Meetings/Events

Congratulations

The National Science Foundation herebyhas awarded a grant of $199,984 to Appalachian State University for support of the project, entitled "North Carolina NAEP: Improving Mathematics Content and Methods Courses;" the project is under the direction of Tracy Goodson-Espy (C&I), David K. Pugalee, Kathleen Lynch-Davis (C&I), Shelby Morge, Tracie Salinas (Math).This award is effective May 1 , 2008 and expires July 31, 2010.

Jackie Cetera, a graduate student at Appalachian State University, has been honored for her outstanding work as a director of a campus residence hall. Cetera, a graduate student and residence hall director at Appalachian State University, has received the North Carolina Housing Officers’ Graduate Student of the Year award. Cetera is the residence director for Lovill Hall, a 224-bed facility at Appalachian.

The award recognizes the contributions of a graduate student in housing or residence life, particularly those made to their campus position and/or academic program which are considered to be above the expectations of a graduate student.

A student at Appalachian since 2006, she plans to graduate in May with a master of arts degree in college student development and a concentration in student affairs.

Faculty Awards

It’s that time to nominate a colleague for one of the RCOE Faculty Awards; the awards include scholarship, adjunct teaching/supervision, community of practice, teaching, mentoring/service. Submit your nominations - forms are available on the RCOE Home Page - by February 8th to Morgan Alwell (alwellmj@appstate.edu) or leave them for her in the LRE Office, Rm. 124. Award recipients receive a plaque, $500 for professional development activities, and recognition at the end-of-the semester RCOE luncheon on May 1, 2008.

Department Chair Evaluations

There’s still time to submit your department chair evaluation; due by Feb. 1, 2008.

Online Syllabi

Syllabi continue to trickle in but we need an all out push to get all current syllabi online in the next two weeks; just submit your syllabus in Word to the department administrative staff and they will see they get to Justin for posting on the web.

New Textbook Rental Policy

A new textbook rental policy has been approved by the university; departments will be required to develop textbook selection policies for their courses. Chairs will be discussing the new policy at the next AC meeting but everyone should have received a copy from the Provost’s Office; we will post the policy under the link to Faculty on our webpage. The Provost’s Office expects each department to have its policies in place by the end of the semester.

UNC Tomorrow

President Bowles established a task force called UNC Tomorrow to determine what the citizens of the state wished their university system to do to assist the state in moving ahead in the 21st century.

The report is now available and contains some interesting demographic information. For example, "by 2017, 30,000 additional students are projected to graduate from North Carolina high schools. Hispanic youth will account for nearly 73% or 22,000 of these students. Because a significant number of students come from lower socio-economic backgrounds ( over half of the Hispanic students in our state come from families with annual incomes under $30,000, who don’t own their own homes, and whose parents have no college experience, their access to higher education may be blocked." (For populations under 18 years of age, 52% of the families in NC earning less than $30,000 annually are Hispanic; 75% of the parents lacking college experience are Hispanic; families both earning less than $30,000 annually and having no college experience constitute 84% of Hispanics and 56% do not own their own homes).

Many of the people speaking in open forums with the task force around the state repeatedly called for UNC to prepare students for today’s workplace, emphasizing the need for soft skills development such as oral and written communication, and increased global awareness. Respondents to UNC Tomorrow surveys also identified the knowledge and skills they considered important in today’s globally competitive workplace: Using a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being most important, here are the results:

The report is filled with such nuggets of information along with a significant number of recommendations in a variety of areas, including teacher education. All campuses are being charged with responding to the report, indicating how they will contribute to solving the problems and issues raised by the report. I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the report, since much of it has some significance for the strategic planning of the university which is currently underway.

Other Reading

The January/February issue of Atlantic Monthly carries an article by Matt Miller called "First, Kill All the School Boards." Miller argues that local control, notably in the hands of school boards, is a major deterrent to improvement of education in this country. According to Miller, our educational system is, more than anything, an artifact of our Colonial past. After all, education was left out of the Constitution, he says, and was one of the unnamed powers reserved for states, which, in turn, passed it on to local communities. Whether or not you agree with Millers’s premise that school boards are definitely a liability, the article makes for lively reading and could be the source of some interesting class discussions.

*******************************

“Change is a Journey, not a Destination.”
—M. Fullan