Criteria 4 Comments

Comments below, as usual between the dashed lines.

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I think this needs to be re-named to at least be consistent with the book: Quality of Program Inputs and PROCESSES. We will look at ‘outputs’ in Criterion 5.
Faculty/ Question A:
• How do we measure total experience of faculty? Especially in the service areas (i.e. teaching, nursing, SLHS) the faculty MUST have clinical experience. In fact, the stronger the clinical experience, the stronger the faculty as a group. So, do we get to count ‘years clinical exp. + yrs teaching exp.’ And then, is it ‘teaching’ at MSUM only; at any 4 year instituion; at any MnSCU institution; at a CC and/or a 4 yr school, etc etc.
• What in the world is ‘intellectually current’???
• Scholarly contributions only ‘fit’ for some areas and probably should not be weighted too heavily, considering MSUM’s current emphasis on being a ‘teaching institution’.
• Describing ‘how our faculty stack up against other institutions in the state and nationally’—so do we use the sum of the individuals’ body weight? (JUST KIDDING) I don’t understand how we can really measure this—it is very very subjective.
• Missing: faculty flexibility, initiative, leadership, passion for teaching and working with students. Not sure how to measure this.
• Suggestion: # of different courses taught by each member; #of new courses developed by each member. Might show something about the faculty’s initiative, flexibility—or ir might just indicate which are ADHD.

Students/ Question C:
For nursing at least, we should include the proportion of transfer students to new, HS students. We have a great majority of transfers and their HS GPA, HS rank; ACT are just not helpful at all. As a matter of fact, for many of them, their incoming cumulative college GPA is not a good reflection of their ability/capability. Their incoming NURSING (for the RN to BSN and grad students) GPA is very informative however. I’m sure we’re not the only program on campus with this.

Curriculum/ Question D:
• What do the first two mean? Breadth, depth, level; coherence of curriculum?
• The third one also confuses me—examination of the design….
• The final one—how the program shifted delivery to meet current student needs—will vary greatly between programs. Nursing has gone increasingly on-line; some of the perfrmance programs have no on-line.
• Need to ADD: something related to how well students are meeting the program’s own stated outcomes. (this may be in Criterion 5)

Criterion 5: Quality of Program outcomes
• Question A: offering examples of exemplary performance is great except it is in the ‘testimonial’ category and usually exemplary performance is due more to the individual’s innate abilities and drive than the educational institution. We assist, of course, but I’m not sure we can take full credit (IMHO). I LIKE the ‘congruence between intended/actual outcomes’ but it is not something one can decide to measure today if you’ve not been doing good data keeping….
• Satisfaction—this is a standard measure but the alumni data is hard to get and employer information is very very difficult to get. And Nursing knows where our grads are working—I have NO idea how some depts. (English, math, psychology, etc.) would address that.
• ‘Professional’ admissions? Does this mean, did the pre-engineering students get into engineering programs?
• Question B: I think this is irrelevant.
• Question C: how does one address ‘external validation of quality’ of faculty (certifications?) or ‘outcomes mirror best practices’ (too vague); ‘recognition to institution’ ?? We seem to be missing student evaluations of individual’s teaching effectiveness???
• Needed: external accreditations or recognitions.

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Some of the information listed (e.g. scholarly contributions) covers 3 years; why 3 when for other items they cover 5 years? Again certain items need clarification. How are we going to show that faculty are intellectually current (with conference attendance, workshops taken, classes taught?) What data are we supposed to use to show how our faculty “stack up against other institutions?” Why there is no place to comment on teaching or involvement of students in research/creative activity? The rating matrix needs to be adjusted to correspond to the information requested. (Why not use Dickeson’s categories, and request information better suited to who we are, for this criterion?)

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• Clarify total years of experience better. Experience doing anything related to the program (teaching, research, outreach, external committees etc.). Do the years include time not at MSUM?
• A list of scholarly contributions should demonstrate intellectual currency - why have these two items separate?
• Here is one place where student research is important. Faculty may not be publishing at a phenomenal rate due to teaching loads along with involving students in research...but should activities of students (conf. attendance etc.) count as an indication of faculty's intellectual currency (I say yes!). Faculty at our institution don't necessarily engage in their professional pursuits independent of what they do with students.
• What exactly IS the measure for retracting and retaining qualified faculty? Failed searches? Faculty leaving? Again, many factors can play into this, not the least of which is the many budget crunches we have faced in the past, national hiring trends, our location etc. Perhaps this could get wrapped into the quality of the faculty assessment somehow. If you have high quality faculty now, you would anticipate being able to recruit/retain the same?
• Quality of students is also related to scholarships. Availability of scholarships (or lack of) has already been mentioned as something the campus needs to do better at.
• This whole issue of quality of students and persistence relative to the quality of a program is not clear to me. Don't we say that we provide students with an opportunity to shine? That we help students who might not have thought they could, do well and find their strengths? I'm not sure the scoring rubric will reflect this spirit - "to what extent does the congruence of the quality of students ...". The term congruence and how that reflects what we do here at MSUM doesn't seem to work. We may see incongruence - should that always result in a low score?
• How do we report on learning styles of the students?
• Internationalized curriculum? What evidence of this is needed - a topic or two within X number of course? Courses with specific SLOs regarding globalization?
• Describe how program shifted deliver to meet current student needs - is this not already addressed in answers to Criterion 1?
• There should be an assessment of opportunities for students to participate in faculty-mentored activities (research, scholarly, creative) outside of the classroom, along with a measure of outcomes (presentation at SAC, conferences, art shows, performances etc.) These opportunities can also be addresses as part of Criterion 5 but they also complement the curricula of many of the programs.

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A. Please provide the following information regarding the quality of faculty and staff
o % of faculty with terminal degrees
o Total years of experience of faculty
Does this include related professional experience or just teaching experience? Does it include adjunct and fixed term or just full time or tenure track years? What about community college experience? Is this averaged across the number of faculty or provided as a single number?
o Please list all scholarly or creative contributions of the faculty for the past three years (include these in an attachment)
o Please provide data showing that the faculty are intellectually current
It is impossible to show data that proves faculty are intellectually current. A faculty member who spends endless hours exhaustively reading materials published in their field would be intellectually current but have no evidence to prove so. Another faculty member may attend conferences and make presentation regularly; this only shows them to be professionally active, not necessarily intellectually current.
o Please comment on the availability of future faculty
o Please comment on the program’s current ability to attract and retain future faculty
o Please comment on how our faculty stack up against other comparable institutions in the state and nationally
We are a liberal arts and sciences institution that prides itself on student centered teaching. Perhaps we should be giving programs credit for quality teaching, student contact and faculty mentored research and creative activities, rather than focusing on scholarly publications as a Research I institution would. Faculty publication records are a very poor measure of the strength of a program. They measure how much time a person has put into their research and resume, not how strong a program they have built. Should we punish a program that has faculty that have put their efforts into its students and curriculum development rather than personal research?
B. You will be provided with the % of instruction offered by full-time faculty
Do we mean permanent faculty or do fixed term faculty count? The book acknowledges only permanent and part time faculty. We also have the category of fulltime non-permanent faculty (fixed term). This question unfairly punishes programs that may have already been unfairly treated by the past administration’s inequities in deciding faculty distribution.
C. You will be provided with the following information regarding your students for the past three years:
o High school GPA, average and range
o High school rank, average and range
o ACT composite, English and math sub-scores; average and range
o GPA for transfer students, average and range
o This data along with major persistence data will help determine the congruence of students and likely persistence in the program. Please include a statement.
The entire section “C” above needs to be removed as it is out of sync with our vision/mission. This type of thinking is predominant among institutions that seek to gain prestige through exclusivity! If we seek to continue to be an institution of access as President Szymanski has indicated, we can not punish the programs who are willing to take on the challenge of taking in below average students and producing above average graduates. Rural and economically disadvantaged students frequently correlate to lower scoring high school students. Providing the opportunity for these students to better themselves is part of who we are as an institution.


D. Please provide the following information regarding curriculum
o The breadth, depth, and level
o The coherence of the curriculum This is the same question as the bullet point below, they should be combined.
o Examination of the design with special attention to whether the integration of the content of the curriculum depends on the student or is designed into the curriculum (senior capstone course or experience)
o Examination of the how the current design meets the needs and learning styles of the students First, the answer to this question would be equivalent to approximately one half of a typical accreditation report and would take considerable volume to report. Second, undergirding this question may be an assumption that our students are overwhelmingly “digital native” students, which I have already indicated may not be an accurate description of our students and is likely out of line with our vision/mission.
o Date of last update of the curriculum and what was done
o An explanation of how the curriculum prepares graduates for a global world
o Analysis done on the program in the last three years
o Date of last accreditation and results
o Please describe how the program shifted delivery to meet current student needs

E. Please provide a statement regarding ways the program has adapted to technology including how it the program prepares students for a high-tech world and attracts high tech support from external sources Preparing students for a high-tech world means much than teaching them to become proficient at using computer software and various digital devices. It means being prepared to make responsible and ethical decisions regarding the use of all forms of technology in our lives (not just digital/computer technology.) I’m not convinced this question, as written, will evoke sufficiently broad responses. Second, attracting support to an institution is covered later in this document (Criterion 7) and so should be removed from this section. High tech support is a pressing concern for Research I institutions with high research demands and less relevant to us as a whole. Are programs like Dance, Theater, Literature, Poetry, Philosophy, and languages less valuable if they don’t garner high tech support?
F. Please make a statement regarding equipment, facilities, and other resources including capital capacity, currency of equipment and materials, library holdings and databases and updated facilities supporting the program.

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