ACADEMIC AFFAIRS GOALS, 2001-02 : I invite you to review the Academic Affairs webpage for a listing of the goals that the deans and I will be working on in consultation with faculty and staff.  I am blessed with an enormously talented team of deans and staff.  We work well together, have done much to promote academic excellence. With demands to decrease our budget. The ability to continue to work as a team will be tested.

ASSESSMENT: The five IUSB attendees at the Assessment Institute in Indianapolis were unanimously enthusiastic about the experience.  They found the sessions and interactions with other participants to be valuable and enriching.  The conference was well attended with over 500 participants from 40 states and three countries.  Linda Fisher, Alec Hosterman, Paul Newcomb, Barbara Peat and Marcia Sheridan from IUSB took part in the conference

Marcia Sheridan presented a session on the use of metacognitive journals and portfolio assessment in a graduate Education course for teachers.  Her analysis dealt with the major problems set for education by the pluralistic culture of American society.  With the use of these techniques the graduate students she studied showed increased use of metaphorical language to describe the internal development of both their perceptual and conceptual worlds.

Linda Fisher found the session on “Doing Assessment as if Learning Matters Most,” by Thomas Angelo to be particularly helpful.  He honed in on the type of information and statistics that should be collected by Assessment Committees, and how that information should feed back into improving assessment and student learning.  Angelo’s comments on how Assessment Committees should function will be very useful to Linda in her role as Chair of the IUSB Assessment Committee.

Linda also described a pre-conference session led by John Taylor, Associate Director of the Higher Learning Commission of the NCA.  He outlined the assessment expectations of the NCA when they do accreditation visits.  The NCA is particularly interested in documentation of student learning.  This information will be very helpful as the Assessment Committee collects, analyses and reports on assessment data over the next several years before the next NCA accreditation visit.

Alec Hosterman, as a newcomer to the assessment discipline, praised the sessions he attended, and the chance to interact with the presenters and other attendees informally.  He specifically mentioned the session on “Assessment Essentials: Planning and implementing assessment programs,” by Trudy Banta and Douglas Edler as one that presented a good overview of assessment basics.  He came back with many ideas and plans that can be adapted to his own department’s assessment program.

All of the IUSB participants in the Assessment Institute came back with a fresh perspective and new enthusiasm for assessment work at IUSB.

BUDGET: As I mentioned in my October address to the senate, I will be working with the deans and the senate budget committee to take a hard look at our budget so that we can begin the AY 2002-03 with a balanced budget.  I will call this process Resources Re-allocation Review.  This exercise, to be done at the encouragement of the deans, is an outgrowth of the November report to President Brand.  It is my hope that this exercise is not simply a budget cutting effort that weakens academic offerings but that through re-allocation the university can respond to the highest good and produce new opportunities within our academic programs.  To do so requires a close examination of and decision about every expenditure within Academic Affairs.  The deans, the senate budget committee and I are committed to doing this work through broad consultation.

ICHE: At the November 9 meeting of the Indiana Commission of Higher Education, the following programs were authorized:

Ivy Tech - Technical certificate in Dental Assistant (to be offered in Columbus in Columbus and Muncie in Anderson)

IUPUI - Fourth Year Completion Track of the Bachelor of Social Work (to be offered at the Bloomington campus); Doctor of Physical Therapy

Vincennes - Associate of Science in Health Information Management (offered via distance technology)

IU Kokomo - Bachelor of Arts in Health and Aging

Best wishes,

Alfred J. Guillaume, Jr.
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs