EDWARDS COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AND FINE ARTS
ANNUAL REPORT 2009-2010
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Mission Statement
The Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts is committed to providing a transformative
education for all students and to preparing majors in humanities and fine arts for positions of
leadership and stewardship in the complex, diverse, and interdependent world of the twenty-first
century.
To this end, the College emphasizes the values of intellectual vitality, moral activism, aesthetic
appreciation, and creative engagement within and beyond the classroom. These values are
realized:
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
Through the disciplined refining of skills in careful reading, clear thinking, close
observation, effective writing, and persuasive argument, and
Through student mastery of the body of knowledge specific to each major within the
College.
In its emphasis on students as makers of the world they inhabit, the College serves its ultimate
goal: to prepare each student to live a thoughtful and fulfilling life as a responsible and
responsive human being.
Vision Statement
We are an intellectual and artistic community that cultivates a passion for rational thought,
creative expression, and moral responsibility.
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Core Values
We are student-centered
We work for the common good of our College, our University, our community
We respect academic and intellectual diversity
We commit ourselves to student accessibility
We promise transparency of deliberations and decision-making
We strive for excellence, creativity, and originality
ASSESSMENT
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Structure of Assessment (Who is responsible for the assessment in your area?):
During the 2009-2010 academic year, the Associate Dean for the Humanities, Dr. John Beard,
directed assessment within the Edwards College of Humanities and Fine Arts and reported on
assessment to the Dean. With the assistance of the College Assessment Coordinator, Paula
Vincini, he worked directly with the nine Department Chairs to update and establish clear
assessment plans for each academic program, to insure that such plans are followed and that
stated assessment tools are used, and to edit the resulting assessment reports from each area.
These final reports included the explanations of results and use of results for continuous
improvement for that year. Within their areas, each Chair is responsible for implementing the
posted departmental assessment, and each has a small number of interested faculty members who
help administer various parts of the assessment plan. Also, a college-wide COHFA Assessment
Committee made up of representatives from each department in the College and chaired by Dr.
Beard meets regularly throughout the academic year to evaluate College assessment plans and
results and to make recommendations to the Dean.
Identify the strengths you have found as a consequence of the assessment:
(1) All departments show more willingness to rely, at least in part, on some of the assessment
results they are now receiving and to view such results as potentially useful information
that should be discussed and perhaps implemented within the department. The degree of
“trust” in such information varies widely from department to department, but overall this
appears to be a positive trend.
(2) All departments have shared assessment results more widely than in the past so that more
departmental faculty members are at least exposed to the information, if not fully in
agreement with it. Assessment processes and results now appear to be part of the
discussion at regular faculty meetings and in some departmental committees.
(3) In terms of departments meeting their stated student learning outcomes as expressed in
their 2009-2010 assessment plans, a little over 60% of the SLOs “met or exceeded
departmental expectations” last year, with most showing clear improvements from the
previous year.
(4) For those departments that have just begun using, or that continue to use, exit interviews,
senior surveys, self-reflective writing and other such affective measures, they find that
the student perception of their learning experience is very positive. Likewise, any
concerns raised here (especially by graduating seniors) have now been partially
incorporated into program assessment. Senior exit interviews appear to be a rich source
of information.
(5) Just as in 2008-2009, according to the various assessment tools now in use, the majority
of our majors tend to master the basic skills and background information required of their
disciplines at a level that “meets or exceeds departmental expectations.”
(6) Likewise, by the time majors arrive at the capstone experience within the major, their
skills and knowledge have advanced from where they were three years earlier. There is
some evidence of positive change over time, although sometimes this change is not
dramatic.
(7) Students continue to do a little better when they are assessed on oral presentations than
when evaluated on written presentations, and verbal comprehension seems somewhat
higher than reading comprehension, although comparable assessments are not available
in all disciplines.
(8) Assessments that are specifically performance-based and that require an application of
knowledge in practice, such as those that involve rating students actually performing
music, doing acting, and making art, as well as participating in group activities or
presenting posters and other such “performances,” tend to indicate higher levels of
proficiency in the students being assessed than more traditional standardized tests or class
exams. Whether these assessment practices are better or worse at actually assessing
student learning has not been determined by the College, but students seem to learn more
or perhaps simply show more of that learning through performance.
Identify the challenges you have found as a consequence of the assessment:
(1) Many departments have not yet set appropriate benchmarks for exactly what is meant by
“meets or exceeds departmental expectations” in respect to specific SLOs. This delay is
to be expected when very limited assessment data is available, but several departments
should now have enough data to make informed decisions about their own expectations.
(2) In those instances where scores are available from standardized tests, departmental
rubrics, or in-house exit exams, etc., average scores should be supplemented with a more
refined breakdown of pertinent criteria related directly to the SLOs being assessed. It is
not enough to simply report a score or an average; some analysis of the full data is
required. Departments need more targeted feedback in order to determine pedagogical
improvements to student learning.
(3) Although this has improved somewhat, there is occasionally still too much reliance on
grades in select classes as the only measure of assessment or too much reliance on a
single score on an exit exam, etc. This needs to change.
(4) As more rubrics come into use in various assessment plans, those rubrics used to assess
SLOs should now be reviewed and approved by the department, not just by the Chair or
the professor who most often teaches that course. Also, such rubrics need to be created in
Scantron forms, in cooperation with Institutional Research, so that they can be processed
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
though IR to generate reports of achievement for each SLO in the department plan. We
need to become more efficient in how we gather and store data.
Also, better consistency must be achieved between the planned assessment and the actual
assessment results reported in TEAL Online for a specific SLO, both in the yearly
assessment plan and in the actual report of results from the assessment in use. In other
words, the assessment tool being used does not always appear to assess (or at least not
fully assess) that specific SLO.
Senior exit surveys of some kind could/should probably be used in several departments
within the College.
Some assessments generate extended narratives from select faculty within the department
discussing the SLOs in reports to the Chair from that unit. For example, the professors
who teach voice majors in Music must report on their part of assessing the performance
of all majors, or the faculty members involved in administering the oral comprehension
part of the Spanish exit exam must explain the results to the Chair, etc. These reports
would be more useful if they are more closely associated with the specific SLO they are
referring to in the assessment plan.
Although adding, or deleting, or requiring another course is, by far, the most common
way that departments respond to assessment results, especially if they perceive a
weakness, more discussion should take place about how the design of the course might be
improved for increased student learning. Simply adding or changing a requirement may
not be enough to address the issue. Course redesign can also lead to improvement.
What are the changes based on assessment results?
The College is currently trying to engage in some kind of overall view of assessment within the
whole College. It has proven to be very difficult to take the multiple assessment reports for the
many separate programs within the College and use them to determine any common view of
broad patterns of strength or weakness that emerge. Although our initial results are very
inconclusive, it may still be useful at this stage in our development of assessment practices to
offer the following observations.
A. The COHFA Assessment Committee recommended at the end of 2009-2010 that all full-time
faculty members in the College be given access to the “Academic” listings on TEAL Online that
pertain to the assessment plans of the College. With the help of Institutional Research, this
access was implemented in August 2010 and has been in effect ever since then. Lecturers, Senior
Instructors, and tenured/tenure-track faculty in the College can view past assessment reports for
any department in the College, as well as current assessment plans for this year and the coming
year. Not only has this one change made it easier for faculty members to view their own
department’s assessment reports and plans, but it has also encouraged faculty members to
become more aware of what other departments are doing with assessment. This should promote
more faculty interaction and more productive discussion about assessment going forward.
B. The potential interest in Portfolio Review appears to be expanding. Currently, three
departments depend heavily on Portfolio Review as a major component of their assessment
plans: Visual Arts, Theatre, and English. However, Philosophy is in the process of developing a
portfolio approach to the student writing they are now collecting for assessment, and Music
seems interested in developing their jury evaluation system into a more comprehensive portfolio
of evaluations that tracks the student through his/her whole program. With models on the Arts
side and the Humanities side, the College has every reason to analyze the success of these
Portfolio Reviews in order to see if wider application would prove beneficial.
C. The overall quality of student writing remains a persistent issue within the College. Although
departments as different as Music and Philosophy have specifically commented on certain
weaknesses in the writing skills of their majors, there have also been areas of assessment in
English, Communication, Spanish, and Art that occasionally touch on similar writing problems.
Even departments that do not directly assess student writing skills often complain about the
relative level of these skills in their majors, and the COHFA Assessment Committee has
identified this as a common issue across disciplines. However, the relative complexity and cost
of writing assessment has discouraged many from pursuing any realistic evaluation of student
writing. This area may be worthy of further analysis.
D. Finally, it appears that the College may have just now reached a tipping point as far as real
engagement with assessment is concerned. It would be misleading to overstate the case, but to
the extent that many departments are now discussing the student learning and teaching that is
actually going on within their majors, this is a hopeful sign that similar discussions will continue
in the future and that some of the assessments now being done may have an impact on these
discussions. This is a different situation than the College was in just three years ago.
As far as particular departmental change is concerned, the various changes for 2009-2010 tend to
fall into three general categories:
(1) Changes in Curriculum & Testing Due to Assessment
After an initial decision to add/subtract/require a class in order to address an issue
identified by assessment, there may still be a need to tweak additional elements in
order to get at the information the department needs to know or to provide a partial
“fix” for the problem. The following examples are typical of these situations:

In 2009-2010, as a result of reviewing the results from several years of a
departmentally developed exit exam, the Department of Theatre determined that
student achievement was barely adequate in identifying the major historical and
cultural dimensions of theatre and in identifying the influence of important
playwrights, actors, directors and designers on the historical and cultural
dimensions of theatre. The test results also indicated that students experienced
problems connecting cultural history and theatre history. To address these
problems, the department chose to add two classes to the new B.F.A. programs:
THEA 461 Dramatic Literature and THEA 462 Theory and Criticism. In
addition to the already required theatre history sequence of THEA 361 & THEA
362, these two new classes should provide the necessary background and
integration majors appear to need. Also, the department has developed a new
required reading list that better reflects the overall world dramatic literature
necessary for the student of theatre to master, and this list is distributed to
incoming freshmen during their first term in the major.

The Department of Music saw improvement in the talent levels of incoming
students and in the performance capabilities of students in the Senior Recital, but
there were other areas of assessment that proved problematic. For example,
students performed more poorly on an ear-training examination than they did in
informal practice situations, and students clearly had a harder time producing
good work “on the spot” than they had when given an open book and longer time
in which to work. More “under the gun” test assignments will now be given
along the way, requiring students to perform in class on a more regular basis, thus
better preparing them for the actual final assessment. Another area in need of
improvement was the rubric used for juries. It was determined that faculty and
students both needed a more simplified rubric that more adequately explains the
requirements of the jury. This change will allow students and faculty, especially
adjuncts, to use the rubric to more effectively guide their teaching according to
departmental expectations. Since the jury process is so fundamental to the
discipline, time spent improving this aspect should benefit the whole program.

The Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies has decided to begin the
assessment of the writing of their students over time. The department piloted a
sample rubric for this activity, but given the range of different assignments
represented in the collected writing samples, the department now intends to
streamline the rubric before the next cycle of review. There was just not enough
consistency in what the rubric was to evaluate compared to the samples they had,
and fewer categories should result in a more effective assessment. Likewise, the
major no longer requires a capstone seminar as part of the program but has now
instituted the writing portfolio system as a major means of evaluation of student
progress through the program.
(2) Changes in Departmental Review Due to Assessment
In some cases, initial assessment results and the general discussion surrounding
assessment will require still more analysis and departmental review before further
major changes might be made. As such discussions, themselves, represent a
relative change from previous years, when little or no review had been done, it
should be identified here as a positive development and an indication of
procedural change within certain departments.

The Department of History has learned that the ETS Major Field Test in History
will be discontinued in 2010-2011. The department still sees a benefit in using a
standardized test for the assessment of certain knowledge areas in the discipline,
so they intend to research the market for a replacement to the ETS exam.
However, since the ETS exam has already been used over several years, the
department had already noted some patterns of student success and weakness.
One surprising trend with the ETS test results was that male students scored
higher than male students nationally, but female history majors scored lower
than their national counterparts and lower than the CCU male history
majors. The department intends to pursue this trend and consider seriously the
apparent disparity in scores between male and female history majors at CCU and
to develop strategies that might allow all student average scores to increase.

Some of the results from the portfolio assessment of the major conducted by the
English Department have indicated that, although students have improved in their
ability to anticipate audience effect on writing and to integrate and analyze
research evidence, as well as in their skills in sentence structure, construction and
mechanical usage, they have not improved in all areas. For example, evidence of
skills involving professional writing remains weak, and outcomes related to
linguistics continue to be below expectations. In response, two departmental
committees were formed in Spring 2010 to (1) begin work on analyzing
teaching effectiveness and (2) review the current English curriculum.
Likewise, the annual departmental retreat as well as several scheduled faculty
meetings will discuss these subjects during 2010-2011. Possible solutions already
include the promotion of more professional writing through Internships, the
development of a linguistic-based grammar course in Spring 2011, and offering
more theory classes that analyze and integrate the rhetorical features of language
and critical elements of major literary genres.

In the Department of Political Science, an ETS Major Field Test is used along
with a departmentally developed pre-test/post-test to assess most of the SLOs in
the assessment plan. While these assessments show gains in several areas, not
every SLO is so clearly met. For instance, the post-test score for graduating
seniors fell below departmental expectations in identifying the political impact of
various public policies. If this public administration/public policy score does not
improve during 2010-2011, the department will need to discuss the utility of
requiring an additional upper-level public administration/public policy
course. Also, the political thought (theory) score on the ETS exam for the
combined fall 2009/spring 2010 year was at the 25th percentile, well below
departmental expectations. However, since POLI 300 Introduction to Political
Theory was only recently added to the major as a required course, the results of
this change may not be fully realized until next academic year at the earliest.
(3) Changes in Departmental Standards Based on Assessment
As assessment processes develop and mature in many departments of the College, it will
become necessary to adjust expectations or even raise the bar in certain areas depending
on assessment results gathered over time. The College is beginning to see some
departments engaging early definitions of just what “meets or exceeds departmental
standards” should mean, and whether that meaning can change due to review.

The Department of Visual Arts has long employed a portfolio system of review
for its majors at the sophomore level and at the senior level. It has also developed
an effective rubric for translating the complex nature of such reviews into more
understandable rankings that allow students and faculty members to discuss
common concerns. The rankings from 2009-2010 indicate that the senior students
performed at the high range of the rubric, often scoring at proficiencies between
67% to 75%. Overall, this seems positive, but the department now needs to
discuss and decide what the benchmark of departmental expectations is for
this and other SLO’s included in this assessment. In other words, how high is
high enough, or how low is too low? If the department’s benchmark is 70% or
higher, then proficiency for at least some of the outcomes is not being met, but
this needs to be decided.

Likewise, the assessment scores for senior level students in the Department of
Communication show some overall improvement, but students scored below
departmental expectations in the rubric criteria for certain aspects of the essay
exams rated by the rubric. For example, those areas of the rubric that rated higher
level cognitive skills such as analysis, critique, creating a compelling argument,
and understanding data usually resulted in lower scores. The department will
discuss and determine appropriate benchmarks for all areas of an essay (or an
exam with essay questions) in order to engage strategies that might strengthen
these areas.

In the Department of World Languages & Cultures, listening comprehension and
reading comprehension remain strong areas of student skills within the Spanish
major, but one area continues to pose problems. Identifying aspects of the history,
literary criticism and cultural studies of Spanish-speaking cultures remains an area
that falls below the department’s benchmark. The department has formed a
review committee to change this result for next year. So far, several possibilities
have been discussed, including (1) shifting the focus of the major away from
many existing literature classes to readings about cultural studies in Spanishspeaking cultures, (2) replacing multiple choice tests on the exit exam with short
essay questions, and (3) providing students with the option of choosing which
Spanish-speaking culture they wish to focus on depending on which courses they
have taken.
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New Projects and Initiatives

The Edwards College recruited 18 new tenure-track faculty and 11 new lecturers for fall
2010, the largest group of faculty ever hired in the College at one time.
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The Center for Archaeology and Anthropology hired two new faculty members and
initiated a variety of new projects in the local area and in Egypt.

The College began the process of establishing an academic exchange program with the
University of Alexandria in Egypt in the fields of Archaeology, Anthropology, and Art
History.

The College made preparations for visits by faculty from CCU’s partner institutions in
China and for CCU faculty to travel to those institutions during 2010-11.

The Clark Chair in History was established through a generous gift from the estate of
Lawrence B. and Jane P. Clark, and the first faculty member was selected for the
position.

The English Department’s new Master of Arts in Writing program will be implemented
in fall of 2010.
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The Department of Visual Arts implemented a new major in Graphic Design.

Faculty created or modified more than one hundred separate courses.

Faculty in the College played a major role in helping to create the Beach Music Hall of
Fame, to be located at CCU.

First steps were taken toward the possible creation of CCU’s Center for Peace and
Conflict Studies, which will be the only such center in South Carolina. The Center will
oversee an interdisciplinary minor in Peace and Conflict Studies and ultimately a major.
The Center intends to be active in community engagement, bringing the campus and
community together through a variety of programs and events focusing on human rights,
human respect, and human responsibility.

The Department of Foreign Languages changed the name of the department from
“Foreign Languages” to “World Languages and Cultures” and redesigned the Spanish
Major.
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Grants and Other Externally Funded Activities
Faculty received dozens of internal and external grants, with some of the most prestigious being
listed below:

Dr. Steve Earnest won an NEH Fellowship for University Teachers for “German Exile
Culture in California” at Stanford University.
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Dr. Michael Ruse received a fellowship to attend the Transylvania University Seminar on
the Future of Liberal Education.

Joe Oestreich was awarded a fellowship from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Eliza Glaze was awarded a research fellowship for the 2010/11 academic year by the
National Humanities Council.

Cheryl Ward secured major grants from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology Field
Research and the Antiquities Endowment Fund Committee of American Research Center
in Egypt.
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Scholarly/Creative Contributions
Faculty published more than one hundred individual scholarly works (articles, book reviews,
essays, poems, works of fiction, etc.) during the academic year.
Faculty made more than two hundred separate scholarly presentations and collaborated in
hundreds of separate performances or exhibitions on and off campus, within the US and abroad.
Among the most prestigious contributions were the following:

Nils Rahut (Philosophy) authored the textbook Think Philosophy (Prentice Hall. 2011).

Dylan Wittkower (Philosophy) edited Mr. Monk and Philosophy (Open Court
Publishing).

Brian Nance and Eliza Glaze (History) edited Between Text and Patient: The Medical
Enterprise in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Edizioni del Galluzzo).

Kenneth Townsend (History) co-authored First Americans: A History of Native Peoples
(Prentice-Hall).

Steven Bleicher (Art) revised his textbook Contemporary Color Theory and Use
(Cengage).

Arne Flaten (Art) co-edited The Medal, No. 56 (British Museum Press).

Ken Rogers (Politics) revised his textbook Understanding American Government
(Horizon Textbook Publishing).

Jen Boyle (English) authored Anamorphosis in Early Modern Literature (Ashgate Press).

Music Faculty performed in eleven states and internationally in Germany, Sweden, and
Spain.
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Community Engagement and Outreach Activities

Faculty made hundreds of individual contributions of service to the University, and
almost over fifty to the community.

Faculty from the College served on a large number of professional and community
boards, committees, and task forces.

Faculty served on a wide variety of professional journal editorial boards and as officers of
disciplinary professional organizations.

Edwards College faculty spoke or performed at CCU’s Litchfield facility as part of the
eight-week Board of Visitors community lecture series.

The Jackson Family Center for Ethics and Values sponsored a series of events, including
presentations on campus and in the community, coordinated the activities of the Jackson
Scholars and the Jackson Junior Scholars at Loris Middle School.

The English Department’s “Words to Say It” series brought a diverse group of six writers
to speak on campus and to the wider community.
Among the most significant individual activities were the following:

Dr. Paul Peterson served on the Horry County School Board.

Robin Russell joined the Myrtle Beach Education Foundation.

Dr. Holley Tankersley was a regular commentator on local, regional, and national politics
for area television stations.

Professor Kenneth Martin served on the Board of Directors for the Horry County Arts
Council.

Dr. Matthieu Chan Tsin served as Vice President of the Board of Directors of Dream
Catchers Therapeutic Riding Center.

Dr. Nils Rauhut was named President of the American Association of Philosophy
Teachers.

Dr. Dennis Earl served as President of the South Carolina Society for Philosophy.
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Awards and Honors
Faculty members received numerous teaching, advising, and scholarly/creative awards.
Some highlights include the following:

Deborah Breede was presented with a 2009-2010 ZONTA Gold Star Award in
recognition for her work with the Eastern Carolinas Coalition Against Human
Trafficking.

Coastal Carolina University’s delegation, sponsored by Holly Tankersley and Fred
Wood, won the Best Large Delegation award at the South Carolina Student Legislature

Eliza Glaze was unanimously elected as a “Socia,” an honorary voting fellow to the
International Society for the Study of Medieval Latin.

Ken Townsend was named a Fellow at the Kroc Institute of Peace, University of Notre
Dame.