Ramapo College of New Jersey
General Education Curriculum Committee (GECCo)
Meeting Minutes for Wednesday, December 8
11:30-1 pm, ASB-230
Members present: Rob Mentore (TAS; Chair), Leigh Cregan Keller (Library), Eric
Daffron (Provost’s Office), Meredith Davis (CA), Monika Giacoppe (AIS), Donovan
McFeron (TAS), Rick Nunez (ASB), Beba Shamash (CA), Gladys Torres-Baumgarten
(ASB), Ashwani Vasishth (SSHS), Jim Woodley (ASB, Ex-Officio)
Approval of the minutes from December 1, 2010. The minutes were discussed and
approved.
Announcements: Chair Rob Mentore announced that a Luminus Group had been
established and the committee was shown the structure. All files collected for the
Writing assessment will be uploaded to this site. Some slight refinements were made to
this structure.
There was a reminder of the AAC&U conference in Chicago in March –there was a brief
discussion of who might want to go.
Writing Assessment topics of discussion:
The group discussed whether we needed to be concerned about “informed consent” and
whether the students needed to be consulted. Rob informed us that he had talked about
this with the IRB Committee and was advised that this case is “exempt.”
Discussion of the recruitment of readers – we were able to recruit 16 readers to do the
rating of the writing samples.
We decided to send out a friendly reminder to faculty who are part of the assessment to
make sure they remember to collect the papers.
Other Business: Discussion of the meeting schedule for spring 2011 was decided - we
decided that some of our scheduled meeting times would be times for our subcommittees
to meet.
Presentation on the AAC&U meeting, summer 2010:
Gladys Torres- Baumgarten gave a presentation on the work that was done at the
AAC&U meeting in Summer 2010. Ashwani presented the option of using “Concept
Mapping” software as a way to get a clear picture of how stakeholders understand the
SLOs. Topics included ways to define and more precisely articulate SLOs, as well as
ways to do quantitative analysis to get a clearer sense of what people felt.
After questions and clarifications, Meredith Davis and Jim Woodley said that they liked
the idea of using this software to get a sense of what is envisioned for categories that are
amorphous such as Intercultural North America, International Issues, etc.
Sam Mustafa suggested that in we should not go in this direction but should focus at first
on classes where the SLOs are relatively straightforward, rather than start with the upper
level classes.
The concern was raised that redesign and assessment should not be confused. In
response, other members of the committee stated that they felt that redesign was implicit
in the GECCo charge. Finally, Sam Mustafa and others agreed that this software might
well help to ask the larger questions of what stakeholders think about student learning
outcomes.
Monika Giacoppe asked about implementation – how could we get the entire faculty
involved in this?
Professors Torres-Baumgarten and Vasishth shared some of the other topics that came up
in the AAC&U conference – including the suggestion of a communication committee to
help with “buy in” and use the FRC to do more of this.
It was suggested that we should know what percentage of the faculty teach in the GE
program. Can we identify faculty who teach GE? How?
Proposal from the Chair:
Rob Mentore presented a proposal for a 4th subcommittee that would study the
curriculum, audit syllabi and determine which skills and concepts are being learned in the
current Gen Ed. Beba Shamash was unclear of what would be accomplished with this
committee. Others also expressed some confusion as to how this subcommittee was
different from the SLO subcommittee.
Jim Woodley felt that there was enough oversight within the school or program in many
cases. Rob Mentore suggested that we could do a syllabus audit as part of the writing
assessment.
Rick Nunez was concerned that we can’t understand all of the writing assignments in a
class from the materials that we collect.
Discussion of an email received from the Diversity Action Committee:
The group had a discussion of an email received from the DAC in an effort to understand
what they were asking of us. It was agreed that we were unclear.
Respectfully submitted,
Meredith Davis