WASC: CCSC meeting, 17 Apr 06

Quick intro (by Richard):

• Overview of WASC process
• Current plan for UG education proposal: teaching quality and undergraduate workload

Discussion:

• Redefining the core?
  • Core has a bit of a bootcamp mentality. Perhaps we should look at this?
  • Example - Cambridge has much less of a well-define core
• Benchmarking against other schools
• Gap between research and teaching; interest of the students is not necessarily aligned with faculty research interests
  • Alignment of students in Divisions with graduates in Divisions
  • Alignment is not necessary, but we should understand it
  • Alignment of faculty advisors with UGs; not uniform across the Divisions
• Students may not care about what faculty have to teach
• Workload balance is a good one
  • Some courses teach way too much; some balance not enough
  • CCSC in principle is in charge of this, but really more advisory
  • Some work has been done in synchronizing Math and Physics, for example
• It might be time to look at core again; we haven't done it for 7 years or so
• Self study of what the core has in it and whether or not its meeting our goals
  • Are we trying to cram too much in?
  • Online course evaluations might provide some new data and evaluation of the core
  • Look at the data from surveys to understand if the core has set up the students for what they need
• Problem set centric methodology
  • Students want the lectures to align with the homeworks to align with the exams
  • Faculty who try to give more insight into the field sometimes get criticized when they try to explore related areas
  • May be different answers for different types of courses
• Has there been a shift of the majors since the course was put in place
  • Look at what the students are graduating in and see if the core is serving them well
  • Applications are probably not a good indicator; students shift after they get here
  • Be careful to study causal effects; the majors might line up with the core because the core is required
• Inspired independent study
  • Decrease workload to allow more independent study
• Undergraduate advising
  • This came up at the end; seems like an important third topic for us to look at