General Education Assessment Committee
March 24, 2015
Rohrbach Library, Room 22
Present: Krista Prock (at-large non-teaching faculty), William Donner (SPRC), Gil Clary (Office of
Assessment), George Sirrakos (COE), Mary Eicholtz (at-large teaching faculty), Kim Shively (at-large
teaching faculty), Varsha Pandya (CLAS).
Absent: Brent Penny (Admin. & Finance), Rayne Palmer (Student Representative), Patricia Derr (Gen Ed
Committee), Valerie Trollinger (VPA), Janice Gasker (at-large teaching faculty), Stephen Hensler (COB),
William Dempsey (Academic Dean).
Prock called the meeting to order at 11:00 am.
Minutes: The Minutes from the February 13th, 2015 and the February 24th, 2015 meetings were
introduced for approval. Shively made a motion to approve the Minutes, Eicholtz seconded. Motion
passed.
New Chair of GEAC: Prock offered her congratulations to Mary Eicholtz, who was elected as the chair
of GEAC beginning Fall 2015. An election will be held shortly for one of the non-teaching faculty
positions on the committee. Prock put her name in for another term. She will keep us up-to-date.
GEC/GEAC discussions: The Communications discussions were held recently and people in attendance
thought they had value. The discussion on Critical Thinking was not as engaging. It was difficult to get
useful information for our purposes. No more discussions will be held this semester. We will schedule
additional sessions for the fall semester.
CLAS Assessment Committee: Pandya reported they would like a small group from GEAC to attend one
of their upcoming meetings. The next meeting is March 31st. It is considered that we should attend each
of the college assessment committee meetings. Prock and Eicholtz are willing to attend. Discussion
followed. The LAS committee has questions about assessment itself.
Assessment Newsletter: Clary talked about the newsletter from assessment. He would like to publish an
additional edition at the end of April 2015. He asked for the Committee to offer some brief reflections
on the work being performed by GEAC.
Website: Access to the website is being worked out.
Assessment workshop: The workshop will be held on August 20, 2015. It was asked if it was better to
have the workshop in August or January. It was decided for a variety of reasons that August is the better
choice, and on the Thursday before the semester begins. Discussion followed. We need to identify a
speaker and theme for the workshop. Faculty from the closer sister schools, such as Millersville and
West Chester, could be invited for break-out sessions to discuss the pros and cons of competencies.
Fall 2015 meetings: Prock requested that teaching members of the Committee send their fall 2015
schedules to Kathi Malloy so that a day and time can be identified to fall meetings.
Fall 2015 Assessment and Mini-Curriculum Map: Prock created a list of contact persons to assist
assessors in the fall with various domains, such as inquiry and analysis, decision making, etc. Once
courses are identified, then the contact person will reach out to the chair of the department performing
the assessment. The chairs will need to identify their courses for assessment. Prock distributed a sheet
with suggested course offerings for exploratory students. She asked the members to talk to their chair
and help them complete the mini curriculum map. Discussion followed. Once we have a new map (to
be created before our next meeting), then we will need to decide what sample size we will use. We have
never looked at domains 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.6 and 1.7. Previously we assessed the other domains in goal 1,
so we want to make sure we assess the domains that have not yet been assessed. Discussion followed.
Assessment will be performed by the teaching faculty who will report on our rubrics. We decided to
offer training at the end of Spring 2015 and also in Fall 2015. It was suggested that at the end of the
semester, each of the contact people will contact teaching faculty and introduce the link for the training
PowerPoint. If the data sent is unusable, will we ask them to re-submit? Should a check sheet be
developed itemizing what contact has been made with the responses? Prock will create that check sheet.
Should incentives be offered for successful completion? Penny will be contacted to see what we might
offer as an incentive.
Meeting adjourned at 11:40 am.
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4/03/2015