Minutes of the University Committee
for August 30, 2002

The Committee met at 12:35 in D135 MOLN. Members present were John Buenker, Peggy James, Don Kummings, Greg Mayer, and Gary Wood. James Kinchen was excused. Also present was Larry Duetsch.

The Committee agreed that its regular meeting time for the year would be at 2:00 on Tuesday. The Committee also briefly reviewed matters that need to be taken up early this semester, including workload, periodic review of administrators, and Senate recognition of faculty retirees.

At this point, members of the Committee on Academic Planning (Walter Feldt, Tim Fossum, Michele Gee, Gene Goodman, Joann Goodyear, and David Holmes) joined the meeting to continue the discussion of the proposed academic program appraisal process.

There was lengthy discussion of the weighting that should be applied to the five evaluation criteria, and the difficulties CAP might encounter in rating each program on each of these criteria. The Interim Associate Vice Chancellor said that the Provost would like to have a common set of weights applied in all program appraisals. It was eventually agreed that weights should not be assigned to any of the five evaluation criteria or to any of the indicators that are employed for each of the criteria. Instead, the prevailing opinion was that, in making recommendations, CAP should always take into account the entire set of evaluation criteria and should consider data for all of the indicators that are available and appear to be useful. In other words, CAP should adopt a holistic approach that avoids giving undue weight to any single criterion. It was understood that every effort would be made to provide CAP with the "cleanest" data set possible.

With that, attention turned to the proposed indicators of teaching quality and it was agreed to add teaching-related publications, grants to improve teaching, teaching evaluations, teaching excellence awards, grade distributions, and teaching loads as indicators.

The meeting adjourned at 2:25, after those present had agreed to continue the discussion on Tuesday, September 3, at 2:00.