The Social Science Task Force met Friday, October 12, at 1:30 p.m. at Rio Grande Campus in Room 125. The following faculty were in attendance: Mary Beth Booth, Livingstone Kumassah, Carol Hayman, Michael Forney, David Robinson, Michael Pool, Geof Andron, Jack Bucco, Richard Croxdale, and James Sondgeroth.

The following items were on the agenda:

1) Discussion of new evaluation procedures.

2) Collegial teaching teams.

3) Summer 2002 schedule.

1)

Those faculty who are required to have three years of syllabi, exams, and major handouts for every course taught during the previous three academic years were told there would be considerable leeway given to them this year since they had not been expecting to be required to submit all this material before this semester began.

Since the portfolio must be turned in by Nov. 1 (there is some wiggle room here too this year) a question arose about whether syllabi and course material from this fall should be included. The answer was, "Yes, but be prepared in the future to turn in syllabi, tests, and handouts from previous academic years."

It was also pointed out that the portfolio should contain the syllabi and course material each course taught per academic year. In other words, not for each section taught for the past three years.

For example, if you are teaching anthropology and during the 2000-2001 academic year you taught 3 Cultural sections, 3 Physical sections, an Intro. to Archaeology section, and a Field Methods section, then you would need to submit a syllabus and course material for each course (not section) taught that academic year. So there would be four sets of material that needed to be submitted, not eight.

Another question was raised about the fruitfulness of evaluating instructors based on portfolio material from previous years and on student evaluations from this year. This question was not satisfactorily answered though it was pointed out that there was unlikely to be a great deal of change in the material from semester to semester.

The Evaluation Subcommittee will consist of the following members: Alec Slivinske, chair, Mary Beth Booth, Livingstone Kumassah, Lizzie Pintar.

2)

A long discussion of collegial teaching teams took place.

There was some confusion about what actions these teams were supposed to carry out.

Are they supposed to meet regularly? Sporadically?

Is the full time faculty member to a liaison for the adjunct faculty members?

This much was clear from the memo instructing the task force to create these teams: the full time faculty member of each team would be a "colleague of" -not a supervisor of- adjunct members on the team, and all members of each team have to reach out and be collegial to each other.

(comment added by James Sondgeroth when minutes were typed but not from meeting: For further information concerning the goals these teams and the duties of their members, please see Administrative Rule 4.06.012.)

An adjunct member of the Task Force said he did not think full time faculty did enough to reach out to adjunct faculty, so anything that is done might be an improvement.

In addition to the teaching teams, it was thought that a party/social at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters would improve collegiality also.

The Task Force Chair was going to assign faculty to teams.

A question then arose about the full time faculty who are members of the Evaluation Subcommittee. How could they be non-supervisory when they were going to evaluate members of their collegial teaching team? The Task Force Chair said he would ask the Dean about this problem. (JS: Having checked with the Dean the solution is this: Each member of the Evaluation Subcommittee would recuse themselves from participating in the evaluation of the members of their collegial team letting other members of the committee do those evaluations.)

(JS: Here are the assignments:

3)

Changes to the Summer 2002 schedule recommended by the Task Force:

Using last summers schedule as a baseline, here are the changes recommended by the Task Force:

ANTHORPOLOGY

Open Campus Courses

1^st 5.5 week session

ADD: ANTH 2351 Cultural Anthropology

Classroom Courses

1^st 5.5 week session

DELETE: ANTH 2351 Cultural Anthropology at NRG

2nd 5.5 week session

ADD: ANTH 2351 Cultural Anthropology at RGC from 12:15pm-2:05pm

ECONOMICS

Open Campus Courses

Change all the ITV courses to PCM/ITV courses

Classroom Courses

1^st 5.5 week session

CHANGE:

ECON 2302 Principles of Microeconomics at RVS MTWHF 9:05am-10:35am

To MTWH 10:00am-11:50am.

GEOGRAPHY

Open Campus Courses

1^st 5.5 week session

ADD: GOG 2433 World/Regional

Classroom Courses

2nd 5.5 week session

DELETE: GEOG 1302 NRG MTWHF 7:30 am - 9:00 am

ADD: GEOG 1302 RGC MTWHF 10:40am-12:10pm