Report to the Community No. 4 – October 2008
Stephen
McClatchie
Provost and Vice-President, Academic and Research
Since the last Report to the Community, the majority of the Working Groups’ consultations have taken place. The annual Teaching Day at the end of August was devoted to academic renewal, with the Working Group Chairs presenting an overview of their group’s progress and leading smaller break-out groups of attendees before coming back together for an open session. (Graduate Studies has been on a separate track; see below.)
On 20 September, an Open Forum was held, with approximately 45 faculty and students present. The format was similar to that of Teaching Day, although there were no breakout groups. Instead, approximately 90 minutes of excellent discussion followed an hour of updates from the Chairs. A SAC-organised series of meetings with students occurred the following week. Despite the excellent job done in advertising these meetings (including a series of provocative questions for each), student attendance was not strong.
Throughout
this period, the Working Groups have continued to meet on an individual
basis and the Steering Committee has met three times. In addition, several
articles on the academic renewal process have appeared in The Argosy.
| 1. | The current system of distribution requirements should be replaced with one that is less prescriptive, more flexible, and tailored to individual student’s needs. Many students and faculty members see some sort of distribution requirement as essential to the Mount Allison experience. |
| 2. | There is considerable enthusiasm for some sort of first-year seminar, ideally focussed on one of the five areas of strategic emphasis in the Strategic Statement (culture and creativity, environment, globalization and its consequences, public service and citizenship, and science) and embodying in a preliminary manner a significant number of the outcomes desired of all Mount Allison degrees (see below). I would propose that we offer such a seminar as a pilot next year and am prepared to allocate a stipend or two to help make this happen. If you are interested in proposing a topic, please let me or your Dean know. |
| 3. | The Outcomes and Literacies group has drafted a list of desired outcomes for all Mount Allison graduates (See Appendix 1). This document has received broad consensus from the community, including the support in principle of Faculty Council. These guiding principles will now inform the work of the other groups and the Outcomes group is now considering ways that they could be implemented. |
| 4. | There is strong support for allowing more challenges for credit and Academic Matters will now give some thought to a policy in this area. |
| 5. | There is an openness to making more use of the beginning and ending of terms for concentrated courses (which admittedly will not work in all areas). There is also support for offering a limited number of evening classes. We will pilot this next year by offering a section of at least one multi-section course in the evening. |
| 6. | The consultative process has also revealed opposition to a number of proposals (e.g., requiring all students to have a second language; requiring a minor outside the Faculty of the major). These have now been dropped. |
The need for a robust system of academic advising has come up repeatedly in conversations and meetings over the past months. Deans’ Council is currently reviewing the success of the pilot project established in 2007 and will be making recommendations for improvements for the 2009-10 academic year. An advertisement for the Academic Advising position in Student Services will appear shortly.
The
last Report to the Community included a report from the Academic Matters
Committee with proposals for a number of calendar changes. Please send
any comments about these proposals to the Chair of the Committee, Hans
vanderLeest. The Committee may move forward with several of these recommendations
this year (e.g., Joint Honours) in response to specific submissions from
Departments.
| 1. | The Working Groups will conclude their consultations and draft their reports, to be submitted by 15 November. |
| 2. | The next Report to the Community will appear shortly after the Working Group reports are submitted on 15 November 2008. It will largely consist of these reports. |
| 3. | A short consultation process will ensue, to be completed early in 2009. |
| 4. | In the meantime, the Provost and Vice-President, in consultation with the Steering Committee, will develop a summative and more-directive document to launch Phase II of the academic renewal process. |
| 5. | Comments or concerns about the process or any other aspect of academic renewal may be given to any member of the Steering Committee. |
- Effective and Ethical Work Habits
- Scholarly Knowledge & Methods
- Critical & Creative Thinking
- Citizenship & Engagement
In
Work Habits
Mount Allison graduates will be able to:
- Work independently
- Work collaboratively, making meaningful contributions to group discussions and projects
- Submit work in whose preparation they have taken care and pride, going beyond the minimum requirements for the task
- Prioritize study, work, and other responsibilities in order to fulfill obligations honestly and punctually
Mount Allison graduates will be able to:
- Demonstrate diplomacy and civility in communication, recognizing that academic language is often nuanced and discriminating
- Appropriately apply ethics and standards associated with the discipline (e.g., research ethics)
- Credit all sources of data, samples, and information honestly and according to the standards and conventions of the discipline
Mount Allison graduates will be able to demonstrate:
- Specific disciplinary knowledge in Majors and Minors or Honours area, including an awareness of how the literature of these disciplines is created
- Multi-disciplinary knowledge from beyond areas of Honours, Majors, and Minors
- An appreciation for the potentials of interplay and cross-pollination among disciplines
- Knowledge of the world, including current events and an awareness of contemporary applications of their learning
Mount Allison graduates will have developed information gathering habits that will support life-long learning, including:
- Locating specific resources (according to instructions)
- Identifying and using relevant information retrieval systems for their needs
- Choosing relevant, appropriate resources independently
- Differentiating between a generic search-engine web search and scholarly research
- Discriminating among various sources
Mount Allison graduates will be able to:
- Produce well-structured written work—thesis statement, well-designed paragraphs, etc
- Present clear oral presentations using spoken language appropriate for the audience and the discipline
- Take effective notes from written or spoken material
- Solve problems using basic computational skills
- Apply basic mathematical skills to perform everyday tasks, such as interest rate calculation, unit conversion, or rough estimation
- Demonstrate a facility with basic computer programs and software
- Use technology thoughtfully and appropriately both to enhance their understanding of subject content and to support their written or oral presentation of academic work
- Apply appropriate methodologies effectively (disciplinary, interdisciplinary, scientific, mathematical, qualitative, quantitative, etc)
Mount Allison graduates will be able to:
- Demonstrate comprehension of written material by interpreting, paraphrasing or summarizing it
- Read, understand and compare a variety of written materials or texts
- Understand standard statistical language and interpret statistical data
- Identify major points when listening to lectures and oral arguments
- Conduct a comparative analysis, by making connections and highlighting differences between a variety of texts, theories or approaches
- Identify patterns in texts, data sets, visual materials, etc.
- Convert units from one system of representation to another (e.g., from numbers to words)
- Judge the validity and value of sources
Mount Allison graduates will have developed the intellectual curiosity that leads to creative problem-solving and will be able to:
- Identify and prioritize significant issues, questions and problems
- Ask meaningful, relevant questions whose answers are within reach
- Design an appropriate research study or creative project
- Evaluate the appropriateness of a problem-solving strategy or logical process
- Learn from mistakes or disappointing/unexpected results
- See the potential of one thing to be several others (creative thinking/abstract thinking)
- Predict results on the basis of data and assess their implications
Mount Allison graduates will be able to:
- Question their own and others’ assumptions and theories
- Recognize and differentiate among facts, assumptions, and commonly-held misconceptions
- Identify and admit error and devise strategies for correction/improvement
- Reflect on the learning process and understand their evolution as life-long learners
Mount Allison graduates will be able to:
- Use language effectively to demonstrate their mastery of concepts
- Express their ideas clearly, logically, and according to the conventions of their area of study
- Develop and defend a hierarchy of ideas
- Present a logical argument using numerical data
- Follow leads from one data set or source to another
- Demonstrate mastery of inductive and deductive reasoning
- Provide logical, convincing, and respectful arguments in defense of their conclusions
Building
on the bases of their achievement in Effective and Ethical Work Habits,
Scholarly Knowledge & Methods, and Critical & Creative Thinking,
Mount Allison graduates will make a difference in their world by:
- The ability to communicate respectfully to and about others
- A respect for difference
- An awareness of the consequences and implications of their actions and words
- The application of principles and theories to real-world contexts
- An awareness of societal, national and international issues
- A spirit of service