Rodney Rogers Message

April 26, 2013 Message

Message from Rodney Rogers dated Friday, April 26, 2013

Dear Colleagues:

As we wrap up another academic year, I want to thank each of you for your contributions to the University.

I’m pleased that we’ve made great progress on our retention and student success initiatives: 

• Thanks to the University Academic Policy Task Force, Undergraduate Council, and other governance groups, we’ve identified and changed many policies that were counter to our goal of student success.
• Faculty Senate passed the proposal to align our general education curriculum with the Ohio Board of Regents, clearly define our learning outcomes and begin the process of reapproving all general education courses to ensure alignment with our stated learning outcomes.
• Ongoing work includes a final recommendation on a structure for undergraduate academic advising as well as recommendations regarding integration of writing across our general education curriculum.

Linked Courses — A major student success initiative for fall is the launch of linked courses for first year students. As reported in Faculty Senate, Senate Executive Committee, the Committee on Academic Affairs, and Undergraduate Council, chairs/directors and faculty have been working on linking three courses for all first-year freshman students. Freshmen will take these introductory classes with the same classmates. This best practice has been shown to be extremely effective in increasing retention and academic performance. You received an email earlier, providing times and locations of open faculty meetings to be held next week. These meetings will facilitate ways in which faculty might leverage this opportunity in their individual courses.

Canvas — Another important initiative is the transition to Canvas, our new Learning Management System that will replace Blackboard this fall. If you haven’t done it yet, please complete your move to this important new tool as soon as possible. Remember, Blackboard will not be supported or accessible after this summer. ITS continues to offer workshops with individualized assistance to help you transition to Canvas. More information is available here.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.

Rodney

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