WAC Minutes
Thursday, September 15th, 2011

Present: Rick Matthews, Ron Cronovich, Abby Hanna, Jean Preston, Ed Montinaro, Chris Renaud, David Steege

Minutes from April 26, 2011 meeting were approved.

Election of chair: Mark Snavely.
Election of secretary: postponed until next meeting.

We need three new committee members: one each from FA, EDUC and IDS (one year). Chris Renaud agreed to serve as IDS. She will contact Chris Lynch and let him know, Matthews will contact Trautwein and let him know Snavely is the WAC chair, and Renaud will serve from IDS. FA and EDUC have been asked to elect members, and we should know who they are soon.

Meeting times, October. Once we have our two new members, we can establish a regular meeting time. We will need to meet during the 2nd or 3rd week of October to approve any courses for J-term and spring.

Abby will generate a report of the WI courses offered this coming J-term and spring and send it to Mark and Rick. Mark and Rick will send a note to chairs with unapproved courses telling them that the deadline for courses is the beginning of the 2nd week in October. We also need to pay close attention to Topics courses.

Announcement: WAC report, fall 2011 workshops, report from Rick Matthews (see attached). Each year Rick gives Julio a report of what we do in the fall and follows up with a budget request in the spring for the following academic year. Each year, he has put goals in the report. To date, 193 people have gone through WAC workshops. Full-time faculty who have gone through it? Answer 87% We have exceeded our goals of 50 WI courses per year, we now offer 50-70 per semester.

We discussed the goals in the report, and talked about the following issues:

What do we look for in the writing of our seniors? Should there be a common assessment rubric across departments? Departments should be looking at writing assessment. Here is where our students are now. Where do we want them to be? How do we get them there?

Departments should develop a rubric (or some other mechanism) for assessing senior seminar and/or writing in the major. What is universal about this? Can you formulate a thesis and support it? Some departments have different projects and goals, so each department should do its own assessment. At the same time, many departments do similar things, and could share rubrics, outcomes, etc. (e.g., across the social sciences). CLA has been used, and will be used in the future as a global measure of student writing. Still, more work needs to be done in the departments and programs.

Departments should have writing goals in general, not just for the senior seminar. They should also think about how to best help students meet these goals (e.g., adding or changing WI courses for their major to develop skills that are important in the discipline).

Adjourned: 4:03 p.m.