Westmont’s Program Review Committee
Minutes
Jan. 9, 2014
Present: Dinora Cardoso, Barb Kennedy, Mary Logue, Andrew Mullen, Tatiana
Nazarenko, and Michael Sommermann
Absent: Dana Alexander, Bill Wright.
Barb Kennedy opened the meeting in prayer. The minutes from 12/4/13 were approved
as written.
Tatiana reviewed the status of departmental responses for annual reports.
The Psychology Department submitted a regular annual report and is working on an
Action Plan for a new 6 Year Report. We reviewed the template which we recently
created. Psychology would like guidance on an Executive Summary to be included
with this document. We discussed whether this was needed at some length. A one
page cover sheet to highlight the departmental accomplishments seems like a
reasonable option.
We discussed the response to the Library 6 Year Report and Tatiana expressed how
many positive aspects she found in this document. Mary Logue said she was quite
dismayed to learn that the Library is not always informed of negative comments coming
from departmental external reviewers…and the fact their staff is out-of-the-loop on
external review visits. Tatiana noted that she will be sure to ask Psychology and
Modern Languages to report any information which appeared in their recent external
reviews. Tatiana will plan to routinely have departments inform the Library of any
mention made by reviewers. Mary noted that Cal Lutheran is routinely asked to provide
information to departments with pending 6 Year Reports. She will get us an example of
this for the next meeting. This could be an important addition to the Program Review
Guide…if the librarians are willing to do this work. Finally, Andrew Mullen suggested
that the library liaisons be proactive in supporting curriculum and materials for the library
collection. In the past, departments have been reminded in late June of remaining
budget money and it would be helpful if they could get an earlier up-date…perhaps in
March. Mary Logue promised she will make sure the liaisons are communicating better!
Tatiana invited the committee to attend a lunch on January 14 to listen to a presentation
by company representatives from LIVE TEXT, an accountability management system.
She has invited members of the GE Committee and department members from various
departments who might benefit from using the e-portfolio (Education, Art, Theatre Arts,
Modern Languages). The software will also manage administrative documents and has
powerful search tools for culling information and data in program review and
assessment tasks.
As discussed at an earlier meeting, how we measure faith learning will be changing in
the coming months. The PRC will be called on to the make a presentation at an upcoming meeting of Department Chairs giving examples of how we measure integration
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of faith learning at the department level. We will need examples of effective program
learning outcomes in all three divisions. Tatiana will be looking for examples in the 6
Year Reports. Andrew Mullen suggested we research examples at other institutions
such as Wheaton. Perhaps past CCCU conferences looked at the issue—we should
look into that. Whatever is presented should be short, simple and easily understood.
The Personnel Committee will be making a presentation at the same meeting regarding
the development of questions for students as they will be measuring how tenure-track
professors are doing on a personal level.
We know some departments are assessing faith-learning in their capstone courses.
Presently, there are only 3 departments who don’t have a capstone course. Perhaps
we should consider inviting the faculty who lead the capstone courses to this Dept.
Chair meeting on the subject of faith-learning rather than all department chairs.
Recorded by Barb Kennedy
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