Review Committee - Archives
Departmental Review Committee Minutes, 2/14/03
In Attendance: John Townshend, Joseph Cirrincione, Martha Geores, Charles Christian, Eric Kasischke, Steve Prince, Vivre Bell, Bob Crossgrove, Kate Wiersema, Chris Justice via telecom
1) Review charges and delegate responsibility among committee members:
Charges were reviewed.
It was noted that we must follow the general outline of the current policy. Each question should normally be given no more than one page of response to help limit the size and scope of the report and many questions can be readily answered with less. It was noted that some of the questions were not completely relevant to the internal review committee and could be handled in one or two sentences or paragraphs.
We can also add sections/topics that are not specifically listed in the policy.
It is important that we stress our scholarly heritage. We have matured enough as a department that we can elegantly understate our case and let the facts speak for themselves.
Action Item 1: Documents from the last departmental review and the 1996 Graduate program review will be circulated among committee members.
Action Item 2: V. Bell to contact D. Vander Wall to see if it is possible to obtain a copy of a recent ‘well done’ internal review. GVPT was mentioned as a recent review under the new policy.
It was agreed that the following committee Chairs would take responsibility for the sections outlined in the policy and would coordinate with the Chairs of the Teaching Teams as appropriate:
Undergrad Program: Undergraduate Committee Chair
- Associate Chair to provide bullets about administration of program.
Graduate Program: Graduate Committee Chair
It is important to discuss the interactions between the graduate program and research activities.
Advising: Undergraduate and Graduate Directors
Service Activities: TBD
This section will have to be done in close collaboration with the research section.
Service to be discussed for the following levels:
- Campus
- Local
- State, i.e. Black Saga, Resac
- National Federal Service
- National Other Service
- International Service
It was agreed that it would be difficult to look for trends. The focus would be what we are currently doing and to show that what we do is focused and contributes directly to the improvement of Geography. The possibility of using a three-year summary was suggested.
Action Item 3: J. Townshend to consider other faculty outside the committee to take on responsibility for the service section.
Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity: Research Committee Chair
- It was suggestion that the citations be ranked using the old journal rankings as well as the proposed new system and that the results be compared.
- Citation impacts of both the publications and people should be done.
- Proposed that the citation impact of the PhD dissertations might be a good way to assess their scientific quality.
- We should also assess the quality of the MA scholarly papers even though not required. Some of the scholarly papers are better than the MA theses of past years.
- How do we represent the breadth of publications?
- Important to craft document to stop rumors that we are only a ‘Department of Remote Sensing’.
- Important to stress and outline the roles of our research faculty. They are involved in our committee structure and teach classes. Suggested that we should discuss where our Post-Doc researchers have gone after they left us. Many have gone on to tenured and/or tenure-track positions.
Facilities – Facility Committee Chair.
While there is not a specific section in the policy on facilities, it was agreed that we felt a section was important, both to outline the facilities that we felt were still needed and to set the stage to explain that most of the facilities we have were self funded and were not provided by campus.
We are very different from other Geography Departments in this regard and others (e.g. numbers of research faculty): we need to explain in the introduction the distinctively different ways in which we operate. It was noted that our facilities are likely to be better than those of most external reviewers. We need to make clear that our ability to create our own facilities has allowed our undergraduate, graduate and research programs to succeed and it is the energies of the people in the Department and the success of our faculty (including research faculty) in obtaining grants and contracts that has allowed us to fund our success.
Facility issues to discuss:
- Space
- Equipment and computing
- Network
- Poor campus funding regarding computer staff, both in numbers of staff, and in the state funding provided. It was noted that Berkeley has twice the tech staff and related resources that UMD has.
- The success of our research program has allowed us to provide facilities, like the new PC teaching lab.
- A discussion on Hartwick Two and the BSOS Research building.
- The need for better visual displays in campus classrooms.
Action Item 4: Develop a section on Facilities. S. Prince to take responsibility as Chair of Facilities Committee.
Action Item 5: The introduction to our report should explain how we operate and the resultant impact across all sectors of the department.
Diversity – This also was not a separate section in the policy document. We discussed this and decided that we wanted a section on diversity in our internal report.
Action Item 6: Shunlin Liang, Chair of the Diversity Committee to be asked to join the review committee.
2) Draft statistics.
The statistics were discussed and distributed as appropriate. Committee members were asked to notify Director of Administration of any other statistics they felt were needed to complete their section of the review.
Action Item 7: Directory on the Share Drive will be created to hold the statistics, etc. for committee members to access.
Action Item 8: The comparison data on the Top Ten Universities Geography Departments will be made available to the review committee.
Action Item 9: The following changes to provided statistics were requested:
- 9a: It was requested that the count of Majors be broken down into all majors. This will be done.
- 9b: We will verify the difference between ‘count of majors’ and ‘..headcount’ with campus. The final table will only show one set of numbers, not both.
- 9c: For consistency, we will not show statistics for Fall 2002 (academic year 2002/03). Statistics will stop at the end of the 2001/2002 academic year.
- 9d: It was agreed that we would rank the undergraduate schools our graduate students attended by grouping them as Research 1, Research 2, Liberal Arts, and Small College. It was noted that College Park is the biggest feeder school to our graduate program.
- 9e: NASA fellowships to be included with fellowships (separated out from GRAs)
- 9f: Visiting Scientists should be separated out from Research Scientists.
- 9g: We want to determine which schools our Master’s students have gone to for PhDs. We will review the alumni database to determine feasibility and will develop a survey to send to recent alumni, if appropriate.
- 9h: A table is needed with the breakdown of our research funding. NASA programs should be listed by subdivision to show that we are not just being funded in one area.
- 9i: Bar Chart is needed to show the graduate student’s areas of concentration and percent change over time. It was agreed to use the primary advisor to determine area of concentration. The numbers for 1996 need to be truncated to only show the students who entered the program in 1996.
3) Determine structure/methodology of Strategic Review Committee.
Draft strategic goals were discussed. It was agreed that 12 goals were likely too many and should be consolidated.
S. Prince will serve on the Strategic Review Committee as well as the Departmental Review Committee. Potential other members of the committee were discussed.
Action Item 10: Chair to invite other faculty to be members of the Strategic Review Committee.
4) Review proposed timeline
a. 1st draft (Information and Analysis) reports submitted by Review Committee by March 31st 2003.
b. Strategic Review Committee (TBD) to produce one page document by March 31st, 2003
c. Evaluative Write-up of Report by Review Committee by April 30th, 2003
d. Assemble First Draft (Townshend and Bell) by May 4th, 2003
e. One day Faculty Retreat to review report (May 15th - Thursday study day.)
f. Final Report submitted to Dean by June, 1st, 2003
Action Item 11: V. Bell to verify if June 1st is a firm deadline by the Dean’s Office.
Time line was discussed and agreed upon by committee.
Action Item 12: The Faculty Retreat to review the report will consist of the entire voting membership of the Faculty Committee.
Summary of action items:
Action Item 1: Documents from the last departmental review and the 1996 Graduate program review will be circulated among committee members.
Action Item 2: V. Bell to contact D. Vander Wall to see if it is possible to obtain a copy of a recent ‘well done’ internal review. GVPT was mentioned as a recent review under the new policy.
Action Item 3: J. Townshend to consider other faculty outside the committee to take on this responsibility.
Action Item 4: Develop a section on Facilities. S. Prince to take responsibility as Chair of Facilities Committee.
Action Item 5: The introduction to our report should explain how we operate and the resultant impact across all sectors of the department.
Action Item 6: Shunlin Liang, Chair of the Diversity Committee to be asked to join the review committee.
Action Item 7: Directory on the Share Drive will be created to hold the statistics, etc. for committee members to access.
Action Item 8: The comparison data on the Top Ten Universities Geography Departments will be made available to the review committee.
Action Item 9: The following changes to provided statistics were requested:
9a: It was requested that the count of Majors be broken down into all majors. This will be done.
9b: We will verify the difference between ‘count of majors’ and ‘..headcount’ with campus. The final table will only show one set of numbers, not both.
9c: For consistency, we will not show statistics for Fall 2002 (academic year 2002/03). Statistics will stop at the end of the 2001/2002 academic year.
9d: It was agreed that we would rank the undergraduate schools our graduate students attended by grouping them as Research 1, Research 2, Liberal Arts, and Small College. It was noted that College Park is the biggest feeder school to our graduate program.
9e: NASA fellowships to be included with fellowships (separated out from GRAs)
9f: Visiting Scientists should be separated out from Research Scientists.
9g: We want to determine which schools our Master’s students have gone to for PhDs. We will review the alumni database to determine feasibility and will develop a survey to send to recent alumni, if appropriate.
9h: A table is needed with the breakdown of our research funding. NASA programs should be listed by subdivision to show that we are not just being funded in one area.
9i: Bar Chart is needed to show the graduate student’s areas of concentration and percent change over time. It was agreed to use the primary advisor to determine area of concentration. The numbers for 1996 need to be truncated to only show the students who entered the program in 1996.
Action Item 10: Chair to invite other faculty to be members of the Strategic Review Committee.
Action Item 11: V. Bell to verify if June 1st is a firm deadline by the Dean’s Office.
Action Item 12: The Faculty Retreat to review the report will consist of the entire voting membership of the Faculty Committee.