2007-2008 Annual Report
Department of Family and Consumer
Sciences
Section 1. Introduction
The
Department of Family and Consumer Sciences had a very productive year. We were
first in the
Section 2. Academic
Planning Implementation
o
The Department
of Family & Consumer Sciences and the Department of Elementary and Early
Childhood Education have continued to work together to implement the birth-five
and birth-eight teaching endorsements in conjunction with the community
colleges. A yearly articulation meeting
was held where faculty shared their syllabi and common assessments. The Department of Family & Consumer
Sciences contributed their materials and attended meetings during the NCATE
accreditation site visit. The Early
Childhood program was praised for its efforts and received reaccreditation
status.
o
Once
again
o The
interdisciplinary masters program in early childhood education has had a stable
enrollment. The
o Christine Wade was hired as the new FCS faculty member in Human Development with a specialization in Child/Youth issues. She will work closely with 4-H and school age programs in the state.
o The Family and Community Services program option received continued program approval through the National Council on Family Relations.
o Allen
Trent,
Progress on the FCS Departmental Strategic Plan is as follows. The rest of the Action Items have been completed and addressed in previous annual reports.
·
Action
Item 2: Staff, equip and open the new Early Care and
· Action Item 9: Participate in the development of a multidisciplinary nutrition program with Pharmacy, Kinesiology and health and Animal Sciences by 2009. Mary Hardin-Jones in Communication Disorders, Mark Byra in Kinesiology and Karen Williams in Family and Consumer Sciences held several meetings, including a meeting with the Deans of Health Sciences and Agriculture, to continue work on an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. It was agreed that the title should be Integrated Biomedical Sciences to be both inclusive and targeted; support from the INBRE Program was identified. A steering committee was formed, and list of interested faculty included participants in Family and Consumer Sciences, Communication Disorders, Kinesiology, Veterinary Science, Molecular Biology, Animal Science, Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, and Pharmacy. The plan will go to the Graduate Council in Fall 2008.
· Action Item 10: Successfully complete reaccreditation of the dietetics program. Dr. Rhoda Schantz has prepared extensive two follow-up reports with information requested by the Commission on Accreditation for Dietetics Education. We will receive our final report and its findings in July 2008.
·
Action
Item 14: Strengthen international
linkages through student and faculty exchanges and international research;
minimum one student exchange per year and one application for international
research or travel grant per year. Randy Weigel, Bill Taylor and John
Hewlett presented at the 16th International Farm Management
Association Congress at University College Cork, Ireland, July 15-20. Sonya Meyer received grants from the
Section 3. Teaching
Activities
Teaching faculty continued to meet two hours per month to address teaching, assessment and curriculum issues. In addition, the graduate recruitment and retention committee and ePortfolio competency committee met in between, bringing reports of progress to our all-department monthly meetings. Key accomplishments included:
Section 4. Research
and/or Creative Activities
The
Department of Family and Consumer Sciences was number one in the
|
Refereed Journal Articles |
|
|
Published |
12 |
|
Accepted |
7 |
|
In Review |
5 |
|
Creative Endeavor Juried Submissions Accepted |
4 |
|
Refereed abstracts/proceedings |
7 |
|
Books/Book chapters |
2 |
|
Patent accepted for licensing |
1 |
|
Published newsletter articles/bulletins |
7 |
|
Invited Presentations |
10 |
|
Refereed Presentations |
|
|
International |
2 |
|
National |
16 |
|
State/Regional |
12 |
|
Journal Editor/Assoc./Board |
4 |
|
Refereed Journal Reviewer |
5 |
Section 5. Service,
Extension and Outreach Activities
The faculty in Family and Consumer Sciences contributed in many ways to key college, university, state and national organizations. Examples include:
· Mark Bittner completed his term on the Board of the National Coalition for Campus Children’s Centers, chairing the Policy Committee, and served on the Laramie Head Start Advisory Board and Early Childhood faculty search committee.
·
Bruce Cameron served as chair of the University
Course and Curriculum Committee, and as a member of the
·
Shane Broughton served on the
· Donna Brown and Kari Morgan served as USDA CSREES Higher Education Challenge Grant reviewers.
· Donna Brown served as a judge for the Clothing Category of the Hoffman Challenge 2007 (an international juried competition) and was an advisor for Mortar Board.
· Enette Larson-Meyer served as the 2007 Symposium Chair for two symposia of the American Dietetic Association, Sports, Cardiovascular and Wellness Nutritionist Dietetic Practice Group; and as the Nominating Committee and Awards Chair for the American Dietetic Association Women & Reproductive Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group.
· Michael Liebman served as co-advisor for Phi Upsilon Omicron, and as a member of the University Graduate Council and UWRead Committee.
· Sonya Meyer served as the faculty advisor for Omicron Delta Kappa, and was a member of the International Textile & Apparel Association’s International Affairs Committee.
· Kari Morgan served on the Child/Youth Development faculty search committee, and the Student Appeals Committee of Faculty Senate.
·
· Rhoda Schantz continued to serve as the Director of the Didactic Program in Dietetics, chaired the Coordinator of Food Safety Programs search committee, and served as the advisor for the Student Dietetics Association.
· Treva Sprout served on Faculty Senate.
· Virginia Vincenti served chaired the Taskforce for Program Advancement, the Database Development Project for FCS Higher Education Programs, served on the AAFCS Redesign Project Task Force, co-chaired the regional Consumer Issues Conference, and served on Faculty Senate.
·
·
Randy Weigel chaired Associate Dean
· Karen Williams chaired the ePortfolio Platform Committee and the Academic Standards Committee for the Interdisciplinary Masters Program in Early Childhood Development, became the Director of the Bachelor of Applied Sciences Program, reviewed grants for the College of Agriculture Experiment Station, and served as a member of the advisory board for the Center for Social Justice Research.
Over half of the faculty taught in our distance degree program, making a significant contribution to Outreach efforts. In addition, there were major contributions to Extension programs resulting in important impacts.
Section 6. Student
Recruitment and Retention Activities and Enrollment Trends
The
Department of Family and Consumer Sciences had the highest number of
undergraduate majors in the
|
|
Fall 2007 |
Spring 2008 |
|
On-campus undergraduates |
141 |
153 |
|
Active distance undergrads. |
23 |
23 |
|
Dual degree - FCS as 2nd |
6 |
4 |
|
Graduate students |
11 |
11 |
|
Minors |
38 |
45 |
|
Total undergraduate majors |
170 |
180 |
Recruitment and retention of undergraduate and graduate students were a high priority, and something that included participation by the faculty, academic professionals, staff, extension personnel and many current and former students. Activities included our annual fall picnic, yearly newsletter, exam week “goody bags” for each major and snacks in the student lounge area, the creation of a Student Handbook, revisions of our brochures and checklists, a booth at all Discover Days, web page updates, Coat Couture IX displayed in the Loggia of the American Heritage Center, visual merchandising and promotion for the Clothing Cottage, creation of exhibits at the Laramie Plains Museum, conducting fashion shows open to the public, producing food safety videos, designing brochures for the Wellness Center, co-chairing the Consumer Issues Conference, conducting a study tour: Paris, London, and Scotland, participation in the UW Resource Fair and Undergraduate Research Day, students judging at the state FCCLA meeting, hosting members of the American Association of Teachers of Family and Consumer Sciences for day-long workshops and tour, revision of the Phi Upsilon Omicron cookbook and making it available for sale, providing activities for the Laramie High School Pro-Start class, hosting tours for McCormick Junior High Students, conducting tours of the Early Care and Education Center, presenting our child development option to the Laramie Head Start teachers, meeting with all prospective and incoming students: freshmen, transfer students and change-of-majors, answering email requests for information, and attending statewide articulation meetings. Our graduate committee facilitated the development of web pages by our graduate students, recommended changes in the web page, are creating recruitment materials, and are working to make recommendations on targeted recruitment site visits. The students in AAFCS were
Awarded Best Volunteer Event for their Habitat for Humanity project by ASUW.
Section 7.
Development Activities
We are fortunate to have generous donors. We made the decision to use money from a bequest plus some of the interest income from our endowments to work on upgrades to our infrastructure: renovations to Rhoda Schantz’s experimental foods laboratory, equipment for Mike Liebman’s nutrition research laboratory, replacement of half of our sewing machines in our clothing construction lab, installation of a kiln in the interior design lab, replacement of all of the computers in our Interior Design/AutoCad lab, and completion of the remote observation system at the Early Care and Education Center. Other development dollars were used for such purposes as to assist with summer graduate student stipends, fund student travel to professional meetings, provide support for student banquets and other recognition events, supplement sabbatical leave travel and research, maintain equipment, and provide tuition reduction for single parents whose children attend the Early Care and Education Center.
We have continued to include a donor recognition section to our annual newsletter as a way to recognize gifts made to the department to honor individuals and to recognize those donors who have donated at the endowment/matching funds level. The department head met with current and potential donors, wrote personal notes for any monetary or equipment donations, wrote personal notes in holiday cards, and implemented a project to work on child and family issues in energy impacted communities. Our website has a “Giving” tab, and use of our departmental website averaged 19,000 hits per month (Part of publicity, recruitment and retention….more details can be found in Section 6).
Section 8. Classified
and Professional Staffing
No one in
the department is under a professional staff category. Classified staff members
are integral members of our department and all contribute to our department’s
success. We are currently fully staffed in our departmental offices and have
had no vacancies or turnover this year.
The classified staff work very well together and have taken the
initiative to learn parts of each others’ jobs through a desire for personal
growth and development and to insure that departmental operations continue
smoothly during health, vacation or other absences.
While the
teachers at the Early Care and
Section 9. Diversity
We conducted one successful faculty search and several academic professional searches (non-extended term ECEC teachers). In all cases, we used mechanisms for reaching women and minorities and carefully constructed our search criteria and feedback forms to be sure that the processes were non-discriminatory. We continued to use national listserves (CSREES, Family Issues, 4-H/Youth Development, NASALGC, etc.), association websites, flyers for professional meetings, direct contacts, local and state newspapers, and including minority faculty members and parents on our search committees when possible.
Most of our
minority graduate student recruitment has come through email inquiries
initiated by the students after they have visited our web page. This year our
Graduate Recruitment Committee worked with our on-campus graduate students to
post photos and bios on the web page in an effort to attract more diversity in
our students. Others will be added in the future. Of our eleven graduate
students, nine were female and two were male; two students were from
Section 10.
Assessment of Student Learning
A. Our department’s six competencies and six skill levels were rewritten by subcommittees including all of our teaching faculty members to include an explanation of the importance of each competency and clearer language for our students and outside evaluators. Our ePortfolio Committee solicited feedback, put the documents into consistent format, and then brought the finished documents to the department for a vote of approval. They were adopted and have been loaded into our FCSC 1010 and 4010 course shells, copied into our new departmental Student Handbook that all students receive upon entry into our programs, and loaded into our Student Assessment web page under Competencies and the Electronic Portfolio at http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/FAMILY/assessment3.asp.
B. Graduate programs: Our graduate committee began examining whether or not the same six undergraduate competencies could be used with our graduate students, and how those might need to be modified should we choose to adopt graduate-level ePortfolios. In our FCSC 5103/5104 Graduate Seminar in Family and Consumer Sciences, students did preliminary pre-prospectus and thesis defense Power Point presentations. We used parts of the Computer and Information Literacy and Professional Behaviors competency rubrics to provide feedback to the students and to gauge their usefulness. We are also tracking graduate student presentations at national meetings, and submissions to juried exhibits.
Undergraduate programs: Outside reviewers (alums, faculty and other professionals in our field) gave general feedback on our FCSC 4010 final student ePortfolios. Faculty decided that for the next assessment cycle we would focus on two competencies: Written Communication and Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving. More targeted feedback will be solicited from outside reviewers. We are participating in the Foliotek ePortfolio platform pilot project beginning in May, 2008 and continuing for a year. Forms are being created so that students can self-assess include reflections for each competency, and attach evidence, and score their skill level. The outside reviewers will also score and give evaluative comments. Reports can then be run to give the department feedback to compare student and evaluator scoring, providing useful curricular feedback.
A survey of employers was conducted under a grant from the ECTL. Surveys for each program option were created that included common questions related to our competencies, skills employers expect from their employees, and customized questions to give curricular-specific information for each program unit. Results were used to examine current courses and internships. The report can be found on our departmental webpage under the Student Assessment tab at http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/FAMILY/Assessment/EMPLOYER%20SURVEY%20report.pdf.
C. No additional tracking was done of graduate students since our Alumni Survey
was conducted in the 2006-2007 academic year. The plan is to conduct the survey every five years.