Math Department Meeting Minutes

Math Department Meeting Minutes 11/05/2013 3:15-4:50pm D226

Present: Nicole Scherger, Dan Kernler, Terri Martin, Ken Beynon, Jean Phillips, Kris Campbell, Lauren Anderko, Gary Grohs, Naima Bahaji, Chalyce Deterding, Dave Lawrence, Mary Ann Tuerk, James McGee, and Greg Wheaton (minute taker)

Our meeting contained many training reminders and volunteer opportunities. The first was a reminder to complete the mandatory online DCFS Mandated Reporter Training by Monday, December 2nd. It takes about 30-45 minutes to complete, and once complete, a printed out certificate must be signed and sent to Mary Prystawsky. On Monday, December 16 th, there will be MyMathLab training available in D201 (10- noon for beginners and 1-3 for intermediate/advanced). There will also be WebAssign training available sometime this fall near the beginning of December. Keep your eyes and ears open for the date, time, and room. We are looking for more integration contest volunteers for Friday, November 22 nd at 2pm. Nicole S. and Chalyce D. volunteered. If interested in volunteering, please contact Kris C. In addition, Dr. James McGee is looking for volunteers to serve on the WYSE planning committee, as well as a separate video committee to showcase the ECC Math Department. Please let him know if you are interested. Terri M. is scheduling full-time staff for the Math Lab for SP14, so all full-timers should let her know what office hours you’d be willing to donate to the Math Lab. Lastly, we were encouraged to research the math software package for smart boards. Check out the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=OOGQwWruCzs#t=15 If we want to purchase this package, we need to put that in the budget soon.

A MTH 096 survey was sent out to current MTH 096 instructors, regarding study skills. In addition, there will be a MTH 096 Community of Practice gathering on Monday, November 18 th from 4-5pm in D221. This will be a great time of sharing how we can improve implementation of study skills in MTH 096, now that this is an essential component of the course. All math instructors are welcome!

Ken B.’s proposed Calc I honors class got approved! The Honors Committee is looking to define an honors program for students, instead of just having random honors classes available for students to take. We were encouraged to think about a minimum number of honors classes that students need to be enrolled in per semester (or year) to qualify as being “in the honors program” at ECC. A valid concern was that part-time students may not be able to meet such a requirement. Dan K. will keep up-to-date on this discussion within the Honors Committee.

Kris C. has begun to line up math-related career speakers for February and March. She is still looking for more speakers for April. Please send her any recommendations you may have.

The math department needs to submit goals a bit earlier than usual: by December 10 th , 2013. We will discuss this at our December meeting. We could carry over old goals, or simply grab goals listed in our program review.

There is a new associate dean position open, and Dr. James McGee will keep us posted on the details in the future. We will also find out more about the PARCC assessment, after the meeting on 11/06/2013. Many of us were wondering how the PARCC assessment determines “college readiness.” Ken B. and Dave L. (and others?) will keep us informed.

Here are some informational tid-bits. Dan K. shared some helpful information regarding students having seizures. If a student has a seizure in the classroom, immediately dial 911 and start timing the length of the seizure. Upon dialing 911 on a classroom phone, campus security is also immediately informed of the situation and will arrive at your class ASAP. Another brief reminder mentioned at the meeting was to please lock the computer labs (D201 and D215) when not in use. Chalyce D. mentioned that all math faculty have access to the math department Q drive, by clicking on “Computer” on your desktop. This is a shared folder used currently to post Maple project ideas. Lastly, it was announced that we now have security cameras in our hallway, as well as an increased number of cameras throughout campus.

We were informed by Nicole S. that there will be cohorts of students coming through a few of our MTH 096 classes. These cohorts are not learning communities having classes with overlapping materials, themes, and/or projects, but rather simply the same students taking the same group of classes together. We will start to see these cohorts (specifically from the pre-allied health program) in FA14.

MOOCs were discussed. Nicole S. is serving on the MOOCs committee, whose purpose is not quite known yet. However, one of the main jobs of this committee will be to determine how ECC will regard MOOCs courses that students are transferring into ECC with. Nicole S. will keep us informed of the committee’s work. Another unresolved point of discussion was whether to convert our Calc I class to 5 credit hours. If we went to 5 credit hours, we’d be concerned that Calc II reverse transfers into ECC would suffer, having possibly not gone through as much Calc I material as we would expect. Other present concerns involve the significant amount of overlap between Calc II material and high school Calculus AB. There will be ongoing discussion of these topics in the future.

An important topic of discussion was the new MTH 104 course (Liberal Arts Mathematics) that was created by some of the department. This new course primarily includes mathematics in finance, probability and statistics, and math modeling. In addition, there are a few optional topics instructors can choose from. Our goal is to bring all the course information to curriculum, and then down state, in time to start this class in FA14. A textbook committee is needed for MTH 104, so volunteers are encouraged to speak up. If anyone wants to see the course information, please contact Dan K., Nicole S., Catherine M., Mary Ann T., or Vicki Walker.