Minutes from Advisory Council Meeting

Thanks to Debbie Yang for providing the minutes. The formatting is a little ugly - I just wanted to get them up right away.
-Liz

MLIS Advisory Council

5 March 2009

4:00-5:30am

CdC 495


AGENDA

I. Welcome and Introductions – Mary
II. COA Decision
III. Response
a. Assessment
b. Curriculum
c. Faculty Research
IV. Annual MLIS Summit – April 27, 2009


MLIS Advisory Council

5 March 2009

4:00-5:30am

CdC 495


MINUTES


Present: Jerry Baldwin, Marilyn Cathcart, Liz Scheibel, Margaret Gillespie, Karen Harwood, Bob Horton, Chris Jacobs, Patricia Post, Susan Shoemaker, Sehri Strom, Ann Treacy, Mary Wagner and Debbie Yang.

Debbie Yang took the minutes.

I. Welcome and Introductions
a. Everyone introduced themselves.

II. COA Decision
a. At the January meeting 25th meeting with COA decided to continue the College of St. Catherine’s MLIS program on candidacy. This decision affects all students and in particular those who have graduated from the program or are planning to do so in May 2009, as they will not have a degree from an accredited program. The faculty and College administrators are preparing additional documentation for COA to address the issues in their decision letter. The documents will be sent to COA on March 13, in preparation for meeting with COA on April 17th. Andrea Lee, IHM, the President of College of St. Catherine, Colleen Hegranes, Senior Vice President, and Jennie Robinson Kloos, Director of the Office of Institutional Research, Assessment and Planning, will be at the COA meeting on the April 17th. Mary Wagner, Director of the MLIS program, will also be attending.
b. Mary read excerpts from the decision letter from COA continuing candidacy for the MLIS program. COA has six standards for LIS programs. Out of these six standards, COA had concerns with the MLIS program on Standard I, II, and III. COA’s concerns on Standard I: Mission, Goals, and Objectives included assessment in terms of what data does the program collect and how is it used. Their concerns with Standard II: Curriculum include the changes being made to the curriculum with the IMLS grant. For Standard III: Faculty, COA is concerned with the support for faculty research.
c. Faculty have been working in two groups on response documentation - one on curriculum (Standard II) and the other on assessment (Standard I). The response to the support on Faculty Research will be addressed by Sister Andrea and Colleen Hegranes.
III. Response

a. Assessment.
i. Members of the Advisory Council were asked to look through the Assessment document within the next few days and to send any comments to Mary. The final document will be sent out on Friday, March 13. The purpose of the Assessment document is to show that we do assessment through data collection, analysis of data and this is used in decision making for program effectiveness and student learning. The Advisory Council was asked to focus on whether the document is successful in making this case to COA.
ii. The Advisory Council was asked for any immediate questions or comments on the assessment document. The argument for the response is that the MLIS program has met the standard. It includes data from the program presentation (pulling assessment pieces from throughout the program presentation into one) as well as including new data in an effort to make the information clearer to COA.
iii. The 2012 date in the COA letter is flexible, so the MLIS program is asking for a focus visit on these three standards in Fall with a new decision in January. For current grads and students ready to graduate, a look back for two years will be suggested. It is not known if there were any reversals in COA history, but COA has agreed to our request to meet on April 17th. If Advisory Council members want to write a letter to COA (especially as they have employed or are employing students from the MLIS program), they should write about the program in terms of the standards as it is ALA’s responsibility to see that programs meet them. MLA will send a letter to COA, the ALA president, and the ALA Executive Director. Mary will talk to SGO on whether they will send a letter to COA from students. The site visit was from the External Review Panel (ERP) who gave positive feedback. They wrote a report and sent it to COA to review. The decision for accreditation comes from COA based on this review and the program presentation from the MLIS program.

b. Curriculum.
i. The Curriculum document was sent to the Advisory Council electronically. Faculty member, Marilyn Cathcart, walked the Advisory Council through the Curriculum document. In summary, the program does meet the standard, the curriculum has been mapped to the Standards, the curriculum has had some changes as classes have been added and some have been taken away, and the IMLS grant is being used to enhance the curriculum and is not being used to do a major re-design. Since the External Review Panel was here, faculty have continued to work on the curriculum and added a research course and portfolio requirement. The current curriculum is synched with ALA Standards, and the College of St. Catherine student learning objectives. The Curriculum document quotes the concerns from COA letter on Standard II and addresses each concern.
ii. The Advisory Council was asked for any immediate questions or comments on the curriculum document. If Members have comments in the next few days, they can send them to Mary or Marilyn. It was suggested to put the tables in the appendices. In support of the first table (illustrating new courses, etc) it should be mentioned that the MLIS program communicates with the Advisory Council and this influences change in courses. LIS 7240 is an example of a course change based on assessment data. This summer the course will include use of various technologies including clickers, e-book readers and smartboards. To clear up some confusion on old and new versions of course, samples of old and new syllabi could be added as evidence. The MLIS program has been teaching an ALA accredited curriculum (from Dominican University) with some changes. It is the responsibility of faculty to continue to move forward with curriculum, incorporate suggestions from the Advisory Council, and connect to the College of St. Catherine as an institution. Dominican was on conditional accreditation for 3 years, and received full accreditation in Spring 2008. This situation of the MLIS program obtaining accreditation is unique because of the partnership with an already accredited institution.

c. Faculty Research
i. The President and the Vice President of the College of St. Catherine will be addressing this issue at the April 17th meeting.
ii. In talking to Karen O’Brien, the COA concerns about faculty research were faculty productivity, having many junior faculty, and support for research. The College does hire junior faculty. And these junior faculty members are at the beginning of their productivity. Also need to consider that College of St. Catherine is not a Research I institution.
iii. Advisory Council Member, Bob Horton agreed to draft a paragraph for the response document to address COA and set the tone for the documents. Mary has met with employers such as MELSA and CLIC. She has been talking to the professional community about a timeline and the implications in hiring or working with students. Mary will be talking with SLA and MALL.
iv. As soon as the MLIS program hears from COA, they will let everyone know any changes. Students will then be making decisions about this term. Some have delayed completion of the program for this term. Those in the middle of their program will decide if they want to slow down their program. Those who started this January will decide whether to stay in the program or transfer to another. There are approximately 10 students on leave right now and are waiting to hear about the decision. There are also about 70 new applicants for the Fall term and 20 prospective students at the Graduate Information Sessions. The president of the College of St. Catherine and the president of Dominican University are in conversation.

IV. Annual MLIS Summit. The MLIS Summit will be on Monday, April 27 at 5:30pm in the ballroom. There will be more information about accreditation at this gathering of students, faculty, adjunct faculty, alums, employers and others interested in the program.

MLIS Advisory Council Meeting

Thank you to Liz Scheibel and Sehri Strom for attending the MLIS Advisory Council Meeting this week as SGO Representatives! Here are Liz's notes from the meeting:

• Mary Wagner conducted the meeting, with Debbie Yang taking notes. Other attendees were faculty Marilyn Cathcart and Susan Shoemaker, students Liz Scheibel and Sehri Strom, and about 6-8 librarians.
  
  
• The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the documents that the program and St. Kate’s are preparing to send to the ALA COA for review before the April meeting (all documents are in draft form). Mary began by describing the three standards in which COA saw problems.
  
  
• We looked at the assessment document, with Mary walking us through it. There wasn’t much discussion on that specific document, because it wasn’t available before the meeting. One librarian offered the suggestion that St. Kate’s should phrase their presentation in particular ways in order to not be confrontational - we want to suggest that we didn’t clearly show some of these things in our program presentation, and we want to show that the college (as a larger institution) has also investigated these issues (and then go on to present the college’s response).
  
  
• Mary mentioned that one of the things they are seeking from the COA is a longer look back period for those who have already graduated once the program gets accreditation. Usually the look back is one year, and they are hoping for two years. Other things they are asking for are an earlier visit (currently scheduled for 2012), preferably this coming fall. Of course they would love to see the COA reverse their decision, but that probably isn’t realistic. Mary also mentioned that since it’s not a decision meeting, she is hoping there can be more dialog between the people from CSC and the COA. She really wants to present to the COA that St. Kate’s is pressing the issue because it’s about the students - the students need accredited degrees and they’ve done the work for them.
  
  
• The librarians present wanted to know of letters from employers would help, and Mary said that they might if those letters specifically addressed how the program meets the COA standards. Minnesota Library Association will be sending a letter, and SGO is working on one.
  
  
• We talked about the issues the COA had with the revised curriculum that’s in the works at St. Kate’s. The feeling is that COA didn’t quite understand what this means, and we wondered if “revision” was the right word (perhaps that implies more sweeping change than it should). Also, CSC wants to make sure the COA understands that the program has still had Dominican students, so we could not step away from the relationship entirely until those students had completed their degrees.
  
  
• The draft document regarding curriculum was discussed, and the faculty asked for some help in toning it down; they have had a hard time not letting their emotions creep into the way they are writing the documents. The purpose of this document is to show that St. Kate’s has met the standards with the current curriculum, and that we have and will continue to have a defined curriculum, even as it is revised. Some changes have been made from DU, an accredited curriculum, but the basics remain the same. The draft we saw showed a lot of comparison to DU, but they are going to take out a lot of that in order to focus on the CSC program, to show that we have our own program.
  
  
• Other suggestions for the document included making the extensive tables into appendices and creating a sample of what a syllabus under the in-progress “new” curriculum would look like, compared to what is currently used (to show that it’s more of a tightening of the curriculum we already have, not a massive change in content).
  
  
• An interesting point that Mary made was that the accreditation process isn’t really designed for a program like ours: a program that has been operating through the accreditation of another school. Therefore, some of the process for accreditation doesn’t fit us very well and those involved on the other end of the process (COA and the panel) can easily misunderstand how the CSC-DU relationship has worked and is working now.
  
  
• Regarding the COA’s concerns about faculty research, the representatives from the College as a whole will primarily tackle this at the April meeting. The standards ask that an accredited program be in line with the parent organization in terms of faculty research, so it makes sense for the College to address this. They want to acknowledge that the MLIS faculty is rather young, and that is why some faculty members haven’t produced a lot of research yet; they are at the beginning of the productive cycle. The MLIS program has been interested in having some younger faculty in order to build for the future. Also, CSC doesn’t hire people into fully tenured faculty positions, so it’s important that COA understand that when evaluating how many of our faculty are tenured, etc.
  
  
• The meeting ended with more discussion on how to approach the April meeting and phrase all of the things we want to get across. The librarians present encouraged the MLIS program to begin by recognizing that some elements may have not been properly or clearly addressed in the program presentation - they should not walk in there and tell the COA that they just missed it all. CSC should embrace the opportunity to clarify and highlight things that will address COA’s concerns. They should thank the COA for helping CSC to evaluate itself carefully, for pushing the program to be the best it can, and for being conscientious stewards of the standards and accreditation (accreditation wouldn’t mean anything if just any program could get it).
  
  
• On a personal note, I think the documents that the faculty and college are working on look great. The department has been working a lot with the college’s institutional research office in order to add in more data, which it sounded like the COA would like to see. A huge amount of preparation is going into these documents and this meeting. The documents will be available for students to see once they are done (the versions that we saw had whole chunks missing and tables that had been thrown together that afternoon, so when I say draft, I really do mean draft). It’s a tough task to turn off your frustration and disappointment in order to meet with an open mind and try to achieve a better result. This meeting made me feel more optimistic than I had been feeling before.

MLIS Social Hours - Jan. 6-8th

Mingle with fellow MLIS students!
Catch up with old friends!
Meet people in your new classes!

Presenting…
the MLIS Social Hour

January 6, 7 & 8th
(Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday)
5 – 6pm in the MLIS Hallway


Come for cookies, soda, coffee
and a great chance to mingle with fellow students right before class starts.

Don’t have a weeknight class? Choose any of the Social Hours that fit your schedule. All MLIS students are welcome every night!


Hosted by the Student Governance Organization (SGO) and the MLIS Program.

Professional Development Funds Available!

For more information go to: http://www.stkate.edu/~mlisweb/current/scholarships.php

Next SGO Meeting - 11/17

All St Kate's MLIS students are invited to attend the next SGO (Student Governance Organization) general meeting:

Date: MONDAY, Nov. 17
Time: 6:45-7:45pm
Location: CdC Room 17b

We will discuss the proposed SGO Constitution, the Professional Development Fund, attending the Chicago ALA meeting and more!

We hope to see you there!
Get involved! Meet new people!

NEW - MLIS Fridge in the student lounge!

Are you looking for a way to keep your food cold while you are in class? Yay! Now MLIS-SGO has bought a fridge for the student lounge for our food.

Feel free to bring food in containers and store it in the fridge during class. A note of warning: the fridge will be cleaned regularly, so make sure your food is marked and dated to avoid disposal! (Pens available next to fridge.)

Check it out!
Here is a picture of the fridge we bought. The picture may not be exciting - but the real thing is better!

MLIS Advisory Council Meeting - Minutes

Thanks to Laura Morlock for sending me the minutes from the meeting. The Executive Summary of the MLIS Program Presentation is on the department's homepage (in the list of links right in the center). Anyone interested in what the program has said about itself as we apply for ALA accreditation should read this summary.
--Liz


MLIS Advisory Council
25 September 2008
8:30-10:30am
CdC 495

AGENDA

I. Welcome and Introductions – Mary

II. Accreditation Update
a. Handout Program Presentation/Executive Summary -- Marilyn
b. External Review Panel Site Visit October 20 & 21, 2008 – Mary
c. Questions

III. MLIS Program Updates
a. University Status -- Mary
b. Faculty -- Mary
c. Curriculum -- Susan


MINUTES

Present: Marilyn Cathcart, Liz Cavert-Scheibel, Margaret Gillespie, Karen Harwood, Bob Horton, Peggy Johnson, Laura Morlock, Patricia Post, Susan Shoemaker, and Mary Wagner.

Laura Morlock took the minutes.

I. Welcome and Introductions
a. Welcome to Marilyn Cathcart and Susan Shoemaker who will serve as the MLIS Faculty Advisory Council members for 2008-09. Liz Cavert-Scheibel will continue to serve as a representative from the MLIS Student Governance Organization. Patricia Post attended via conference phone.

b. News from Advisory members included: Karen Harwood enjoyed an elder hostel in Farmington, New Mexico; Peggy Johnson just finished teaching a new, popular, four-week on-line technical services course with ambivalence toward the on-line format; Bob Horton mentioned the new Vatican Splendors exhibit at the Minnesota Historical Society; Marilyn Cathcart shared that the there is a fabulous group of entering MLIS students who are very engaged and intelligent; Liz Cavert-Scheibel works part-time at the Legislative Reference Library and volunteered at the Guthrie Library this summer; Margaret Gillespie brought up the Hennepin County and Minneapolis Public Library merger and the current intricacies of job hiring; Patricia Post shared that the St. Cloud Public Library had its ribbon cutting and grand opening. Circulation from the first five days exceeded the month of September from last year.

II. Accreditation Update
a. A Program Presentation was given to each Advisory Council member. Those who could not attend today’s meeting will be mailed a copy. Marilyn Cathcart, as author, walked through the Executive Summary handout (also sent to those who could not attend today). She outlined highlights from the executive summary which share the history of the program at St. Kate’s, future directions, strengths of the program and an encapsulation of each of the Standard chapters. The MLIS Mission, Guiding Principles, Goals, and Student Learning Objectives were attached at the end. We will find out about our Accreditation status in February from the Committee on Accreditation following the ALA conference.

b. The External Review Panel Site Visit takes place on October 19, 20, & 21, 2008. A detailed schedule will be posted on the MLIS website once it has been confirmed by the ERP Chair. Please mark those dates in your calendar especially with a tentative spot reserved on Sunday evening. The ERP may alternatively request Advisory Council email addresses and contact members in that fashion.

c. Questions and comments about Accreditation were addressed. Like Dominican University, St. Kate’s does see itself as preparing practitioners; the change in curriculum is so that St. Kate’s can create themes which reflect values that are different from DU. Positioning the MLIS Program in the national area for prospective students is a goal and future challenge. We will focus once again on what the hopes and dreams of the MLIS Program are. Some stories from Advisory Council members mentioned MLIS graduates as “rising star interns” within their organizations; that we have many people outside the program who are engaged in the program—as partnering institutions; that students also connect with the local library community through field trips from classes or student groups such as SLA.

III. MLIS Program Updates
a. The College of St. Catherine will become St. Catherine University as of June 1, 2009. Mary shared an advertisement from the Star Tribune announcing the new name. This change reflects what the college has become in the last 10-12 years. The MLIS Program/Information Management Department will reside in a School with the Social Work and Education Departments. That School name has yet to be decided. The INFM undergraduate program for which the IM Department is responsible will be phased out.

b. Faculty news includes the retirement of Helen Humeston as of the end of the winter 2008 semester. Two new faculty were hired. Sheri Ross comes from Florida State University. During the 2008-09 academic year she’ll teach the Organization of Knowledge, Information Policy, and Management of Libraries and Information Centers courses for MLIS as well as the Organization of Information Sources for the INFM Program. Sarah Park of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign will start in winter 2009 by teaching Library Materials for Young Adults and Internet Fundamentals & Design.

c. Susan Shoemaker conveyed that MLIS faculty have continued a Curriculum discussion during the whole Accreditation process. Following the scholar practitioner model the MLIS Program is working on incorporating five main threads into the future Curriculum: Ethics, Diversity, Leadership, Research/Critical Thinking and Technology. Brainstorming sessions, meetings of the MLIS faculty as a whole, and small group discussions have occurred; in particular there have been many small group meetings among the faculty who teach the core courses. Case studies have been a topic of interest. Introducing them into the core courses and revisiting them in subsequent advanced courses is a possibility. Other topics of interest have included offering one-credit courses on subjects that don’t seem to fit into the current curriculum but which merit value for students; one example could be a course on the role of libraries in an election year. These courses would be offered in a J-term. The Ethics, Diversity, Leadership, Research/Critical Thinking and Technology threads would be integrated into all courses. Assessment continues to be an ongoing discussion component. Faculty have contemplated a capstone course, a portfolio requirement, continuing education courses (such as brand new Leadership Certificate offered in conjunction with the MAOL Program). Summed up, the faculty are taking the Curriculum apart and putting it back together in a way that best supports the students and the library communities which they will serve.

Comments from Advisory Council members: Peggy Johnson shared that the U of M has offers a leadership workshop Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians From Traditionally Underrepresented Groups http://www.lib.umn.edu/sed/institute/Registration.html for the past ten years. It could serve as a possible template for a one-credit course. Bob Horton proposed offering 1-2 day workshops instead of one-credit courses. Topics for these courses included: grant writing (and evaluation) and advocacy.

Reminder: the next MLIS Advisory Council Meeting date is February 16, 2009 from 5-6pm in CdC 495 followed by an Accreditation announcement and celebration in Rauenhorst Hall (CdC third floor Ballroom ) from 6-8pm.