • Sophomore survey
  • Doing fall/spring differences on 2 separate surveys
  • Also want to find out if students enroll in spring FYE class to be with friends they made in fall FYE class
  • Stacey brought up Living Learning Communities, that would have not had a choice in the FYE course they took as a group together, but this will not affect our current survey since no current sophomores had the choice to be in an LLC last year
  • Peer mentor survey
  • Pros and Cons to surveying Peer Mentors via the paper surveys vs qualitative data from a focus group – decided to create PM Survey
  • Stacey and Brenley will draft questions and send to Craig and survey subcommittee for review next week
  • Syllabi – Nancy
  • Will be asking faculty in the email sent out in next few weeks that we are looking for sample syllabi to be sent in from FYE faculty
  • Emphasize that we are not looking to penalize anyone, just wants to know what is currently being done
  • ‘best practices’ of FYE syllabi
  • Potentially some faculty do not list their co-curriculars because they wait to plan then with their Peer Mentors during the first week of classes
  • Bradley found an article online about syllabi review that we could potentially adapt to use for our review
  • Peer Institutions FYE Review - Brenley
  • Overall themes found: half schools FYE programs were mandatory and half were not, most programs are a type of ‘transition’ course that students take once in the fall semester, some schools have courses for credit that peer mentors take while completing a ‘practicum’ placement as a peer mentor in FYE course, most schools had common reading texts (some with exciting titles for the reading program), but not all were linked directly to FYE, but rather were part of the overall campus community
  • FYE Review Committee
  • New committee being established by Nancy Parsons in the next few weeks – discussed who will be on this committee:
  • 3 Faculty Associates (Katrina Daytner, Robert, Matt Blankenship)
  • 4 members from the Classes Committee (one from each college – Stacey Macchi, Craig Tollini, Rachel Smith, and Mark Hoge OR Danny Terry)
  • Rep from A+S Dean’s Office
  • UTech Web Services
  • 3 Student Services (Jessica Butcher, Tara Monroe, and a CSP rep)
  • Library rep, SGA rep
  • Nancy and FYE Grad Assistant (Brenley Devlin)
  • Committee will take data provided by Classes Committee, as well as other constituent groups, in order to make decisions for recommendations to make to President
  • Possible areas of FYE to look at:
  • # of weeks of FYE class, common reading or movie or group of articles, who teaches FYE, special topics or transition course or gen ed course, co-curriculars, etc.)
  • Focus Groups
  • Will look into doing these next semester early on
  • Importance of getting qualitative data as well as quantitative from the surveys
  • Start discussing these during the December Classes Committee meeting
  • ‘Town Hall’ event?
  • Will need to look into how to market these events – telestars, etc.
  • Who will facilitate the discussions?
  • Timeline
  • 2 weeks for faculty to administer surveys (week 12 and 13 of classes) – all surveys due back by Friday November 11
  • Moving Classes Committee December meeting from the 2nd to the 9th (in order to have more time after Thanksgiving Break for Craig to look over the data and input some into SPSS for overall impression from the surveys)
  • Fall 2012 courses being developed now, therefore potentially changes to FYE in Fall 2013

Meeting was adjourned at 3:40pm.