Enrolling Yourself on Faculty Workspace

If you as a Full-time or a Part-time faculty member are not already enrolled on the Faculty Workspace Blackboard Site, you need to be!

Here is the procedure:

Log on to Blackboard
Go to Courses
Search “Faculty”
You will see “King College Faculty Workspace” as the course name
Under “Committees” is the symbol for a drop-down menu
Click on that symbol
You will see “Enroll”
Click on “Enroll” which will give you the self-enrollment screen
On the right side of that screen, click SUBMIT.
One of the administrators of the site will approve your request.

Get It out of the Way? . . . No Way!

Even though the whole college—business majors, nursing students, and pre-service teachers included—has some interest in the structure and content of general education requirements, these groups see it as something to “get out of the way.” As Tim Clydesdale’s The First Year Out so clearly states, for students the value of their college education is a narrow career objective with a $$ attached.

We in Arts and Sciences see things differently. For us, the ones charged with packaging and delivering the wisdom of millenia (hence Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, pictured here) and critical life skills in communication, numeracy, teamwork, and critical thinking, the Core Curriculum is the way, second only to “The Way” in John 14:6.

Because of our vested interest, we owe it to our disciplines, our college, and our students to do the Core with all the passion and energy we can muster. And, of course, we must measure what we are doing with precision and scrutinize our collected data with perspicacity.

The MEETING coming up on Monday, October 19, for all Core teachers is important. It will lay out our course-embedded assessment plan for 2009-2010. It will remind us what data we need to collect and which IDEA objectives to mark for each course being taught for Core Curriculum credit this semester.

The plan was laid out in the re-imagined course proposals that came to the Ad Hoc Core Curriculum Revision Committee. However, the measures and methods may not be as familiar to the “boots-on-the-ground” classroom teachers as they were to the course designers. Hence this meeting.

IDEA Course Evaluations
Last year we pre-marked the IDEA Course Evaluations for Core classes, but some teachers really felt constrained by the fact that they could not measure distinctive features of their particular courses. So, this fall we are counting on teaching faculty to mark the objectives “Essential” that are designated on the course proposals, AND allowing each teacher to mark other objectives of his/her choice up to a total of five as either “Essential” or “Important.”

Course-embedded Measures
Just as we hope our students will embrace not only their Core Curriculum assignments but also the values and understandings those assignments can foster, we must undertake assessment with zeal. This year that means doing course-embedded assessment well.

CBASE
We will be continuing to use the CBASE; however, we are not giving it in 2009-2010. In the future we will give it to seniors as a part of KING 4000 to see if (as the SACS standard stipulates…) our graduates, four-year King students and transfers alike, do possess the five competencies we say our Core accomplishes. The students who are seniors this year took CBASE in the fall of 2008, so we will not be testing them again in 2009-2010.

This year the burden of assessing the New Core rests on each person teaching, and all but two are in the School of Arts and Sciences. Good assessment practice is one way we will get to keep on doing the job we love. Let’s not treat it as something to get out of the way.

Home

If home is where the the heart is, this place, this view, is home for me. The top of the beachwalk in Birchwood makes my heart happy. I drive miles to get here. I walk to the beach in all kinds of weather. And, every time I get to the top of the beachwalk, I stop and breathe in hard.

If the Lake is rough, I may have been hearing it roar all the way from my house. But the first glimpse that I get is a reminder that I am home.

If the Lake is calm, glassy smooth as it often is in summer, when I get to the top of the steps, I can hear children at play or a dog barking.

If the Lake is frozen, I am awed by the expanse and the absolute stillness that never happens otherwise. For even calm, the water laps at the shore in gentle wavelets that make the smooth gravel at the shoreline whisper.

If I go at sunset, I see the bright path on the water, and the world is bathed in rosy light.

This home of mine renews my energy. After being here, I'm ready face my never-ending list.


Carl Sandburg lived in my neighborhood from 1927 to 1945: he wrote the Lincoln biography here on the dune overlooking the Lake. Roger Ebert has a house nearby; I meet him going in and out on the ravine road and see him in local eateries. He may write his movie reviews on the dune, too. I live here. Big chunks of my two books were written in this place. It's a writer's place.

Fall Break Greetings from Birchwood Beach
Harbert, Michigan
49115

Insomnia and the Harvest Moon

Scottish artist Lesley Mclaren created this oil on canvas; I found it on her personal/professional website (http://www.lesleymclaren.co.uk/index.asp. It could be the harvest moon over Appalachia.

Last night I lay awake and watched the moonbeams stream in my west-facing window. It seems I am often awake when there's a full moon. Could there be a connection? Wakefulness and dreaming often go together.

My days have been so busy lately that my dreams for Arts & Sciences have been submerged in the flurry of activity around the SACS visit and now the revision of all the program ABC forms. But the moonbeams worked their magic; they brought the dreams to mind.

Let me share two dreams with you:

1. I would like to see us "convert" a large number of students from undecided to Arts & Sciences majors. We have 22 exciting programs. Last spring we "signed" 76 new students to our rosters; we need to do that again this semester as we go into advising mode for Spring 2010.

2. I would like us to imagine one or two adult degree-completion programs for our School. Our total numbers should include not just our traditional majors and minors but also some adult learners who are working toward bachelors' degrees.

We are the heart of the institution, we teach all but one class in the Core, we provide most of the KING 1000 and 2000 instructors, we do the tracs in D.C., we supply most of the student and faculty lecturers, we attend ball games, plays, concerts, recitals, films, chapel, and Buechner events. All that is more than wonderful. But, I still want a piece of the action with the adult students. We need to add this one more arrow to our quiver.

What dreams surface for you under the harvest moon?

Closing the Loop

This diagram came from Arizona State's assessment website
But, I could have made it myself. You don't have to look very far to realize that colleges and universities across the nation are talking about assessment.

By next Monday each program administrator and I will have reviewed program assessment documents, the ubiquitous ABC forms, for all the programs (22) in Arts and Sciences. As a result of our SACS team's visit on September 11, we are doing some fine tuning to our report and the supporting materials.

At the moment we are tightening our outcomes and the measures we have identified to evaluate them. We are clarifying the language. We are making sure that every measure listed on a C form has a criterion for success. We want to make sure that we know how to determine whether a student has missed, met, or exceeded expectations.

Is this closing the loop? Not yet. As the diagram at the top so clearly demonstrates, we will not close the loop until May when we look back at the data we collected, analyze it, recommend changes based on our analyses, and make the changes. So, we are almost an entire year away from closing the loop.

The same process is happening in the Core Curriculum. Very soon there will be a meeting of all faculty teaching in the Core. The assessment process will be the centerpiece of the meeting. We will show what needs to be collected and what sort of analysis should take place. The conclusions reached in May 2010 will impact content, form policies, and dictate pedagogies for the next academic year.

Assessment is neither meatloaf nor moonbeams--neither comforting nor visionary. However, there can be great satisfaction in doing it well. Embedded in the process is freedom. Knowing the truth from the data we collect gives us the impetus to chart our course for the future. We are actors not victims.

The School of Arts and Sciences has really embraced assessment. We are life-long learners, and we are learning the necessary techniques and entering the discourse community of institutional effectiveness. I have contended all along that anyone who would teach well does assessment through every semester and in every planning cycle. We teachers are always thinking about what worked in a particular class and why. And, furthermore, we make changes in content, methodology, and delivery all the time. We close the loop.

Full-Time A&S Faculty List...

..is finally up on the college website.

It's taken me all day, several false starts, and new directions in the middle of the process.

I used the information in the catalog, which I assume is correct--spelling, degrees, and titles.

Here's the link.
http://artsandsciences.king.edu/index.php?id=676

Let me know if you see any errors.

Experience. D.C.

“You fill up my senses, like light in a forest…”
Not quite…

Diesel exhaust,
Hot dogs grilling on a vendor’s cart
Popcorn,
Starbucks’ coffee brewing at a corner store,
Whiffs of perfume,
Nicotene addicts’ acrid effluvia.

Human voices speaking many languages,
Clicks of the heel taps at the Tomb of the Unknowns,
Helicopters overhead, wooka-wooka-wooka,
Jets screaming aloft at 2-minute intervals,
Birds calling in the quiet of Arlington Cemetery,
Sirens' urgency dulled by their frequency,
And the throaty rumble of traffic an auditory foundation.

Tourists with cameras and funny hats,
Looking up, snapping photos.
Men in dark suits,
Carrying briefcases, hurrying,
Women dressed classy, heels tapping pavements,
Inscrutable behind their sunglasses.
Joggers earbudded.
Poised impatiently at every crosswalk.
The city's servants--cooking, cleaning,
watering, weeding, serving, selling.
King students moving like snails,
Shod in flip-flops despite good counsel.

Surprising vistas—
The domed Capitol,
Monuments lit by sun-light or spot-light
Against skies' blues.
Bright flowers against green.
White gravestones in ordered rows,
Soldiers, sailors, airmen, policemen
Fit, uniformed, hair cut close.
The capital’s homeless in layers of clothing
No matter the weather.

Warm sunshine,
Cool breezes,
Whoosh of stale wind as a train streaks past
the Metro platform.

Tired feet,
Sore muscles.
Down comforter.
Senses overloaded.
Sleepy bus trip.
Home.