Minutes of the Committee on Teaching & Learning
for May 2, 2007

Present: Lori Allen, Theresa Castor, Mary Louise Edwards, Pam Handrow, Fran Kavenik, Jim Robinson, Anne Statham, Chris Zanowski.

Meeting was called to order at approximately 8:35 a.m. by Theresa Castor.

I. The Committee discussed Professional Development activities for the TLC to pursue next year.
   
A. The group discussed using different spaces such as the Galbraith room or the         Overlook Lounge.

B. The TLC will continue to offer a “Teaching Tool Box” session.

C. There will be a mini-conference to showcase the Student Success Initiative projects. Models used this year of having brown bag lead-up session with a culminating mini-conference were advocated as a way of featuring the SSI projects.

D. The group discussed topics for the TLC to run brown bag and workshop sessions on:
      i. Hybrid and Blended Delivery
      ii. Academic Listening
      iii. Bridging the Gap: Understanding Our Students
      iv. Managing Student Mental Health

E. The group also discussed different ways to structure Professional Development sessions:
      i. Some brown bags would be offered where participants could ‘drop-in’ to a single session.
      ii. Some sessions would be themed or sequenced so that participants could build on      and develop their work (i.e., teaching activity) over multiple sessions to get greater feedback.

II. The Committee discussed the recent charge from the University Committee to develop an Action Plan to follow-up on discussion from the Spring Faculty Meeting. Theresa described some ways that the Elements of Action Plan is being addressed through CoTL & TLC activities. However, further discussion of the Action Plan is needed at the start of the next year. One idea the committee had was to develop and administer a survey at the start of the fall semester related to teaching and developing better means of communication on campus.

III. The campus received an OPID Follow-Up grant to help disseminate information learned from the Spring OPID conference on the first-year experience. Theresa asked for volunteers to help continue planning and organization the pre-fall conference, and the following individuals agreed to help: Jim Robinson, Chris Zanowski, and Lori Allen.

IV. Anne asked about continuing work on refining Course Evaluations and suggested working closely with five departments (Art, Communication, English, GeoScience, History, and Modern Languages) as a way of developing prototypes and moving along with this project.

Meeting adjourned at 9:30 a.m.

Minutes respectfully submitted by Theresa Castor.