Task Force Minutes, April 28, 2000.

1) Chair's Report.

Frank Garrahan provided an update on the fall schedule. The preliminary Fall 2000 schedule is on the Web, but still has some problems that have to be fixed. In addition, early work has begun on the Spring 2001 schedule.

The hiring committee is conducting interviews for the two new positions in Government that begin Fall 2000. Recommendations will go from the committee to Rex Peebles, Dean of Social & Behavioral Sciences, who then takes those hiring recommendations on up the chain of command.

The Task Force chair also provided a brief report regarding the latest reorganization here at ACC. Many details have not yet been provided. As they become available, we will all know more about how this reorganization will affect the work of the Task Force.

2) Committee Reports.

Budget Committee report. Our budget requests for next year have been submitted. We asked for money to purchase permanent computer carts to be placed in a Government classroom at each campus, money to hire departmental interns, money for a computer repair fund, and additional money in our educational supplies budget.
Faculty Committee report on faculty evaluations. All portfolios received as of April 28, both full-time and adjunct, have been evaluated by the Faculty Committee. Thanks very much to the members of this committee who gave their time and attention to this important task. Members include Cecile Durish, Joe Engle, Glen Hunt, Marilyn Mote-Yale, Paz Pena, and Gaye Lynn Scott.

3) Ad hoc Assessment Review Committee report.

Joe Engle, Jim Fowler, Amber Archuleta-Lucero, and Stefan Haag met as an ad hoc committee to analyze information regarding our current assessment process. They presented the Task Force with several options concerning how to improve our efforts to assess what students are learning in our Government courses.

The essential question: How do we accurately measure the value added by our teaching? After a lively discussion, the Task Force decided the following:

a) An ad hoc committee (feel free to join this effort if you would like) will spend the early part of the summer revising the course objectives for GOVT 2305 and GOVT 2306. Once those objectives have been revised (and the new objectives included in the Government Instructor's manual for next year), the committee will move on to revising our testing instrument. This will be completed by mid-Fall. Current ad hoc committee members: Joe Engle, Amber Archuleta-Lucero, Stefan Haag, Judy Nwachie, Cecile Durish, Gaye Lynn Scott, Paz Pena, Jim Fowler, Lynn Lehle, Ed Mullen.
b) We will no longer administer a pre-test. Instead, our assessment instrument will be an exit exam tied to the revised learning objectives. This exit exam will be mandatory for every Government section taught at ACC. Instructors will be free to determine how they will administer this exam in their own sections. (For instance, instructors may choose to imbed the questions in their final, or they may choose some other means of administering the exit exam to their students.)

c) Instructors will report results, which will then be compiled so that we can more accurately measure, as a discipline, whether we are teaching our students what we think we are.

d) The first meeting of this ad hoc committee is scheduled for Friday, June 9, 1:00 pm at the Riverside Campus (room TBA). At this meeting we will look more closely at the nature of learning objectives, how to write good learning objectives, etc. We will meet each Friday in June to complete work on rewriting the learning objectives for our basic courses.

4) Election of Task Force Chair for 2000-2001.

The Task Force Chair is elected by a majority vote of the full-time faculty (at present, that means seven votes out of twelve full-time faculty members are required to elect the Task Force chair for next year). Since several full-time faculty members were unable to be present at this meeting, it was decided that ballots would be sent to each full-time faculty member through intercampus mail. Ballots went out on Monday, May 1 and are to be returned to Lynn Lehle at the Rio Grande campus by Monday, May 8. There are two candidates: Frank J. Garrahan and Paz Pena. Results will be reported to Rex Peebles, Dean of Social & Behavioral Sciences.