2012 (2012-2014)

Title: High Impact Educational Practices (HIPS)

Team Members: Amy Cook, Richard Hardy, Krista Glazewski, Rasul Mowatt, Cathrine Reck, and Henry Wakhungu

Project Description: The overarching goal for this project is changing the culture of the campus to encourage the use ofHIPS.  In that vein, the team members have taken on multiple projects to initiate and sustainlongterm change: developing and disseminating a faculty survey on the use of HIPS, producingpromotional materials for faculty and departments, creating videos to highlight the use of HIPS byIUB faculty, developing a list of acceptable HIPS that will be added to the Faculty Annual Report(FAR), developing both faculty and student learning communities, developing a website highlighting faculty and students using HIPS, and writing grant submissions to garner more longterm support of these measures (http://citl.indiana.edu/resources/teaching-resources1/high-impact-practices.php).

Progress made on the project and next steps: The starting place was to have an inventory of which faculty are utilizing HIPs.  We decided toinclude reporting of HIPs on the faculty annual report (ideally faculty would click on a tab, butwould be able to describe their HIPs in more detail).  We presented a report to the VPAA andProvost, thinking the FAR changes would occur in 2013. However, IT is still working on implementing these changes in FAR. We need to meet with VPUE to accomplish our next steps. Our team has worked on creating aquestionnaire to ask faculty about their utilization of HIPS.  This questionnaire can be used to assistfaculty in understanding HIPS and allow for the collection of demographic information.Our team is also working on a video project to help explain HIPS.  The team has asked for supportfrom VPUE.  We plan to wait on showing the video until the revised FAR is ready.  We really need training on putting HIPS down on the FAR – not just clicking on service learning, but instead helpfaculty really explain what they are doing.

The VPUE also said he plans to add HIPS information on the transcript.  (Larry Richards at IUE hasnoted that they have that for IUE. That is, there is a brochure to market to students to get thetranscript notation; this notation has three levels of accomplishment.)Carol will bring one of the team members to meet with Dennis next month. She will email Rasul. Another next step would be to ask CITL do workshops.

Title: Leads and Professional Development Workshops

Team Members: Edwina Helton, Julien Simon, Ron Itnyre, Tonya Breymeir, and Fredricka Joyner

Project Description: Team members have focused on two initiatives:  IU East Leads and Professional DevelopmentWorkshops.  IU East Leads, approved at senate in spring 2013, is designed to allow students to earntranscript notation for accomplishments in high impact practice programs. The second initiativeinvolved the creation of a series of professional development workshops. These faculty and staffworkshops are to be offered by leaders in high impact practice areas throughout the 2013-14school year. Monthly workshops are planned with faculty staff leaders. Grants will be offered tofaculty who attend workshops and execute a high impact practice project.

Progress made on the project: IUE had two projects: one informal and one formal.  The informal project involved developing IUELeads, and entailed a variety of assessments, including student transcript assessment and exitinterviews. This took collaboration between staff and faculty, resulted in a proposal approved bythe faculty senate in spring 2013, and includes adding HIPS work to transcripts for those whocompleted the program in 2013.  That’s in the process of being rolled out.  The team’s work on thisended at the end of spring semester 2013. The formal project involved research on high impactpractices where each team member led a group during 2012-2013 that researched various HIPS.  Aseries of professional development workshops during 2013-2014 (one a month) beginning in thefall of 2013 shared the results of these research projects with faculty.  Assessment data includedinformation about who is participating in workshops, what projects come from workshops (theycheck in with them and ask them individually, provide mentoring and support), number of folksgetting grants, and outcomes of grants.  Ultimately, the goal is to institutionalize this process inorder to systematically increase the use of HIPs on campus.

Project Next Steps: At this point, the team is developing a process by which faculty would put together courses basedon HIPS.  Seven faculty received awards to create such courses this past fall; more can apply for awards this spring.  These awards came from grants from John Applegate’s office, received in the summer of 2013.

Title: HIPS Project

Team members: Irwin Mallin, Linda Lolkus, Deb Huffman, Stella Batagiannis, Michael Bendele, Michelle Drouin, and Cigdem Gurgur

Project Description:  Team members are focusing on one specific high impact practice: service learning.  Instructors across several disciplines have implemented service learning into their courses in different forms and to varying degrees. Instructors may or may not have assessed thisaspect of their course so this project will undertake a systematic review of service learning as a campus initiative.  Specifically, the review will examine its impact on student learning as it is currently being implemented on this campus. The project will involve two phases.  The first will bean investigation of current practices with a focus on how instructors assess service learning outcomes and what assessment measures and aspects of service learning appear to be most effective.  Once this phase is completed, the team will work on developing practices and measures that can be implemented campus-wide and examine their effectiveness. The team will make recommendations for service learning based on their findings.

Progress made on the project: At the Fort Wayne campus, our meetings in fall, 2013 involved discussions of theinformation we were provided about High Impact Practices (HIPs) and debate about which HIP would be most useful on our campus. During these discussions we had several questions about the overall objectives of the project. We wondered whether the HIPs were supposed to have an effect on student learning, retention, or some other metric ofsuccess. We reasoned that the overall objectives of the project were to bolster student learning and retention. Based on this conclusion, we made several important decisions:

Title: Improve student learning at IUPUI/C through the use of RISE and high impact practices

Team members: Sarah Baker, Gina Gibau, Gary Felsten, Angela McNelis, and Katherine Wills

Project Description: High impact practices have been employed at IUPUI and IUPUC for some time and at varying levels. The initiative designed seeks to “RISE” to the next level of engagement with high impact practices by expanding access to and participation in HIPS. In support of this team’s work, the IUPUI Council on Retention and Graduation (CRG) formed a RISE strategic planning task force, chaired by Kathy Johnson. Work from this task force will feed into the IUPUI campus-wide strategic planning process and will coordinate with the work of our FACET-based faculty leadership team.. Team members have been busy interviewing a variety of individuals, associate deans, and chairs of those areas serving our RISE initiative (research chair, service and learning, internships, international, and Center for Teaching and Learning). To facilitate and implement recommendation of the RISE strategic planning task force, Kathy Johnson met with the IUPUI Faculty Council to lay the ground work for further discussion, oversight and involvement of IUPUI Faculty Council with the hope of appointing a faculty director for the RISE initiative. A final report from this subcommittee has been developed and shared with academic affairs and IUPUI Faculty Council Executive Committee

Progress made on the project:

IUPUI
A great deal of progress has been made with respect to our project at IUPUI.  Based upon findingsfrom the IUPUI/IUPUC Facet Leadership team and the IUPUI Council on Retention and Graduation(CRG), RISE strategic planning task force recommendation were presented to Academic and Student Affairs Committees of IUPUI Faculty Council (IFC).  IFC Academic and Student Affairs Committee considered selected recommendations from the aforementioned groups.  Specificallythe IUPUI Academic Affairs Committee (AAC) was convinced of the importance of RISE and the IUPUI Registrar affirmed that proposed transcript notations were achievable.  Following are recommendations from AAC to enhance development of RISE:

The campus should develop a flexible system so that a RISE experience can be administered and recognized at three levels:

a) Course (for all sections of a course),

b) Section (for particular sections),

c) Student (student individual option for a RISE experience).

The campus should establish a process by which students are recognized for their RISE accomplishment(s) on the official transcript each term, in addition to the transcript notation that is currently added upon graduation. This would require faculty teaching a RISE class to designate satisfactory or unsatisfactory RISE completion at the end of the term along with final grades directly to the final grade roster.

• The campus should develop options for recognizing RISE experiences that are not related to course credit using zero-credit courses or the special credit process.
• RISE notations may be granted for paid, special credit, and zero-credit forms ofexperiential learning, as well as combinations of RISE experiences.
• The campus should charge the RISE Subcommittee of the Council on Retention and Graduation Steering Committee to develop and coordinate RISE at the campus level under a RISE director, to be appointed from within the ranks of the tenured faculty.

IUPUC
Gary Felsten and Kathy Wills discussed plans for contributing information about IUPUC to IUPUI/IUPUC cohort.  They reviewed their charge from the FACET meeting.

Project Next Steps: 

IUPUI 

A review of solicited applications for the Director of the IUPUI RISE Program will begin March 1,2014 and continue until the position is filled.  Anticipated start date for the director is June 1, 2014.

IUPUC
Felsten/Wills plan to create a survey to ask IUPUC faculty about their understanding of and participation in RISE, SL, and High Impact Practices.  They will forward findings to the IUPUI teammembers.

March-- Create survey

Early April-- Submit survey to faculty

Mid-April-- send survey results to IUPUI/IUPUC team

Project Name: SAIL Office and Academic Journal at IU Kokomo

Team Members: Joe Keener, Melissa Grabner-Hagen, T.J. Sullivan, Karla Stouse, Dmitriy Chulkov, and Kathy Parkison

Project Description: Team members focused on two separate efforts:  the development of a SAIL office and the development of an academic journal.  During the past year, team members worked on developing a new office called SAIL (Service, Applied Learning, Internships, and Leadership), not unlike the OACS office at Fort Wayne. Ultimately, this proposal was rejected, but it did lead to several job redefinitions to cover shortcomings in these areas.  Additionally, the newly created Internships Council will take on some of the recommended SAIL functions.  In addition, team members pitched the idea of an academic journal to highlight our student undergraduate research, an exemplar of their best work. We have From the Well House, a creative writing student journal that has been quite successful, and we wanted to do something similar specifically for student research. Currently, the proposal has been given to administration for consideration.

Progress made and project next steps: A proposal for an undergraduate research journal has been submitted to the administration for consideration. Once approved, the team will move forward organizing submissions and review of manuscripts.

Project Name: First-Year Experience (FYE) at IU Northwest

Team Members: Ellen Szarleta, Cynthia O'Dell (Chair of FYE Task Force), First-Year Experience

Task Force Members: Atta A. Ceesay, Sharese A. Dudley, Mary Ann Fischer, Charles P. Gallmeier,Suzanne O. Green, Cathy Ann Hall, Helen Marie Harmon, Iztok Hozo, Georgia A. Kontos, Donna S.Krause, Michael S. LaPointe, Diane Larson, Beverly Ann Lewis-Burton, Kevin L. McElmurry, MaryBeth Mitchell, Elena C. Mrozinske, Robert Mucci, Brian Thomas O’Camb, Cynthia O’Dell, DawnSamson, Linda C. Templeton, Beth Tyler, Kelly Zieba

Project Description: The team focused their project on the First Year Experience (FYE) program.  During the past year,efforts have focused on: increasing enrollment in FYE courses; requiring orientation of newstudents; working to link FYE courses using the One Book, One Campus, One Community model;offering Student Success Series workshops in conjunction with the Office of Diversity Programming;developing a FYE webpage (http://www.iun.edu/first-year/); and launching a mandatory FYE Financial Literacy program.The team inventoried existing FYE courses to identify populations not currently being served by this program, and evaluated other IU campuses’ FYE programming.  Over the summer of 2013,learning outcomes for a FYE course were developed and provided to the academic units for reviewand implementation plan development. In addition,  development of an FYE Steering Committee to administer, coordinate, and assess all FYE courses on campus as well as provide training/feedbackto instructors is recommended.

Progress made on the project: Learning outcomes for a FYE course were developed and provided to the academic units in 2013.Our One Book, One Campus, One Community  book (The House on Mango Street) was used in several freshman-level courses and we offered Student Success Series workshops during the fall semester(see topics on the FYE calendar: http://www.iun.edu/first-year/). The Honors Program proposal has been vetted by the FYE Committee and the Deans and is being revised with their input.  We hope to present the proposal to the faculty as a whole at the Faculty Organization during the spring 2014 semester.  

Project Next Steps:
1)     Increasing the number of FYE courses offered to students for fall 2014 over what     is currently available (ongoing).  We plan to pilot additional courses this fall.
2)     The General Education Committee discussion and recommendation of whether an FYE course should be part of the general education requirements (will be accomplished by March of 2014).

Project Name: Changing the Culture of IU South Bend with HIPS

Team Members: Gretchen Anderson, Catherine Borshuk, Jane Cera, Linda Chen, Gary Kern, Vaidyanathan Ganeshan, and James VanderVeen

Project Description: The team members at IUSB decided to focus on giving a voice to those teaching/taking courses with High Impact Practices. There are a number of talented and dedicated faculty and staff at IU SouthBend that have already implemented significant projects. However, there needs to be greater awareness of these efforts  and their benefits need to be made more tangible to the students and,later, potential employees. To achieve these goals, the culture on the IU South Bend campus regarding the understanding and practice of HIPS needed to change. Two specific goals addressed thus far have been the implementation of a variation of IUPUI's RISE initiative (giving students areason and motivation for taking the courses with HIPS) and adding a reporting aspect of HIPS tothe FAR. This last goal seems small, but by providing faculty with a place to note their work, andhaving that work noticed by administration, such work could possibly lead to greater recognition interms of salary, tenure, or awards. Finally, some team members were already working on the beginning of FYS on the campus, knew of those trying to get learning communities into housing, andthe team focused on incoporating HIPS into these burgeoning programs.

Progress made on the project: We have made some interesting progress since the last report. I have been in contact with our Registrar about the procedures involved in adding material to student transcripts and records. It is not as easy as we had wished, but we are talking about being creative with the topic. Also, there has been progress toward implementing FYS on campus for the Fall semester, and our campus is actively recording HIPs in the Annual Report due this month, as we had planned to do.

Project Next Steps:

February - Explore the Vision 2020 grants for pilot funding of the small monetary/book initiative to students completing the HIPs criteria
March - Complete the student feedback conversations and make sure things will work on the student services side
April - Request all the specific courses from programs/departments in which the HIPs are completed
May -Run a test of the co-curriculum notation system on students completing HIPs courses from the previous semester

Project Name: Residential Learning Community at IU Southeast

Team members: Pamela Connerly, Bryan Hall, Ranida Harris, and James Kauffman

Project Description: During the 2013-2014 AY, IU Southeast will launch a pilot residential learning community (RLC) aimed at incoming students whose backgrounds indicate that they are most at risk of dropping out after the first year. Specifically, students targeted in this initiative are first-generation, Pell-Granteligible (ICHE definition of ‘at-risk’) first-year, Indiana students.  Studies have shown that RLC’s are very effective at improving retention and persistence to on-time graduation rates for at risk students. At risk students are often academically underprepared and feel as if they do not belong in college once they arrive. RLC’s integrate student learning academically while also socially integrating students into the campus community. The students will live together in the residence halls and take three general education courses with linked content (two in the fall, one in the spring). One of these courses will be taught as a first-year seminar. A supplemental instructor will be assisting the students outside of class and there will be a number of co-curricular activities organized for the students in the residence hall. After the first year, faculty participating in the RLC will continue to mentor the students until they graduate. Funding for the project has come from the Blueprint for Student Attainment committee at IU-Bloomington as well as the office of Financial Aidat IUS. It is worth noting that this project is directly related to one of the ICHE metrics.

Progress made and project next steps: The team is consulting with administration on the steps needed to continue the project, including potential funding sources and program evaluation tactics.  Unfortunately, the Horseshoe grant to fund a second year of the project was not approved. This semester, students are taking the third (and final) linked course in the residential learning community (RLC) sequence. This is Kauffman’s S121 (Public Speaking) course. Kauffman and Tom O’Neal (the latter taught in the RLC in the first semester) will be organizing two events a month for RLC students (one intellectual, the other social). We lost two students in the first semester and are left with ten at this point. Kauffman, O’Neal, and Hall are committed to mentoring these students once the RLC program finishes at the end of the academic year.