Quality Enhancement Plan Rolling Out

 

At its February 18 meeting, the Faculty Council heard a report on the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), a required part of the university’s Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) reaccreditation in 2014. A campuswide process in 2011-12 yielded a decision to select “The Nature of Evidence” (originally named “Primary Evidence”) as the theme of Emory’s QEP plan. Since that time, a steering committee representing divisions across the campus, under the leadership of Professor Pamela Scully, has more fully developed the plan. The goal of this five-year plan, dedicated to improving an aspect of student learning or the environment for student success, is to empower students as independent scholars capable of supporting arguments with different types of evidence. The plan has three components designed to engage first-year students at Emory’s main campus 1) before they arrive on campus, 2) within the classroom (in the required first-year seminars), and 3) beyond the classroom, through co-curricular experiences. “If we can help them think about the differences between original and secondary sources, how different disciplines encounter evidence, the way new evidence or a new look at existing evidence can present ideas in a new light—this kind of basic engagement with questions of evidence would be a very good thing for our students,” Scully said.

 

University Research Committee Considers Changes

 

In February, the co-chairs of the University Research Committee (URC), Frank Wong (Public Health) and Elizabeth Pastan (Art History), spoke to the Council to solicit its input. A standing committee of the Faculty Council, the URC awards small research grants to Emory faculty. In collaboration with the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, the URC is considering changes to improve its tracking of research output, encourage and fund high-risk/high-reward research, update its policies and procedures, and pursue new directions in interdisciplinary research. The URC currently has five subcommittees: 1) Biological & Health Sciences; 2) Humanities; 3) Social Sciences; 4) Math & Natural Sciences; and 5) Visual & Performing Arts. A sixth “Interdisciplinary” category was created three years ago but not formally constituted as a subcommittee. “This is the part we really wanted to bring to the Faculty Council today,” Wong said. “Exactly what do we mean by ‘interdisciplinary?’” He suggested formalizing this committee as a standing committee and said the critical issue was how to conceptualize interdisciplinarity without downplaying or underplaying certain disciplines. Pastan added that currently interdisciplinary applications were defined through self-identification by the applicants.

 

Provost Reports on Budget Process, Reaccreditation

 

Provost Claire Sterk addressed the Council in February on several major processes currently underway in the life of the university. The annual “budget season” recently began, she said, offering “an insider’s perspective on challenges and how people are looking toward solutions. More and more, we hear about ways to collaborate that were not part of the rhetoric in the past. It’s shifting the way people are approaching identity in their schools and the budget consequences.” Sterk also spoke at length about the SACSCOC reaccreditation visit on March 17-19, 2014, and the extraordinary amount of preparation and effort behind the process (for example, Emory’s QEP, “The Nature of Evidence”). “I think everybody would agree that it’s important for us to do assessment,” she said. “We just want to do it in ways that fit the institution.”