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…

Grad student teaching, program reviews, and other items…

1.  John Crespi, Cherie Hodgson, Arlo Biere, and I met last Friday to discuss a greater role for graduate students in the department’s undergraduate classes.  By increasing the opportunities for graduate students to teach, we not only benefit the grad students by giving them teaching experience, but we can also leverage the department’s teaching resources (primarily teaching time)  to continue offering classes that might otherwise be eliminated or offered more infrequently due to our current budgetary cutbacks.

Teaching quality will not be sacrificed.  Therefore, grad students wishing to teach will be evaluated prior to selection for leading our classes.  In addition, Ph.D. students offered teaching positions will be required to have passed their micro and macro qualifying exams before being considered. This latter requirement was suggested to ensure that Ph.D. teaching assistants realize that passing their qualifying exams is of paramount importance, and we don’t intend for teaching to negatively affect their progress towards attaining candidacy.

The immediate outcome from Friday’s meeting was to identify recitation sections (or labs) for which the the students will take full responsibility.  For example, graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) might lead the labs for AGEC 505.  I will be checking with instructors who either currently offer labs or recitation sections, or who might consider offering these sections, if they would open up the teaching resonsibilities for their sections to GTAs.

In addition to lab and recitation session instruction, I will monitor our teaching needs in other undergraduate classes and, if a graduate student are willing and able, offer full responsibility to the GTAs to teach a class.  As some of you know, Beth Yeager will be teaching AGEC 515 for us this spring, resulting in a win/win/win situation for Beth, our students, and the department.  I am confident Beth will do a great job teaching this class.

2.  The undergraduate program review continues.  The student learning outcomes have been revised slightly, and I have now received feedback from all of the instructors of our undergraduate courses identifying SLOs they cover in their classes.  The next step in the process will be to determine if students in our various program options are exposed to all of the SLOs somewhere during their progress through the program.  If not, changes will need to be made in adding required classes o the different options, or modifying courses to make sure that, for example, students are exposed to, for example, international trade and globalization in at least one required course.

Course revision and rationalization, part of the original intent of the review, continue as long term goals…

3.  Although we were not successful in bringing in an outside seminar speaker this semester, be sure to support Tim Dalton by attending his luncheon presentation tomorrow (October 27th, 12:15 – 1:00, Waters 137) on maize variety development in Africa as part of the international ag brownbag seminar series.  The Econ Department is also sponsoring a seminar on November 11th by Tracy Turner addressing tax policy and housing markets.  Although not definite, it appears we wil have one and perhaps two outside speakers giving seminars in the spring.

4.  And finally, thanks again to everyone who assisted during the search for a livestock extension/research economist.  Glynn Tonsor has accepted the position, and will be joining us on April 1st of next year.  Based on his already impressive successes in extension, research, and graduate student advising, Glynn will be a great addition to the department and will add to our already strong level of research-based educational materials we provide to industry and our other stakeholders.

Reinvestment in Agricultural Economics

The Dean has asked us to put our reinvestment plans on hold until we see how the state and university budgets might change over the next few months.   Thanks to all of you who have provided thoughts on necessary reinvestments in Extension, teaching, and research to either rebuild strengths we have lost through retirements or resignations or to build new expertise in areas of current and future need.

Instead of letting all this good work go dormant, however, I did send a synopsis of department faculty needs to the Dean last week.  Instead of specific job descriptions, new faculty with exceptional economic skills should be added who can address the following areas:

“The following are identified as high priority areas for investment in the Department.  Specific details on allocation of the appointments among Extension, Experiment Station, and College will follow as information regarding sources of funds becomes available.

• “Crop agriculture.  In order to meet state and regional needs in commercial agriculture, new faculty would be added with interest and expertise in production economics, product marketing, farm business management and strategy, biosecurity, and/or policy analysis.
• “Agriculture in the international economy, including food security
• “Economics of agriculture, energy, and the environment
• “Natural resource management and policies
• “Rural and community development”

Dave

Seminars and Undergraduate Review Progress

#1

Jeff Williams and Jeff Peterson have been actively recruiting outside speakers to present seminars and spend time in the department with those people interested in finding out more about their work and possibly initiating (or continuing) joint research projects.  It seems as if the fall semester has slipped away, but we may have two speakers coming in the spring.  Nearly confirmed is Jeff LaFrance (formerly at Berkeley but recently relocated to Washington State).  Arrangements are not so far along for the second speaker, but we’ll post names and times when both speakers’ visits have been confirmed.

In the meantime,

1.  The Economics Department has one remaining seminar scheduled for the fall.  Tracy Turner will be speaking on housing tenure decisions relative to tax subsidies on Wednesday, November 11th, from 3:30-5:00 p.m. in Waters 329.

2.  Faculty and grad students in Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University conduct high quality research, and volunteering to present either completed or partially-completed research projects is a great way to receive both accolades and feedback from peers.  Transportation and lodging costs are generally quite low as well.  Therefore, if you would like to schedule a time to share your research with your colleagues either this semester or next, please contact either Jeff W or Jeff P and we’ll put you on the calendar.

#2

Thanks to all of you who have returned the spreadsheet linking classes with the student learning outcomes.  We still need data for a few courses, but I hope to have these data collected this week.  The next step will be determining if students are exposed to all of the learning outcomes through our existing programs of study.  If not, the programs may need to be modified.

Discussions are also continuing about possible deletion or merging of some of the undergraduate courses to reduce the number of different, though similar, courses that are taught.  One interesting tidbit did emerge from talking with the Associate Dean last week about the degree of correspondence between student credit hours (SCH) generated and teaching resources flowing back to the department.  Apparently, there is no formulaic link.  Each additional SCH does not translate into some fraction of a teaching appointment coming to the department.

However, I suspect the relationship between SCHs and teaching resources coming from the College and the University is both asymmetric and lumpy.

Dave

Friday the 9th of October

The undergraduate program committee met earlier this week to continue the review of undergraduate courses, degrees, and options. There was lively discussion around several topics.  Curriculum review always generates lively discussion, of course.  Areas addressed primarily included combining courses that cover similar concepts into a smaller number of classes taught, possibly changing upper division, advanced topics courses to readings or individual study classes instead of regularly scheduled classes, and ensuring that all students are exposed to, and perhaps even master, the  learning objectives identified for our graduates.

To meet this latter goal, the committee is seeking your feedback on student learning objectives addresed in your classes.  I will email a spreadsheet to all of you.  Please indicate how your classes meet the SLOs identified by the undergraduate committee (and listed in the first column).  At this point, please just focus on the (1) subject matter knowledge, (2) the critical thinking, and (3) the communications learning outcomes.  The primary purpose of this exercise is to identify where students are exposed to, or master, the desired learning outcomes.  Another objective is to identify if none of the required classes meet specific SLOs.  This latter situation might then entail either changing the SLOs or changing the core requirements of the programs of study.  If more than one of you teach the same class, you can either coordinate your responses or just return the spreadsheet with the student learning outcomes that you address in your offering of the class.

Please email your spreadsheet back to me.  In addition, be sure to share your ideas or feedback on the curriculum review with Arlo, Hikaru, Bob, Andy, Cherie, or me as we continue the review process.

Thank you.