Center for the First Year Experience Committee

Hello World,

So this is, unfortunately, the first and last(and only) post for the Center for the First Year Experience(CFYE) for this academic year. Good thing for you readers everything that has been discussed is all here =) !

CFYE met twice this semester on April 8 & 15th. The first meeting was with the CFYE staff, myself and a few other students and the second one was a repeat of the first but with faculty from across campus. The basic thing that came out of these meetings was discussion of the Orientation Review Project. CFYE was and still is coming up with ways to make their current programming more effective and beneficial for students.

Below is all the literature from the meetings. Do keep in mind that ALL Ideas listed are only IDEAS nothing is final or even in the the process. The goal of these Ideas is to solicit feedback from STUDENTS and faculty alike. (So if you see something awful or something you would really like comment!)
Here it goes!

Current Programming (done by CFYE):
-Freshman SOAR: 2day sessions throughout June/July. Condensed 1day sessions in late August & January. Components on academic Advising, enrollment, "campus life" and building social connections. Concurrent parent/guest program.

-Transfer SOAR: 1day sessions throughout June/July and late August, January. Emphasis on academic advising and enrollment. Little information on resources, "campus life" and social connections. Concurrent parent program.

-Wisconsin Welcome: Large & Small scale events prior to classes through the first month. Events are social informational & welcoming. Attendance is optional.

Philosophical "Big Ideas"
-Removing most discussion of campus life issues from summer programming and emphasizing academics only. Capitalizing on campus life programming that already occurs within University Housing in the fall.
-Development of more online components for pre-orientation, such as Interest Exploration and Academic Information provision.
-Structured Fall/First-week program series themed on the Wisconsin Experience. Large Presentations followed by small-group discussion in residence halls.
- "Welcome " events(Social & WI Experience) occurring primarily during the first week of classes, not several days before.
-Transfer students would participate in targeted programming tracks for fall experiences.
-Summer parent program focused more on parenting and transition issues rather than detailed information(which would still be provided in print and online).

Logistical "Big Ideas"
-Length of the summer program, options include
*Restructured 2day program(noon-noon) that incorporates advising components on both days
*1day(8am-5pm) program focused almost entirely on advising and enrollment
*Distance advising and enrollment
-Summer sessions occur from mid- June through late- August continuously(with short breaks)
-Increase total number of sessions and decrease attendance at each session





Comment away, I will forward all comments to the CFYE Chair and I will send her a link to this also>

CFYE website: http://www.newstudent.wisc.edu/index.html

Good Luck on Finals!
-Jasmine "Jay" Savoy

Dean of Students' Advisory Board April 15th

The April 15th ODOS Advisory Board meeting marked the last meeting of this year. The agenda for our last meeting was a presentation by Wren Singer and Carren Martin from CFYE on the new student orientation, a division name change for the Office of the Dean of Students, and our "year in review".
The presentation by CFYE was to get the advisory boards' opinion on the re-evaluation of SOAR programs. CFYE had plenty of ideas for how they would like to change SOAR in the coming years. One of the ideas was to take away most of the "student life" information from the SOAR dates and move it into the control of University Housing once the students move in. CFYE said they would like to do this to make room for more advising and enrollment help. Because of of the biggest problems with SOAR now is the second day enrollment period, CFYE wants to give students more time to learn about enrollment and classes before they have to actually do it. Also the board gave CFYE the suggestion to add more online pre-enrollment options for students so they can take a look at possible classes and the Student Center before they attend SOAR. Also CFYE would like to make the parents' part of SOAR more about the transition and how to parent their children while they are at college. With all these proposed changes CFYE also suggested offering two options for SOAR; a two day period running from noon the first day to noon the second, and a one day option for those who are traveling a long distance. Another thing CFYE proposed changing was Wisconsin Welcome Week. That first week before classes start has been the worst time for students taken to detox and there are high costs for opening the dorms and other buildings up that early. CFYE would like to move move-in day closer to the start of the school year and transfer Welcome Week activities to the first week of classes. The board warned CFYE that those couple of days before school starts, while costly to the University, are invaluable to incoming students. That is their time to explore the campus and get settled before the crunch of classes begin. CFYE made the point to mention that none of these suggestions will go into effect for this falls upcoming SOAR dates.
The next item on the boards' agenda was a name change for the Office of the Dean of Students. There is much confusion between ODOS and the Dean of Students' Office. The first is the entire collection of programs and offices inside Bascom and the later is specifically the Deans' offices. The board was told that the entire office was surveyed on what they would like the name to be changed to and it came to a consensus that "Division of..." should be included in the title. With that the board was given several options for names and after debate about whether the name should be more "student-friendly" or authoritarian, the board decided that the "Division of Student Life" was the most appropriate. This decision was passed on to Dean Berquam (who had to leave the meeting before this conversation took place).
The last thing we covered was just a short "year in review". We quickly went over all the major topics the board had covered this school year. The board was thanked for our service that our last meeting of the school year adjourned.
If you have any questions feel free to post a comment!
Rebecca

Programs Committee- School of Education

The Programs Committee for SoE met today, April 16th at 12:30pm.

The agenda consisted of course changes.

For the Art department, the course 518, Artist Video, had a syllabus change to make it not repeatable, as it is not the highest level course in the subject.

In the Kinesiology department, a similar case was present for the course 499 and the wording was changed to make it repeatable. In addition, there was a program change for the Athletic Training Sub-Plan, adding and editing certain courses.

Lastly, there were a group of courses on which the departments of Counseling Psychology, Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education, and Educational Psychology collaborated to consolidate and cross-list and make it more comprehensible for students in those programs. Psychology 629, Counseling Psychology 736 and 737, and Rehab Psychology/Special Ed 735 are now cross-listed. Counseling Psychology 995 was added as a 0 credit class in order to waive student tuition for those who have an internship while working on their dissertations.

Those were the interesting points of the meeting. Next to be held May 13th at 11:30am.

Campus Diversity and Climate Committee Meeting, April 13, 2010

It has been several months since the Campus Diversity and Climate Committee (CDCC) last met. The committee canceled a planned retreat in February and its March meeting, so there was a lot of business to cover on the April 13 agenda.

Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer Damon Williams began the meeting with several updates about his work over the past few months. Williams has stepped into the role of evaluator of the PEOPLE program, a program that supports young people of color through after-school tutoring, summer programs, and college transition services, after the sudden passing of the program’s evaluator. Williams highlighted a few points about the lessons he has learned about PEOPLE and spoke both to the success the program has experienced since it began as well as the need to support program leadership given the enormous range of tasks underway at any one point in time. Williams pointed out that PEOPLE is the largest in the nation of this kind of program, which brings unique challenges. Additional updates about the program will emerge in the coming weeks and months.

Williams also briefly spoke about a proposal he submitted to the Chancellor in February to support several new diversity initiatives. These include: “(1) organizational realignment of several key diversity programs; (2) a faculty diversity strategy; (3) a fund to seed diversity innovations; (4) curriculum revision project with DELTA aimed at a number of gateway courses; (5) global intercultural experience for undergraduates.” Williams reported that the proposal has been well received by many of the people who have given him feedback on it but that it must also first receive the Chancellor’s approval in order to move forward.

The bulk of the meeting, however, focused on a proposal for the CDCC’s work going forward. This project incolves three interrelated tasks, each of which will begin almost immediately. First, the CDCC will work to draft an institutional definition of “diversity.” Second, the committee will reassess its membership structure and determine what sorts of changes need to be made to the group’s membership. Finally, the CDCC will design a campus-wide diversity assessment tool that will be used with schools and divisions to assess progress toward diversity goals in the coming year.

The final part of the conversation was also the most interesting. People discussed what a diversity “scorecard” might look like, with back-and-forth conversations about how to balance the “carrots” and “sticks” of any accountability program. Although no concrete plans were made during the meeting, group members seemed to support a program that offered concrete support to divisions and schools as they work to improve their own diversity initiatives. At the same time, people seemed to seek a program that had “teeth”—that is, something that could not easily be shelved and easily overlooked.

Sub-committees of the CDCC will form over the summer to take the next steps toward improving and implementing the plan that was outlined yesterday.

Submitted by Frank Honts

Assessment and the University of the Future

This is a good article about the future of higher education that explains why assessment is important. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/13/hlc

April 12 L&S Curriculum Committee

We have had continued discussion about the use of AP credits for fulfilling graduation breadth requirements, an issue raised by the Phi Beta Kappa selection committee. A possible solution is having on-campus breadth requirements, similar to that of the comprehensive honors program but this raises an issue so far as transfer admissions, particularly existing agreements with 2-yr UW System colleges and the role of AP credits as regulated by the UW System. The central conclusion of discussion is that we need to see more studies which have been done so far as AP students completing degrees earlier, or sacrificing breadth for depth as said by Phi Beta Kappa. Further research will be done over summer, with the topic raised again in Fall 2010.

Discussion regarding the Liberal Studies proposal is limited and will be continued April 26, when there will be two relevant presenters. We have compiled a list of universities offering similar programs, and obtained a survey regarding employer interest in broad liberal studies - it is clear employers want this, and the question is if we can identify existing programs that would match up with what employers want and is appropriate with UW wishes/needs. Surprisingly, a number of the B.L.S. programs are targeted at non-traditional students (i.e. Iowa State http://www.public.iastate.edu/~catalog/2007-2009/curric/las-liberalst.html). That isn't necessarily the motivation behind the committee's review of the proposal, and there is still a concern about the advising and resource needs such a program would require, especially depending on the flexibility.

There will be two more committee meetings before the end of the year, April 26 and May 10.

Advisory Board for the Office of Equity and Diversity

Update for Advisory Board for the Office of Equity and Diversity:

Meeting date: 03/26/2010

Main discussions:

- Chancellor Martin and Damon Williams, the vice provost for diversity and climate, are working on defining the university's visions on equity and diversity. This advisory board is interested to know what this vision is. Therefore, we are planning to invite Chancellor and the vice provost to one of our meetings so that we are all in the same page.

- We are also planning to invite other persons involved with diversity issues around campus to get their input and understand where they are at.

- WISELI (Women In Science & Engineering Leadership) will be holding 2 days workshops for faculty in 90 departments. The workshop is aimed to make faculty aware of unconscious biases that every person has in order to prevent these biases. There was discussion on that teaching assistants are not included, and where do they fit in terms of diversity workshops.

- WISELI also provides another kind of workshops called "Climate workshops" which targets department chairs and tries to make them aware of approaches that they can take in order to improve the climate in their department. Here is an interesting presentation regarding this subject: http://wiseli.engr.wisc.edu/docs/Present_STS_Sheridan_2010.pdf

- There were also discussions on that it is important that faculty get these trainings. However, these are not mandatory. We also discussed some of the issues that arises for students hired by the faculty that are not fully aware of what they should expect from their employees and how to treat them.

*WISELI Web site: http://wiseli.engr.wisc.edu/ You can register to be a member of this organization and get E-mails on the workshops that they provide for the students.

Posted by: Fatemah Panahi