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RPC Meeting Minutes
October 4, 2006
Present: Balik, Collins, Flath, Heyman, Hornbach, Laskin, Latham, Lindeman, Michelfelder, Nedelsky, Wheaton and Contant (ACE Fellow)
- Meeting was called to order at 2:00 pm
- Minutes from the meeting of September 27, 2006 were approved.
- Lorne Robinson, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, presented a report on the past admissions cycle and outcomes. This was the first year of the need-aware process used in making admissions decisions. After some discussion, the process was described as a success after this first year, but with the need for much more careful data collection and analysis on yield rates for various groups of admitted students.
- Chair Heyman began the discussion of faculty course-loads and sabbatical cycles by sharing a table of results from preliminary models he had done mixing various options on sabbatical cycle length, course teaching load reductions, class size changes, and student-faculty ratio goals. This table demonstrated the varying outcomes of the different options. Provost Michelfelder requested that the same, standardized data be used from Institutional Research for all modeling. The subtle differences between data sources could skew the results of the models and make comparisons difficult and inaccurate. Dan Balik will compile the data needed for the models and conduct the analyses for the committee.
The committee then discussed what sorts of changes would be outside the range of acceptability. For example, what is the highest number of new faculty that would feasible? The largest average class size? Committee members also wanted to discuss lower enrollments as a way to meet to some of these goals of this task. No final determinations were made.
Hornbach presented his analysis of class size that would produce approximately the same percentage of class sizes at 20 or less, but would accommodate a larger average class size. The shift would be to increase the number of classes taught with sizes of 30-49 students enrolled. Committee members were concerned about the availability of classrooms for these sizes of classes. Committee members also wanted to get data on the courses with class size limits (how many courses and what limits).
Chair Heyman also indicated that we needed to think about how to measure benefits of changes in faculty workload. Provost Michelfelder suggested revisiting the idea of survey of faculty preferences between various choices (reduced teaching load, larger class sizes, more frequent sabbaticals, higher salary, etc.) for them and for their students.
- Meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Respectfully submitted by Cheryl Contant |
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