Minutes -- General Education Committee
Friday, October 31, 2003 -- 4 to 5 PM, Plains Room, Memorial Union, NDSU

Committee members attending: Larry Peterson, Chair; Orv Swenson; Grant Striemer; Char Myhre; Marina Ioudina; Bob Harrold; Brian Dougan; Phil McClean; Virginia Clark Johnson; RaNelle Ingalls; Justin Wageman; Doug Rymph

Guests: Bill Slanger

1. Virginia Clark Johnson served as recorder for the meeting.

2. Changes to the minutes, as adopted, for the October 10th meeting follow:

> Change the date from October 9th to 10th, 2003
> Add the motion, second and vote for approval to delete Soil 210 and UNIV 403 from General Education

3. Reminders to the Committee included:

> The General Education Focus Group from the NCA Self-Study Committee will participate in two Open Forums on Tuesday, November 13, 2003 from 1-2:30 pm in the University Chamber and on Wednesday, November 19, 2003 from 1-2 pm in the Meadow Lark rooms of the Memorial Union. The Focus Group's "Draft Report" is located at:
http://www.ndsu.edu/ndsu/accreditation/GeneralEducationFocusGroup.htm
> The next meeting of the General Education Committee will be Friday,
November 7th, 2003

4. Dr. William Slanger, Director of the Office of Institutional Research and
Analysis met with the Committee to discuss assessment of General Education.
Dr. Slanger indicated that his office could offer four possible ways to
assist:

> A standardized test (the Academic Profile, ETS) - this test will be given
to a subsample of students this spring; it can be designed for general
education
> A secure website -- an example of one possible way to get information from
students was provided
> A combination of both the test and the website
> Organizational support

Points covered in the discussion of these tools included:
> We need to answer the question, "What to we want to get out of this?"
> The test could tell us how well our students are doing, and we could
compare to national data.
> Could we use subsets of questions to show how well we are doing in
areas of general education and the outcomes we have identified?
> Our goal is self-improvement as well as accreditation
> Cost of developing our own exam VS using the ETS exam
> Could ACT scores be linked to scores on the ETS exam?
> To follow-up with alumni a question might be added to the Alumni Placement
Survey that is done each year out of the Career Center; this might be a
to get information about the Lifelong Learning Outcome

5. The student petition was approved

6. No report from the Science and Technology Committee

7. No report from the Humanities, Fine Arts and Communication Committee

8. The Social and Behavioral Science, Quantitative Reasoning, and Wellness
Subcommittee provided the following information:

> Five General Education Review of ME 189: Skills for Academic Success --
instructor was asked to resubmit
> Geography 161: World Regional Geography -- instructor was asked to
resubmit

9. Meeting was adjourned at 5 PM