Meeting at Lane CC 10 Dec 2004

On Friday, December 10, IFS Senators Bob Turner and Robert Mercer attended the Articulation and Transfer Conference, "Students at the Center: Managing Transitions" at Lane Community College. The conference program, which is at http://www.odccwd.state.or.us/CCWDFiles/Word/Conf/Session_Abstracts.doc, included two sessions on the Oregon Transfer Module, both of which Robert Mercer attended and the first of which Bob Turner also attended. Titles of the other sessions were: Transfer 101: Managing the ?Nuts and Bolts? of Articulation Agreements: Financial Aid and the Transfer Student: A Primer: Best Practices: Retention: Effective Advising: New Directions for Developing Learning Communities: Addressing the Needs of Increasingly Diverse and Complex Student Populations: Is Progress Possible in 2005? Student Panel: Negotiating Dual Admissions: Student Success: What?s Advising Got to do with It? Talk with the JBAC:

The OTM sessions included the following points of potential interest to IFS. The "history" of OTM was summarized, and the goal of sending the OTM to the OUS Board for approval in Feb 05 was stated. Students with the OTM will still need major requirements, additional gen ed courses specific to each campus, AND EFFECTIVE ADVISING. The AAOT also leaves additional campus specific major and gen ed requirements to be completed. There was much discussion of the details of applying the OTM, with frustration expressed over differences in gen ed requirements among the 7 OUS campuses - the point was made that the 17 community colleges also differ in their gen ed requirememts. The need for accurate advising was emphasized repeatedly. An advantage of OTM to the student is that it would require each school to honor a course as it was offered at the previous school (example: while PSU treats physical anthro courses at PSU as social science, UO treats them as science. So while a PSU student couldn't use them as science if taken there, an OTM student who transferred there could). The political nature of the OTM and the need to endorse OTM were discussed. The viewpoint was presented that the OTM will convert the community colleges into "one year institutions", but the point was also made that cc students leave early now (a comment from Bob Turner: the "Measuring Up 2004" report states that Oregon community colleges have poor retention of students from 1st to 2nd year). During the 2nd session, the point was made that community colleges could include OTM students when computing their student completion rates. The first OTM session ended on the politics of the OTM, with statements that, whatever the size of the actual problem, it is very large with the legislators, who want a fix in the next couple of months and have generated their own bills by looking at what legislatures have done in other states. The closing comment was that we need to take the next step of working faculty to faculty on defining an outcomes based totally transferrable universal general education core. Several attendees of the 2nd session were impressed by Robert Mercer's "Czhekslovakian Menu" analogy. While dining in Prague, Robert was told that Czhek restaurants during the Iron Curtain times were provided with the Communist cookbook, which mandated the menu and recipes that had to be used at every restaurant in the country. Obviously a very consistent, if extremely stifling and bland, situation. It seems that Czhek culinary offerings have improved since the end of Soviet domination.

Bob Turner also attended sessions on Learning Communities and on Advising, neither of which contained information that seem to significantly inform recent IFS concerns.

In an attempt to indicate that ease of transferrability is a real concern for OUS, Bob Turner will determine and summarize the data on the number of students that actually transfer in specific discplines and the work that is now being done to produce articulation agreements between OUS institutions and community colleges that will affect the largest number of transfer students. Bob will also be in contact with IFS senators from each campus to learn the structure of academic advising at each OUS institution.

Please keep Bob Turner informed of the progress of your campus Faculty Senate toward consideration and endorsement of the two motions passed at the Dec. 4 IFS meeting.