Instructional Support Committee


Minutes of April 12, 2006
Noon
Faculty House


Attending: Cecilia Knight, Jon Chenette, Megan Goering, Anatoly Vishevsky, Christopher McKee, Mark Schneider, Margarita Pillado, Bill Francis, Justin Abramson, Terri Phipps

Minutes of last meeting approved.

Fast track approvals: Math Wavelet Theory workshop, two participants, up to $505 each.

Curricular Development Proposals:
Anthropology (attend French language course): Approved, up to $2000.
Currently no precedent for this type of proposal coming through ISC. Previously, this type of development was funded by the PEW grant. This proposal supports the interdisciplinary curriculum initiative and will have a definite curricular impact. ISC's mission is to support faculty development and institutional priorities. The proposal also supports ISC's decision to move away from stipends and toward expense-based funding opportunities.
Jon will draft new guidelines for summer workshop and seminar attendance and forward these guidelines to the Executive Council for review and possible approval.

Art: Final Cut Pro Workshop, approved, $1777.50
This workshop will provide skills necessary to develop a 200-level digital art course. CTSs do not have this expertise. ISC suggests that the faculty member share knowledge gained with the CTSs and with other faculty members through a workshop or presentation.

Faculty-Faculty Tutorial (Food): Approved, $650 each stipend plus $75 for books. This expense will fall under next fiscal year's budget.

Faculty-Faculty Tutorial (Interdisciplinary statistics lab modules): Tabled.
Scholarly and Pedagogical impact. The work is in applicant's field; the examples will be pulled from outside the applicant's area of expertise. Statistics is used across disciplines. It is not clear from the proposal how this work will enhance the College's curriculum. Ask faculty member to resubmit with a focus on curricular impact if still wants to pursue ISC funding.

Wireless Internet Survey
The survey has not yet been distributed. One concern about wireless access is that students will be able to surf the web, read email, etc., in class. Since wireless devices will become smaller and ubiquitous, it will be a fact of life for faculty members that they need to state clearly what their policies are concerning use of laptops and other wireless devices in their classes.

It was suggested to add hallways near offices and classrooms to the survey.

The purpose of the survey is to help prioritize areas where the need wireless access is greatest. The difficulty is not with adding access points to campus. The difficulty is in getting the appropriate wiring to the access point.

SPAM Filter
Some faculty members have been experiencing an increase in SPAM messages. ITS will re-advertise the filter. Faculty can contact ITS will specific concerns.

Summer Workshops
Three workshops have three participants each. Those with fewer participants have been cancelled.

Digital art workshop: Not approved with stipends. Participants can meet with the CTS on their own or as a group, but will not receive a stipend.

Peace Studies and Food workshops: Not approved. ISC will likely overspend its budget, so cannot approve this expense.

Online teaching resource
A suggestion was made to create an online resource where faculty could ask for and receive advice from other teaching faculty. Posts would be anonymous. Some faculty, especially some junior faculty, may be hesitant to have their posts known for fear of tainting a review, etc. Discussion indicated some support for the idea but concern about the feasibility and wisdom of anonymity in the posts.

ISC currently funds Early Career Faculty Lunches (previously known as Junior Faculty Lunches). Senior faculty members are sometimes invited to attend these lunches as well to address particular topics. ISC also funds a mentoring program. Mentors and mentees are paired upon request. A more formal mentoring program was not successful. Jon will contact current pairs at the end of the semester to determine the success of the informal pairing.

Forum update
Two sets of plans should arrive today. We will discuss this more at the next meeting.

Respectfully submitted,
Terri Phipps