ASCRC WRITING COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA
Monday, April 6, 2015, 10:00 a.m. -12:00 p.m., Todd 203
CALL TO ORDER
Chair-elect Stark called the meeting to order at 10:10 a.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT:
T. Andrews, I. Appelbaum, S. Brown, G. Burns, H. Jurva, J. Gallo, J. Glendening, D. Raiford, M.
Stark, G. Weix,
Ex-Officio Members Present: N. Lindsay, M. Mangold, N. Peeterse, K. Webster
Members Absent/Excused: B. Chin, C. Corr, D. Sewell S. Williams
Guests: Peter Baker & Julie Cahil
The minutes from March 2nd 2015 were approved.
COMMUNICATION

Professor Brown was congratulated on receiving the Career Achievement Award from
Kappa Epsilon.

The Labeling Motion was approved by ASCRC and will go to the Faculty Senate this
Thursday. Chair Chin and Chair-elect Stark will be at the meeting to answer any
questions. ASCRC asked that the Writing Committee identify every place the catalog
that needs to be updated to reflect the new labels of the courses in the Writing Program.
Professors Applebaum and Weix volunteered to work on this.
ASCRC expressed concern that there were no summer offerings of WRIT 101. Missoula
College has now added one section, but currently has low enrollment because of the late
addition.

Grace Harris, Athletic Academic Advisor will be rejoining the committee next year an exofficio member. Professor David Gates from Creative Writing has agreed to serve for the
English department.
BUSINESS ITEMS

Chair-elect Stark received a request from the History department to allow a student to
get credit for the upper-division writing requirement in the major for a graduate
research seminar. The Writing Committee does not have a mechanism to grant
retroactive upper-division writing requirement status to a course. The student will
need to go through the Graduation Appeals process. However, the Writing Committee
could review the course to determine whether it meets the criteria and learning goals of
the requirement and provide a letter of support for the appeal. Director Webster and
Professor Applebaum agreed to review the course.

Natalie Peeterse provided an update regard preparation for the writing retreat.
Currently there are 28 non table leaders registered for a total of 40 participants. She
will send a reminder to table leaders regarding the training. Two hundred student
papers have been randomly selected and will be available for review at the retreat.
Natalie is looking into alternatives to Moodle for collecting student papers. One option
is Qualtrix, the survey tool supported by IT. Chair-elect Stark is familiar with the
Qualtrix and does not believe it is well suited for assessment.
We now have the ability to pull information from Banner. The scores and strengths and
weaknesses from the retreat will need to be uploaded into the Banner data spreadsheet
in order to look for patterns. Professor Raiford is teaching a graduate pattern
recognition analytics course next fall. His students could use this data to gain
experience working on a real project. We don’t yet know the questions the data will
help to address.

Chair Chin provided some feedback regarding the Writing Resource Website, but no
other members have provided feedback. Professor Burns reviewed it and thought it
looked great. Student member Williams and other students review the site as well.
Director Webster is meeting with the Undergraduate advisors and will ask them to
provide feedback. After the edits requested by Chair Chin are made the site can go live.
Once it is live Camie will ask Beth Howard to create a link to the new General Education
Resource Site.

The Committee discussed planning for the Fall Symposium. The date of September 25th
was agreed on. This is during homecoming, so there could be a topic to incorporate
Alumni. The Committee should keep in mind the goal of the symposium is to improve
the writing curriculum. Additional topics may arise after the Writing Assessment
Retreat. Some initial suggestions include:
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Half day with three one-hour concurrent sessions and then a round table.
Associate Provost Lindsay can provide the introduction and a shared message
regarding writing assessment.
Un-Conference: built on the idea that most networking and collaboration takes
place in between conference sections. Usually organized around food.
A workshop on how to fill out the Writing Forms / best practices
Accessibility / accessibility for mac users
Revision or research
Challenges of teaching writing to non-native English speakers
How to meet the needs of diverse student population with varying abilities and
needs
o
o
o
Particular needs of Missoula College Students / non-traditional / veteran
students
Student panel discussing what feedback is helpful
Rubric – how to get students to engage in assessment-pedagogy of the assessed
Director Webster, Professor Gallo, and Chair-elect Stark agreed to work on the details
after the retreat. Members should think about things their colleagues would find useful
and send any other ideas to the workgroup including possible names of presenters.

Guests Peter Baker, International Program Development Officer & Julie Cahil, Associate
Director, International Recruitment joined the meeting to discuss the issues related to
English placement tests for international students. There are an increasing number of
international students on campus. The Pathway Program allows students to take credit
baring courses while they work on improving their English. They receive conditional
admission until they increase their TOEFL score to gain full admission. There is a new
articulation agreement with a University in Shanghai for Instructors of English. Many
students in the joint program with Potsdam University took WRIT 101 their senior year.
UM has more and more students from Japan and Brazil.
International students have been taking the Placement Exam over and over so they can
get into credit baring courses rather than taking WRIT 095. There is a cost to take the
exam on the Mountain campus and students are not allowed to use the computer. At
Missoula College the exam is given and graded by a machine.
Students in the Pathway Program are reporting that the EASL courses don’t help them
to improve their scores. EASL courses are designed to teach academic English and are
being taught for historical reasons.
The Writing Placement exam needs to be evaluated to see whether it is fair to
international students and adequately placing them. It may be helpful to have a e a
diagnostic designed specifically for International Students. There is no mechanism to
prevent them from retaking the placement exam. Are they taking classes that they are
not ready to take? Could TOEFL scores be aligned with the placement exam? It would
be helpful to have a clear pathway for international students that directly addresses
their specific needs It seems instructors of the ELI courses do not know what is being
taught in EASL courses and vice versa. A collaborative effort for these courses to
complement each other could be useful. Once the new Director of Composition is
hired, everyone involved in supporting international students improve their English
should get together to discuss the issues and work on a resolution.
The Writing Committee does not have purview over the placement exam, WRIT 095,
WRIT 101, EASL or ELI courses, but is willing to be a resource on the effectiveness of the
WRIT placement (for all students including international students) should that be
deemed appropriate by the Director of Composition.
Maria Mangold started tracking international students’ performance in WRIT courses in
comparison to their scores on TOEFL and placement exam.
ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 12:05