February Meeting Followup

Thanks for attending our February meetings last week, and thanks Gae Lyn for heading the Wednesday session.

Just to catch everyone up and give everyone access to documentation, here's a link to the university policies on awarding UW grades and accommodating military leave. Gae Lyn followed up on questions about the last drop date (after which we should avoid giving any UW grades), which is February 19, later than I believed.

There was also some discussion about administrative drops. The department typically does not use the administrative drop option, but we're working on ways to get the institution to allow wait listing when students attempt to sign up for full sections, which we hope will--if used as we imagine--allow for more flexibility in the first few weeks of the term.

As we consider assessment plans for the coming academic year, it's likely that we'll follow up on Doug's suggestion last year of incorporating some kind of portfolio system into the existing assignment sequences. I'll link here to Basic Comp's portfolio guidelines so you can get an idea of what they've been doing, but we'll try to spend some time in our upcoming monthly meetings proposing some approaches and getting your feedback before we proceed with any new requirements.

Finally, I hope we'll be able to distribute schedule preference forms for fall 2009 soon. Since we're a few weeks out from our March meeting, you'll probably get the forms first via email, but we'll have hard copies available as well once we get a sense of the fall schedule.

See you in the halls.