Faculty Meeting Virtual Minutes

In lieu of a faculty meeting today, here are the topics that would have been presented.  Note that one item (a vote on a curriculum change for AGEC 460) does require action.

Dean/Director Search

• Don Boggs, Associate Dean of the College (teaching) will serve as Acting Dean and Director until an interim has been selected
• A search committee for the Interim Dean/Director has met.  Applications for the Interim position are due February 10^th
• The search committee for the Dean/Director position is being formed and will be announced soon.  The intention is to have a new Dean/Director in place within 6-9 months.

Undergraduate Program Review Task Force

• From Mike Boland’s report:

“The committee has met twice to discuss the process for the Undergraduate Curriculum Review and will be meeting every Tuesday for 90 minutes all spring. We are still in the early stages of listening to other departments that have done a similar process and anticipate that there will be opportunities for faculty to engage the committee later this spring. This process is going to take some time to understand better how to best design assessment tools for our major and degree programs and align those with our student learning outcomes. The committee believes that a commitment to continuous improvement will help us to a better understanding of how well our students are thinking and understanding how to use economics to make decisions. We will provide updates at faculty meetings and if you have any questions, feel free to visit with the other committee members.”

Spring Seminars

The following seminars have been confirmed for the spring (from Jeff Williams):

“Jeff LaFrance, Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics in the School of Economic Sciences, at Washington State University will be giving a Department Seminar on Thursday March 25 at 1:00 to 2:30 PM in Waters 342. The title of his seminar is ‘Making Sense of Agricultural Production, Risk Management, and Arbitrage Decisions.’

“Nick Brozovic, Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics  at the University  of Illinois  will be giving a Department Seminar on Friday April 16 at 3:00 PM in Waters 342. His seminar title is ‘Spatial Targeting of Water Management Policies for the Protection of Instream Flows.’

“Dr. Brian Briggeman, Economist, Omaha Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City will present ‘Agricultural Commodity Prices and Monetary Policy: The Case of the Zero Bound,’ on Thursday, April 22, 2010 in Room 342, Waters Hall from  1:00 to 2:30 p.m.”

Extension Program

• The Risk and Profit Conference will be in August.  Allen Featherstone has again agreed to serve as organizer of the conference.
• Future directions for MAST will be assessed following the final on-campus session for the 2010 course.  Options to be considered include revising the mix of on-campus and online presentations and partnering with other states to expand the reach of the educational program.
• Although resources for maintenance are limited, plans are to revise AgManager content to remove outdated materials and to update selected documents and decision tools.
• Related to updating AgManager is a new effort to only retain current documents for release through the Extension Publications office.  Notices were sent in December to many of you requiring either updating or suggesting deletion of your past publications.  If no updates are made within the next 12 months, the documents will be removed from the active Extension Publications list.   Thereafter, annual updates will be required to keep your publications available for release.

Undergraduate Program

• Arlo is overseeing the completion of the 2009 departmental assessment of teaching.  Once complete, he will schedule a faculty brown-bag session to present the report and have a discussion on the results and procedures.
• The department is scheduled for a campus review of assessment procedures in 2011.
• One curricular change was to be presented for a vote at the meeting:

The proposal to include AGEC 460 (International Study) as a restricted elective (versus a free elective) for all options under the Agricultural Economics and the Agribusiness programs of study was apparently approved several years ago, yet no record in the department meeting minutes verify this outcome.  Therefore, another vote must be taken.  A “yes” vote indicates approval of listing AGEC 460 as a restricted elective.  A “no” vote continues listing AGEC 460 as a free elective.

Please email Deana Foster with your vote.  Polling ends Wednesday, 5:00 p.m. cst.

Graduate Program

• No updates.

MAB Program

• The 2010 incoming cohort totaled 25 new students, about the same as last year.
• Allen has requested external funds to expand the program to an African cohort beginning in the summer of 2012.  The funding decision is still under consideration.

Notes from January 15th Unit Leaders’ Meeting

Today’s comments summarize the Unit Leaders’ meeting from Friday, January 15th:

1.  Discussion with Provost and Senior Vice-President April Mason
2.  Dean Cholick’s comments regarding:
a.  Budget
b.  Open positions

1.  Discussion with Provost Mason

The focus of the discussion with Dr. Mason was refilling the dean and director’s position following Fred’s transition to lead the K-State Foundation on February 4th.  The Department Heads and other unit leaders delivered a letter last week to Dr. Mason, with copies to President Schulz, stressing the importance of expeditiously refilling the dean/director position.  To this end, the letter suggested greater emphasis should be placed on finding a long-term replacement for Fred instead of devoting resources to a lengthy interim dean/director search.  K-State policies specify sufficient opportunities exist for faculty and staff input on the identification of an interim, yet no specific steps are laid out.  The Head’s letter thus asks that input be encouraged in the interim search process, yet delays be avoided so that an interim can be in place by Fred’s departure.

There was acknowledgement that the dean/director position entails perhaps greater responsibilities than those of other College deans due to the larger College and KSRE larger budget with lines in teaching, experiment station, and Extension, responsibility for faculty in at least five different Colleges at K-State, and obligations to represent K-State and KSRE in national and international forums.  Consequently, there was some discussion of establishing and filling a Vice-President for Agriculture position.  Although there was some support for this suggestion, such an organizational change would require considerable input from campus and state stakeholders, and would likely work against the goal of an expeditious transition.  Dr. Mason said she would discuss the possibility with President Schulz, but my own perspective that the change will probably not be pursued.

The final discussion regarding the dean/director search dealt with formation of a Search Committee.  Dr. Mason asked for recommendations regarding groups that should be represented.  In addition to faculty, classified and unclassified staff, and students, it was recommended that stakeholders from the Ag Advisory Board, farm groups, and agribusinesses should be on the committee.  The preference seemed to support an internal search process, as opposed to contracting with a headhunting firm.  Consequently, it was stressed that members of the search committee would be expected to throw a broad net in terms of contacting colleagues to ensure the formation of a large pool of qualified (and serious) applicants.

Although we have seen the new administration tends to move quickly in filling top positions, Dr. Mason closed by stating that there was no time line yet established for the search process.

2.a.  Budget

As of last Friday, there is no expectation of additional mid-year budget reductions this fiscal year.

The Governor has proposed two budgets for FY2011: #1 assumes revenue increases from sales and other tax increases, and #2 assumes no revenue increases from new taxes.  Apart from the increased revenues in #1, both budgets assume somewhat flat state expenditures for next year, which is a good thing.

Under both budgets, there are unfunded mandates that would require an approximate $600,000 increase in campus (and KSRE) expenditures.  One of these mandates is a 12.5% increase in mandated health insurance costs, an increase we were advised to bring to the attention of faculty budgeting for continuing or new grants for the next fiscal year.  This $600,000 increase would be all we would be expected to face for the next fiscal year if the revenue increases under budget #1 are approved.  If the tax changes are not adopted (i.e., budget #2), campus and KSRE would face an additional $980,000 shortfall next year.

Since revenue projections and legislative action is uncertain, there was no talk about contingencies under either budget.

2.b.  Open positions

Fred recognizes the difficulty resulting from the position losses that have occurred the last several years.  Though not complete, he mentioned we are down 22 faculty, 9 unclassified positions, about 50 classified positions, and 9 Extension agents.  Therefore, he is willing to be somewhat conservatively liberal in allowing some positions to be refilled in the near term.  He is sending letters to the Unit Leaders this coming week outlining current commitments he has made (and will honor).  For us, this includes the start-up agreements with Glynn.  This is also a time for advocating for filling some of our gaping holes.  I sent him an email Friday stressing the immediate need for one teaching/research assistant professor position to fill an upcoming vacancy and at least one extension/research position.  I’ll know more this week after visiting with Fred and the Associate Deans/Directors.

Bureaucratic Minutiae

I hope you are all enjoying this wonderful winter weather!

Here are a few updates:

1.  Thank you to those of you who have already registered for this Monday’s teaching workshop in the Waters Annex.  Shannon Washburn’s hands-on focus on encouraging student engagement and participation will nicely augment Tuesday’s teaching conference, “Meeting Students Where They Are.”  Tuesday’s campus-wide conference,  sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, will be held in Trotter Hall of the Vet Med Complex on January 12, 2010.  The Tuesday conference runs from 8:30 am to 2:00 pm.  Congratulations to Bob Burton and Andy Barkley, both of whom received invitations to present their papers at the conference.

2.  We are awaiting 2009 Performance Reviews from a few of you.  In terms of process, I have downloaded the files already sent, and will closely read the evaluation forms completed, will look at the TEVAL comments and scores, have followed links to publications when provided, and have looked over some of the departmental and extension reports and updates available on AgManager.  I am following department practice by evaluating 2009 accomplishments (Unsatisfactory, Fair, Good, Very Good, and Exceptional) and deriving an overall score by using the responsibility weights you and Allen agreed to last winter .

If you haven’t already done so, please book a time with Judy so I can discuss your evaluations with you.

3.  Please upload your AD421 CRIS progress (or termination) reports by tomorrow’s deadline.  Two of you have currently completed uploading your information.  Based on the excellent job that Ted and his collaborators did for KS 372, the Department will have to create a new “Quality of CRIS Reporting Award.”  They did an excellent job.

My perusal of these CRIS reports does not reflect a pathological love of paperwork, but rather a responsibility we have to account for the public’s investment in supporting our research programs.  The CRIS system is a public forum, and thus should accurately summarize the results realized from primarily public financial support.  Rather than a static dead-letter box, information provided through the CRIS system can lead the public, or our peers, to pursue more in-depth analysis through listed publications or lead to direct contact with a PI conducting research in an area in which they might be interested.

This does of course rest on an assumption that people outside of USDA or the Land Grant System actually know about the CRIS system.  However, the progress reports, once public, do enter the public domain, and are accessible by anyone with an internet connection.

If anyone needs to see me next week, I will be here through lunch on Monday, but will be leaving after lunch to attend the NC SunGrant conference in Reno to present results from the logistical model of biomass-based ethanol production I have been working on.  I’ll be back in the office Monday, January 18th.  Naturally I’ll be checking email and will have my phone.

Dave

Enhanced Student Learning

Reminder of a Teaching Workshop

Engagement and Application for Enhanced Student Learning

Dr. Shannon Washburn, Associate Professor (Department of Communication)

January 11th, 2010 in the Waters Annex from 10:30-12:00.

At the conclusion of the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Identify the need for and opportunities to increase the variety of your instructional methods.
2. Utilize instructional objectives to communicate with students and effectively plan instruction and assessment at higher levels of cognition.
3. Incorporate strategies for student engagement / application of content in your instructional repertoire.

Participants are asked to bring along a copy of their syllabi for a course they will be teaching this term (or last term if you are not teaching in the spring).  Dr. Washburn will ask instructors to consider specific topics they teach so that during application time in the workshop, they can be thinking specifically about certain class periods and how they might modify their instructional routine.

Here’s a rough schedule of the workshop:

1. 20 minutes intro and quick review of the Principles of Teaching and Learning (rationale for why variety in instruction contributes to learning).
2. 30 minutes on objectives-based instruction (using objectives to guide instruction directs our content, our instructional approach, and clarifies our goals for assessment as well as communicating to students what they are expected to learn).
3. 40 minutes on strategies to engage students and effective questioning.

Dr. Washburn emphasizes that this will be a hands-on session.  You will be engaged in dialog about possible ways to modify your teaching methods.  This won’t be a lecture about what you should do, or an evaluation of what you currently do.  The emphasis will be on effectively engaging your students in achieving your learning objectives.

Holiday Stocking Stuffers

I learned from teaching that the really important stuff should be at the beginning of class, before students’ minds (and often bodies) wandered off.  Therefore, thanks to all of you for all that you did this past semester in teaching, research, and Extension.  Graduates used the exit interviews to praise both our undergraduate and graduate programs.  Research publication quality remains high, and involvement in large, issue-oriented grants shows that everyone gets it in terms of the future sources of research funding.  Even with cutbacks, Extension continues to provide the knowledge-based educational materials and decision tools to help people in Kansas, the U.S., and around the world in addressing vital agricultural, agribusiness, natural resource, and development issues.

So, great job!

Odds and Ends

Thanks again to the Undergraduate Committee for modifying the Student Learning Objectives for our undergraduate program.  Addition of international trade, globalization, and awareness of natural resource and environmental issues should strengthen the department’s attraction for students across campus, as well as prepare our students for life on the outside.

Mike Boland will serve as the chair of an ad hoc committee this spring tasked with reviewing undergraduate classes and programs of study.  The first meeting for the committee is January 21^st at 11:00 a.m.  Mike intends to make the process very open, and will include several brown-bag discussions to make sure everyone’s thoughts are aired in the review process.

Thanks to Arlo for agreeing to serve for one more year (2010-2011) as the department’s Undergraduate Coordinator.  Hikaru has expressed a strong interest in serving in this role, and will become the Coordinator after her return from next year’s sabbatical.  Arlo’s offer of services to help Hikaru learn the ropes will be greatly appreciated.

For those of you preparing course syllabi for the Spring, please be sure to follow the K-State guidelines by including the verbiage suggested on the Provost’s website:
http://www.k-state.edu/provost/policies/course.htm .  In addition, following College guidelines, you should also include: (1) any Gen Ed requirements that the course meets, if applicable, and (2) departmental Student Learning Outcomes addressed in the course.

Most of you know that John Crespi is off to Berkeley for a spring sabbatical leave.  Sean will serve as the Graduate Coordinator during John’s absence.  Currently, the Graduate Committee has recommended admittance and funding for several excellent new students to start next fall (plus a few new students in January as well).  Funding will be used to attract the best students to the M.S. and Ph.D. programs next year.  If you have grant funding and are in the market for a good GRA, Cherie has copies of the admitted students’ application materials for your perusal.

Bob and Andy have both been accepted as presenters at the Faculty Teaching Retreat on January 12^th.  Information and registration materials for the workshop is available at: https://www.ksu.edu/catl/fete/.

Shannon Washburn will present a warm-up for the campus-wide event by leading a teaching workshop for the department on January 11^th, from 10:30 till noon, with lunch provided.  The workshop will be held in Waters Annex.  Since we will be ordering in lunch, please let Judy know if you will be attending.

Monday, December 21^st, is the day for the Annual Sharing of Snacks Festival here in the department.  Please bring snacks to share if you wish.  Food will be available throughout the day in the Conference Room.  There may be an exogenous shock to the food supply at noon for those who wish to share lunch in the Conference Room.

Upcoming important dates:

Uploading of progress or termination reports to the CRIS database must be completed by January 8^th, 2010.

Performance reviews for 2009 and plans for 2010 must be submitted electronically (with hardcopy addenda as needed) to Judy by January 5^th, 2010.  Judy is scheduling meeting times for individual reviews for the January 19^th – 29^th (though dates outside of this range are possible if necessary).

And once again, for those of you who made it this far, have a great holiday and a happy new year.

Dave

Testing of automatic email notification

Subscriptions only notify you if there is a new posting, so this is a test to see if those who have signed up (but haven’t received notice) will receive notice of new posts.

Undergraduate Course and Program Review

I would like to thank Arlo, Bob, Cherie, Hikaru, and Andy for their work this semester in reviewing the undergraduate program.  Development of the changes in the Student Learning Outcomes approved at last Monday’s faculty meeting (and posted with the faculty minutes on the intranet site) will help guide future discussions about course and program changes that best serve our students.

In order to encourage broader input into these future discussions, I have asked Mike Boland to head up a Task Force with the sole task of reviewing our undergraduate courses and programs of study.  In addition to Mike, I have asked Bryan, Andy, Hikaru, Tim, Orlen, Cherie, Jeff Williams, and Christine to meet over the next few months to identify any necessary changes.  Classes, travel, and research agendas will limit meetings for the next several weeks, but I am hoping the Task Force will be able to extend the work completed this past semester by the undergraduate committee.  I am looking forward to the suggestions of the group this coming spring.

Thanks to all of you who are teaching this semester as the semester winds down, and thanks to the Extension faculty as your schedules (continues to) wind up.

Dave

Teaching Workshop – January 11th, 2010

There have been some excellent presentations recently about student learning styles.  Michael Wesch discussed motivating on-campus students and other adult learners at the KSRE conference in October.   Tomorrow (Wednesday November 18th), Shannon Washburn will be giving a presentation on engaging adult learners in an “Excellence in Extension” workshop at 1:00 p.m. in the Flint Hills Room of the Union.

In order to take advantage of this on-campus expertise in teaching methods, Dr. Washburn has accepted an invitation to lead a discussion for the department on engaging students using effective classroom methods.   We have reserved the Waters Annex for this workshop, beginning at 10:30 a.m. on the morning of January 11th.  This will be a great opportunity to hear recent research results in student learning, to hear Dr. Washburn’s ideas on alternative teaching approaches, and to discuss teaching ideas and methods with Dr. Washburn and with others in the department.

We’ll meet from 10:30 till noon, then have lunch provided.  There will be more information about this workshop in the future, but be sure to mark it now on your calendars.

Thanks,

Dave

CRIS reports

There have been a number of questions about the upcoming meeting (November 23rd, 3:30 p.m.) to discuss CRIS reports.

Several of us new arrivals here were surprised that faculty with Hatch and multi-state research projects could not enter their progress reports directly into the CRIS database.  The practice here has been for researchers to give their department contact (Carla in our case) write-ups of their progress reports, publications, etc., and the department support staff would type these into the CRIS reports for each project.

Entering the data directly into the appropriate  CRIS form (e.g., the 421 progress report or termination reports) cuts out the unnecessary duplication of having Carla re-enter the data that each of you must already prepare and provide to her.

The meeting on the 23rd is thus to walk through the steps of entering your CRIS update reports directly.

Friday, November 6th

Today’s posting includes initial perspectives from my ongoing visits with graduating seniors, changes that have been proposed in the graduate program, increasing classroom opportunities for our graduate students, and a few points raised at this morning’s Unit Leaders’ meeting.

I miss getting to know our students better since I am (currently) out of the classroom, so I have enjoyed meeting with the graduating seniors this week.

The students with whom I’ve met have been happy with their decisions to come to K-State and their decisions to be in the College of Agriculture and especially in the Department of Agricultural Economics.  In visiting with their friends who might have attended 2- or 4-year local colleges, our students were quite satisfied with the increased knowledge they have received from attending K-State.  In addition to the increased knowledge of the tools and concepts they have gained by coming to K-State, the students also recognized the value of interacting with other students and their teachers both inside and outside of the classroom.  Their sense of improved interpersonal skills because of their experiences here would seem to indicate that those more nebulous Student Learning Objectives listed under “Communications” and “Life Skills” are being achieved.

Once here, the students are happy they majored in Agricultural Economics.  Several have transferred into the program, in part because of the increased potential for interacting with our faculty.  One of our selling points is that we do spend more time with our students, and that we care about them as people.  This attitude is greatly appreciated by the students I visited.
Students were for the most part satisfied with instruction and the classes in the department.  Some students had some good insight in how we might improve our instruction.  I’ll share some of this discussions as I complete the exit interviews.  I will also arrange at least one teaching seminar in January (if possible) to discus teaching methods.  Don Boggs has suggested a few names of people here on campus who might lead these sessions.

John Crespi met with the Graduate Committee and me earlier this week to consider revisions in the graduate curriculum.  Several ideas were developed regarding course and program revision, including merging, deleting, or modifying some of our existing courses.  Recognition of the comparative strengths of our department compared to the Economics Department raised the possibility of our departments’ specializing in course offerings and encouraging students to take courses across departmental lines. The Committee will bring a formal proposal to the next Faculty Meeting.

As mentioned in my last posting, we would like to increase the opportunities for our graduate students to gain teaching experience.  Although GTA opportunities to have 100% responsibility for a class will be limited to exceptional cases, increasing reliance on graduate student help in recitation or lab courses will provide students with teaching experience, help the department out by leveraging our existing resources, and enhance our students’ resumes as they enter the job market.  If instructors would like to make use of our graduate students this spring or next year, please let me know.

Finally, a few points from this morning’s Unit Leaders’ meeting:

1.  All GTAs or GRAs for whom English is a second language must have passed the KSU SPEAK test if they have direct contact with students (i.e., leading labs or classes, but not if they are just serving as graders)
2.  Retention of students is becoming the latest administrative mantra.  The State Board of Regents is seeking a 10% increase in retention rates, up from our current approximately 80% retention (defined as true freshmen who start at KSU in the fall of a year and are still here to enroll the following fall).  Besides the use of a questionable metric, there is probably also a natural rate of disappearance.  However, efforts should be spent to identify students at risk of leaving who could be retained with careful advising and the provision of extra help if they are struggling in their classes.  If you are advising a student who seems to need some additional help, feel free to contact me (or Cherie) and we can help find what is needed to increase the student’s chances of succeeding at K-State.
3.  Dean Cholick reiterated the federal requirement that all KSRE faculty with any research funding must have an active Hatch project.  I believe that most in the department satisfy this requirement.  Given increased attention to impact reporting, everyone will have to provide some feedback in their annual reviews of progress made towards the objectives of Hatch projects.
4.  Budget news was not rosy.  There is a possibility of another mid-year rescission in our budgets, and further reductions in the FY11 budget next year.  Since reductions must be tied to state appropriated funds, we will need to continue being creative in continuing our teaching, research, and Extension activities without significantly scaling back our programs.  No target reductions were given, but one number thrown around this morning was a 4.2% shortfall in this fiscal year.

On this note, be sure to attend the KSU budget discussion next Friday, November 13th, at 3:00 p.m. in the Student Union’s Forum Hall.

On a positive note, enjoy this weekend’s wonderful weather.  It is nice to have global warming kicking back in…