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Instructional Support Committee |
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Attending: Erin Hurley, Cecilia Knight, Richard Fyffe, Roger Vetter, David Romano, Monty Roper, Jon Chenette, Shuchi Kapila, John Kalkbrenner, Terri Phipps Jon gave a brief description of ISC’s history and charge. Fast-track approvals: Teaching Writing at Grinnell lunches ................................................ $400 Funding requests: CFFLS discussion group ............................................................... $1300 Teaching and Learning discussion groups are required to include multiple departments, though they may be from the same division. Both funding requests were approved. Statistics student research assistant: EKI-related ....................................... $1275 OIS endorses student labor but not purchases of labs, texts, journals, or other publications unless they are such as would not be appropriate for Library acquisition. Curricular Development guidelines do not generally allow for purchases of books but instead ask that such purchases be coordinated through the Library. The faculty member should contact the Library to purchase books and other materials. Funding will not be committed automatically for journal subscriptions, though requests will be reviewed. The student assistant should work closely with Library staff to identify appropriate materials for review. --Approved ($1075 student labor, possibly more for purchase of textual materials after consultation with the Libraries) Data Librarian Search Position is currently staffed by a term appointment. The successful candidate needs a broad skill set: GIS, datasets, supporting faculty and students. This person will be a liaison mainly to social sciences, but will provide consultation campus-wide. The library faculty will constitute the search committee. ISC participation in the interview process is encouraged. On campus interviews will tentatively be held in February/March 2008. CTS Search This position will focus on the social sciences or arts. There were originally four CTSs. That number was reduced to three when the CTS program was adopted into the College’s regular budget. Currently, technology needs of faculty in the arts are being served by a temporary appointee. So far, 22 applications have been received for the CTS position, 11 of which are viable. Four phone interviews will be held next week. If these interviews do not warrant on-campus visits, the position will be re-advertised. ISC will be invited to attend open fora as part of the CTS on-campus interviews, though a separate meeting may also be held. Library/IT vision statement Richard, Jon, and BIll have drafted a statement that will be brought to the Trustees and would like ISC’s input. What exactly is inquiry-based learning? It is mentioned repeatedly in the Strategic Plan as well as in the vision statement, but it is not defined. Inquiry-based learning is experiential, active, and based on creating/finding knowledge. Mentored research, research-based science classes, and creative art classes are forms of inquiry-based learning prevalent at Grinnell. How do we compare with our peers in access to primary materials? We lag in scholarly literature, though it is difficult to compare. ISC agreed that the draft vision statement could be shared with the Board of Trustees. ISC will consider future versions of this statement as it develops in response to input, as the Trustees and more faculty groups discuss it. Digital repository This kind of service is more common at universities than at colleges, but many of Grinnell’s peers are experimenting with digital repositories. Examples of software that support digital repositories include Dspace an open-source project started at MIT (www.dspace.org), and ProQuest Digital Commons, a commercial platform. Digital repositories allow the user to search in various ways, such as by department or topic. This could lead to increased collaboration and wider awareness of scholarly work of Grinnell faculty, staff, and students. Repositories are being used to store work awaiting publication (pre-prints), previously published works, student essays, theses, etc. It is typically faculty members’ decision whether to post their own or their students’ work. This could be a good venue for results from the MAP research. Copyright law applies to materials posted in repositories, and the various policies of publishers regarding copyright transfer makes the situation more complex. Depending on the software implementation, it may be possible to control whether a file may be viewed on campus only or is available world-wide. Various campus committees will discuss digital repositories and recommend whether or not to pursue. If Grinnell does pursue a digital repository, additional staff will be required, which will compete with other areas that require funding. Demonstration projects will be available in a test repository soon so that faculty can see how a repository could work. Computer science: Open Office proposal ISC has received a document requesting that the campus move to Open Office rather than Microsoft’s Office suite as a campus standard. Microsoft has recently been denied approval as an international standard. When will the College re-contrract with Microsoft? Suggestion to save documents in Rich Text Format (RTF) no matter which program is used. No matter what the College adopts as a standard, we will have to work with formats that others use. ISC will continue this discussion at a later date. Common Ground lunches The Office of Interdisciplinary Studies has requested funds to continue the Common Ground Lunches. ISC approves up to $3000 and suggests making these lunches part of the ongoing program of teaching and learning discussion groups, like CFFLS and STaLG. Curricular Development Guidelines The guidelines have been updated to reflect EKI. Committee members should look over the revised guidelines. Discussion will continue at a later date.
Respectfully submitted, |