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NEASC Steering Committee Meeting
October 16, 2007
MEETING MINUTES
Present: C. Lovitt, P. Lemma,
T. Craine, A. Alling, M. Toston, R. Cernock, R. Bachoo,
L. Wilder, N. Pettinico, M. McLaughlin, K. Kollar
Team Leader Appointment—C. Lovitt
C. Lovitt reported that the site Team chair position was
recently identified and approved by NEASC. The team chair is
Dr. Patricia Meservey, who is currently the President of Salem
state College and previously held the Provost position at
another institution.
Updates on Description Sections—C.
Lovitt
C. Lovitt reported that the annotated versions of the
description sections were sent to all chairs. One of the
suggestions made by C. Lovitt was for chairs to consider
consulting outside sources regarding their description sections.
C. Lovitt shared the outcome of Friday’s Standard 4
NEASC working session. C. Lovitt explained that the idea behind
the meeting was to meet with various people considered to be
valuable resources for Standard 4 information and have them
brainstorm and provide recommendations for the description
section. The meeting was held in a computer classroom in Vance
academic Center; approximately fifteen people were present. C.
Lovitt reported that participation was great, and he recommended
this type of open forum meeting to the other committees who feel
they might benefit from such feedback.
C. Lovitt is confident that the self-study
will be one of good quality if the committees continue to
approach this project on a sentence-by-sentence basis, so that
no one item will be overlooked. He added that the committees
owe it to themselves to do well on this project for the
betterment of the University.
A. Alling asked C. Lovitt if the due date
for the Appraisal section would still be December 31st;
C. Lovitt confirmed that this date was correct.
Committee Updates:
·
Standard 1 (T. Craine): Standard 1 has
not met yet due to scheduling difficulties. T. Craine stated
that they will be looking at the feedback from C. Lovitt for
their description section at the next committee meeting.
·
Standard 2 (P. Lemma): P. Lemma reported
that portions of Standard 2 were assigned to each member of the
committee for review, and for consulting various people as
resources regarding their section of the standard.
Members will send their sections to P. Lemma for incorporation
into the section.
·
Standard 3 (A. Alling): Upon review of C.
Lovitt’s comments on Standard 3, A. Alling and A. Adams began
working on rewriting the description section in order to make it
more detailed. A. Adams met with C. Lovitt to discuss comments
made on the description. Standard 3 will be conducting several
interviews for their appraisal section, including interviews
with the Chancellor and President Miller.
·
Standards 4 & 5 (C. Lovitt): C. Lovitt
reported that Standards 4 and 5 are still struggling with their
descriptions sections. He added that there are still a few
sections for which they have no information as of yet. C.
Lovitt assured the group that the committee will be working hard
to get this completed.
·
Standard 6 (M. Toston): Standard 6 has met
twice to review their descriptions in a sentence-by-sentence
fashion. They added information to address each point
specifically. Because of this, responses for each point have
increased in great length. M. Toston’s group has begun adding
links in attempts to shorten the sections.
·
Standard 7 (R. Cernock): R. Cernock
reported that C. Lovitt’s comments for the description section
were on point, and he will be applying these comments in the
editing of his standard’s description.
·
Standard 8 (R. Bachoo): R. Bachoo agreed
with the points that C. Lovitt made on the Standard 8
description section and, as a result, the committee made various
changes. R. Bachoo will be reviewing the revised description
again to fix a few errors.
·
Standard 9 (L. Wilder): L. Wilder reported
that Standard 9 has submitted an outline of their description
section to P. Lemma. L. Wilder expressed his committee’s
concern with trying to get the 2008 budget data into a readable
format.
·
Standard 10 (N. Pettinico): N. Pettinico
reported that he has reviewed C. Lovitt’s comments. The
committee is moving along with regards to the appraisal
section. Standard 10 has yet to survey the incoming graduate
students but will be doing this in the near future. The Standard
has completed all other surveys.
Update on Noel Levitz Survey—A.
Alling
A. Alling reported that the Noel Levitz Survey will be
distributed on Wednesday, October 17, 2007. The campus
community will have until October 31st to respond to
the survey. The results are expected no later than November 15th.
A. Alling added a reminder that the survey results will provide
helpful information for the Appraisal section of the NEASC
Self-study.
Update on Links for Description
Sections—P. Lemma
P. Lemma reported that K. Kollar has been going through each
description section to create links, and upon completion, has
sent them to the appropriate chairs. K. Kollar will be waiting
for feedback regarding the links once they are reviewed by the
chairs. P. Lemma mentioned that K. Kollar will also be creating
another table of contents that will include all links used in
the descriptions sections. She reported that once K. Kollar has
completed this task she will be sending a copy to each one of
the chairs. P. Lemma advised the committee to let K. Kollar
know if they would like to use any of the other links listed on
the new table of contents.
The new versions of the description
sections will be put onto the Vista site. Regarding Vista, P.
Lemma noted that the site is not compatible with Word 2007
documents. If chairs are going to post items to Vista they
should always be converted to Word 03 version first. She added
that if chairs would like to send the documents to K. Kollar she
would do the conversion for them. Alling asked K. Kollar to
send Standard 3’s description to her again; K. Kollar confirmed
that she would send out all descriptions containing links to the
appropriate chairs. M. Toston said she would send her
description containing links to K. Kollar.
Website Audit—M. McLaughlin
C. Lovitt introduced M. McLaughlin to the group,
explaining that he was invited to the meeting to talk about the
need for an audit of the University website. There have been
problems regarding multiple versions of the same document,
outdated information, and dead documents being displayed on the
CCSU website. All of these problems need to be resolved before
the NEASC visit. C. Lovitt asked M. McLaughlin to advise the
committee regarding how to resolve this issue.
M. McLaughlin reported finding a number of
flaws in the University’s website. He provided an example of
four different places on the University site where one could
find different versions of the Strategic Plan, as evidenced on
the projector screen at the meeting. He suggested that some of
these issues could be resolved by archiving certain items rather
than keeping them on the site.
P. Lemma stated that the committees should
decide which documents are to stay on the site and how they
should be labeled to clarify for the NEASC visiting team exactly
the document that is on display. She added that there may be
older versions of documents that are relevant to the self-study,
and these documents should be labeled and kept on the web. C.
Lovitt noted that displaying these older documents would convey
that the school has been steadily progressing. The campus should
expect the NEASC site team to use the web to search for items
identified in the self study.
On another matter, R. Cernock expressed
concern regarding linking the self-study to seemingly unreliable
web pages. He noted that, because sites can be changed at any
time by the site’s creator, it might not be a good idea to link
their report to a site that they do not have primary control
of. R. Cernock suggested exploring other options for linking
their materials for the self study.
C. Lovitt ended by noting that every
department will have to work on getting the University website
cleaned up for the NEASC visit. He also added to R. Cernock’s
point that the committee needs to make sure that the documents
that they link to are stable.
Other Items—C. Lovitt
C. Lovitt called attention to the self-study websites of
various universities that were listed on the agenda as reference
tools. He asked that committees look at their corresponding
standards to see how the other universities handled this task.
C. Lovitt mentioned that the committee
needs begin thinking about how to organize and make necessary
plans for the next Town Meeting.
Action Items
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K. Kollar will send out descriptions containing links to the
committee chairs.
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M. Toston will send her description containing links to K.
Kollar.
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CCSU’s website must be cleaned up before NEASC visit.
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P. Lemma and R. Cernock will discuss other ways to link
documents.
The next Steering Committee Meeting will
be held on Tuesday,
November
13th at 11:00 am
in the President’s Conference Room.
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