Minutes of Task Force Meeting
Tuesday Dec 16, 2003 @ 1pm
Attending: Bernhardt, Chajes, Perse, Klingaman, Aniunas, Courtright, Vukelich, Beeman,
Sawyer, Rise.
Guest: Clyde Moneyhun, Director of Writing at UD
Bernhardt briefed the group on various outreach intiatives to departments: a survey of biology
faculty, curricular changes in Art History to introduce more writing, discussions in
Sociology/Criminal Justice, planning for outcomes assessment in Civil Engineering, planning for
writing support for distance Nursing students, and potential projects in Agriculture and Natural
Sciences and Business and Economics. Arts and Sciences is also looking at writing requirements
within their Educational Affairs committee.
Other outreach is being coordinated through CTE and The Present by designating the
instructional improvement grants to projects that integrate oral and written communication into
courses (as an option alongside service learning and quantitative reasoning). Writing Center
consultants (funded through the Task Force Unidel money) are working with faculty to help
them develop their proposals.
The Task Force reviewed a set of Tip Sheets for faculty outreach covering such topics as
assignment design, integrating communication skills, managing the paper load, attending to
grammar, and other topics. Bernhardt is developing these Tip Sheets with the help of Writing
Center consultants for use in various outreach activities on campus and elsewhere.
Moneyhun and Perse described TA training and course design efforts for a first-year
communication course that would substitute for E110 and incorporate oral communication with
written in a four-credit course. Scott Caplan from Communication Studies will provide training
for English Department TAs in January in preparation for teaching four pilot courses in spring
(one Honors and three regular). The courses are thematically designed.
Bernhardt briefed the group on faculty training delivered through partnering with the ITUE/PBL
team, with a workshop completed in June ’03 and another planned for Jan ’04, with an emphasis
on integrating communication skills through PBL.
Finally, the Task Force discussed plans for the summer Gen Ed workshop, with plans to offer
workshop sessions on both oral and written communication. A suggestion is to involve faculty
from the disciplines, rather than only faculty from English and Communication.
Next meeting and spring schedule, to be announced.