On March 5th, I attended our second steering committee meeting. President Mellow began the meeting with a thank you to all of the committee members, and remarked about how big this self-study was, how many people were working on it (almost 150) and what she expected from the process.

She stressed a couple of points:

1. She wants us to be “critical friends” of the college. She stressed that the self-study should be a critical look at the college, and that if we uncover something that is a problem, we should disclose it.

2. The work we’re doing has to be transparent to the college, and the Steering Committee has to brainstorm ways to get information and feedback from the entire college community.

3. They want it to be as enjoyable a process as possible. Dean Baston indicated that the Core committee hoped that the diveristy of the groups will lead to collaborations that will continue after the study is over, helping students further enjoy their experience at the college. President Mellow even used the word “fun”.

After the President delivered her charge, the committee discussed some things:

1. The core committee felt it may be a good idea to provide the electronic copies of the 2002 and 2007 self-studies. I have posted the 2002 10 year report on this site. We’re waiting for electronic copies of the 2007 mid-term report.

2. They discussed the number of questions – Gordon indicated that there could not be enough questions, but that ten was a good number to shoot for. If you notice in the Burlington County design, there are a number of standards that do not have ten questions, but it seemed that ten was a good number to start with. There is a concern from Middle States that the questions not be too long. For example, you may have only five questions, but if each one has three of four parts, then it is too much.

3. The Core committee developed a report form based on a template provided by Middle States in the book Self Study: Creating a Useful Process and Report, p.20. The form has been uploaded into this site. The first of these reports is due on March 23, 2010, along with our self-study questions. We will be providing our questions to the Core committee before that so that we can get some feedback. These reports will serve as progress reports, and be available to the community to document the work the committees are doing during the self-study.

4. The Core team indicated that if we had any questions, we should not hesitate to ask them. THey will help us identify experts on the campus who can answer our questions, provide documents we need and offer other guidance. Gordon indicated that he will try to attend as many Working Group meetings as he can.

5. They want us to craft questions that are exploratory rather than descriptive. We spent some time on this, and I think it helped point members of the committee in the general direction of good question design. The Burlington County Middle States contingent indicated that it was a good strategy to be familiar with the fundamental elements of your standard, and use them to guide your questions. It is important to consider if there is a particular LaGuardia “twist” you could add to a question to make it more relevant to our institution.

That’s my report. Any questions, let me know.

Scott

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