Author: Undergraduate Academic Affairs

Dear UAA Colleagues,

Each spring at commencement we bear witness to the very purpose of our work: the results of good teaching.

Events in Undergraduate Academic Affairs this spring highlighted the critical and inspiring foundation of good teaching. Listening to faculty talk about why they teach and what they love most about teaching has been very illustrative. Their care for their students and knowledge of their field and of the practice of teaching is nothing short of inspiring. They represent the complexity of deep preparation of knowledge, interdisciplinary thinking, systemic understanding of issues and problems in the world, and powerful illustrations of the many contributions the University can make toward solving those problems.

At the Distinguished Teaching Awards Showcase in May, faculty talked about challenging students and learning alongside of their students. They reinforced that teaching, inquiry, and service for the common good really do go hand in hand.

At the Undergraduate Research Symposium, we see evidence of this—students engaged in the process of discovery to generate knowledge and contribute to our understanding of our world.

Stanford research psychologist Carol Dweck says, “The students who thrive are not necessarily the ones who come in with the perfect scores. It’s the ones who love what they’re doing and go at it vigorously.” The spring 2010 scholarship nominees reception reaffirmed this statement. The reception is a celebration of students who love to learn, recognition of faculty whose love of learning inspires these students, and the passion and commitment each bring to their work. These students categorically recognize Mona Pitre-Collins and Robin Chang as invaluable in their scholarship process. It serves as a reminder to me that individuals in our unit make a difference in countless, immeasurable ways.

Our work to make more public the good teaching that happens here continues through the appointment of Beth Kalikoff to the position of director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. Beth is an associate professor in the UW Tacoma Interdisciplinary Arts Program and brings an excitement and fresh perspective that will be so critical as the center establishes itself and gains traction. Beth began her work this month. Betsy Wilson, Jerry Baldasty, and I look forward to working with her.

This summer, entering freshmen are again receiving a copy of the UW Common Book. For 2010-11 we are focusing on poetry and have compiled You Are Never Where You Are, an original collection of 15 poems. Throughout the year, we hope to engage freshmen and the campus community in poetry, voice, expression, and the persistence, courage, and imagination it takes to read and write poetry. As Honors Program writer-in-residence and selection committee member Frances McCue wrote in the book’s introduction, “Without poetry, our civilization would be unmoored to the past. There wouldn’t be a way of singing praise or suffering; we wouldn’t be articulate; we couldn’t see ourselves and how we are living. Poems are deliberate. They get us to take stock of what is out there.”

As in the past, copies of the book are available at the front desk in Mary Gates Hall 220 for UAA staff to borrow, it is in the UW libraries, and for sale at the University Book Store. I hope you pick it up and find a poem or ten that perhaps opens the world or a corner of it in a new way for you.

Sincerely,

Ed Taylor
Vice Provost and Dean

An accountability report organizes aggregate statistics for undergraduate involvement in a certain activity type. An Activity models a person’s participation in some sort of trackable activity. The primary purpose of the Activity models is to compile and generate accountability statistics for the provost and the legislature. We currently focus on two metrics for undergraduates: public service and research.

How activities are stored

Activity is subclassed by a number of Activity varieties:

Sources

The following data sources are used to calculate accountability statistics:

• Course lists provided by departments, including
  course_branch, course_no, dept_abbrev, and section_id for each course along
  with a Y/N for each quarter that the course should be counted. (Note: if
  section_id was not specified, we automatically pull all sections
  for that course. In some cases this will result in duplicates but they will
  be removed during duplication processing).
• Individual student lists provided by departments
• Carlson Center service-learning participation (as tracked by EXPO) —
  only for the public service report
• Applicants and group members of applications whose Offering has an ActivityType defined (currently, this includes
  Mary Gates Research scholarship [research], Mary Gates leadership
  scholarship [public service], and the Undergraduate Research Symposium
  [research]).
  • For session-based events (e.g., UGR Symposium), session presenters (all
    group members) are counted.
  • For non-research-based award offerings (e.g., Mary Gates Leadership), only
    awarded applicants are counted.
  • For research-based award offerings (e.g., Mary Gates Research), all
    complete applications (mentor approved) are counted.

Intended Results

This system generates the following general types of statistics wherever
possible:

Student-quarters

The number of quarters a student spent working in the given activity. One
student for one quarter = 1 student-quarter. One student for three quarters
= 3 student-quarters. Three students for one quarter = 3 student-quarters.

Number of students

The total number of unique students who participated

Number of hours

A sum of all total number of hours that students participated

Coverage

The number/percentage of departments reporting information

Accountability Methodology

This section describes the methodology used to calculate accountability
statistics. All statistics are generated in groups based on the ActivityType of the given activity.

1. Raw Data AccumulationFor each data source, pull relevant records. Calculate number of students
   and hours for each record.
   1. Student participation is gathered for department
      course lists:
      1. Each ActivityCourse that meets the
         requested criteria (e.g., “year = 2009”) is validated against
         the SDB to verify that it is a valid course.
      2. For each course, the class enrollment is pulled, resulting in individual Student records.
      3. Students who withdrew, failed, or did not receive credit for the course are
         removed.
   2. Student participation is gathered from
      department individual participant lists.
   3. Student participation is gathered from
      EXPO’s service-learning courses (ONLY for public service report).
   4. Student participation is gathered from
      EXPO’s application system (ONLY matching ActivityTypes)

   Final result: hash with Students as keys and an activity array for each
   quarter, e.g.:

          Student_1_system_key   =>  {
            AutumnQuarter => [ActivityCourse, MaryGatesLeadershipApplication],
            SpringQuarter => [ServiceLearningCourse],
                           },
          Student_2_system_key   =>  {
            WinterQuarter => [ActivityEvent]
          }
          Student_3_system_key   => {
            :no_quarter => [ActivityProject]   # in rare cases, we don't know what quarters a project spanned
          }
          ...

2. Removal of non-undergraduates for each student in the data hash, check each quarter of activity to ensure
   that the student was enrolled as an undergraduate during that quarter.
   Non-undergraduate quarters are removed. To do this, we look at the
   student’s transcript record for that quarter.
   • If the quarter being evaluated is summer, the record is never removed, even
     if the student was not enrolled or not listed as an undergraduate for that
     quarter.
   • If there is no transcript record for that quarter and it is not summer, we
     remove it from the data hash.
   • If the “class” code for that quarter is higher than 5 and it is
     not summer, we remove it from the data hash.

   Notes:

   • For this report, “undergraduate” is any student with a class
     standing of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 (note that we do not include non-matriculated
     students but we do include “5th years”).
   • If removing a quarter from a student in the data hash results in that
     student having no more valid quarters, the student is completely removed
     from the data hash and will not count toward any totals.
   • Any :no_quarter listings are still analysed based on the first quarter of
     the academic year being evaluated.

   Final result: same as in step 1, but only with the students’ quarters
   that are valid.

3. Duplication ProcessingFor each student in the data hash, process each duplication rule (see rule
   definitions below). As the processing happens, records that are removed are
   saved in a duplicates array for later review.
   1. Same quarter, same course
   2. Same quarter, multiple courses
   3. Same quarter, multiple activities

   Final result: same as in step 2, but only with the activities that should
   be counted in the final tally.

4. Statistics Calculation
   1. Student-quarters: sum of the count of each student’s Quarter objects, plus any :no_quarter listings.
   2. Number of students: size of student data array.
   3. Number of hours: sum of number of hours per student; calculated differently
      based on the data source.
      1. Course list: number of credits the student
         earned for the course, multiplied by the constant
         COURSE_CREDIT_TO_HOURS_MULTIPLIER and the WEEKS_PER_QUARTER (10).
      2. Individual list: Hours are specified by department (as either hours per
         week or total hours per quarter)
      3. Carlson Center service-learning: 20 hours per quarter is used, as
         recommended by the Carlson Center (this is the minimum requirement by the
         CC)
      4. Application processes: use hours_per_week as specified by the student, if
         available. If hours_per_week is not available, we calculate the average
         number of hours for all students in the given activity type.
         • For award-based processes, multiply the calculated-hours-per-quarter times
           the number of requested award quarters
         • For event-based processes, the number of hours is only counted for the
           quarter during which the event occured.
5. Additional Reports
   • Department Sponsorship Breakdown: in what
     departments are these activities happening?
   • Department Cross-Pollination: e.g., how many
     BIO majors are doing research sponsored by medicine?
   • Demographic Analysis: majors, gender, class standing, and race/ethnicity of
     students participating.
   • Coverage: how many departments are represented/reported, broken down by
     college, discipline, and academic/admin.

Rules for duplicates

These rules define how we handle students who have multple records in a
given quarter. Note that activities are always
evaluated through the lens of a specific ActivityType, so these rules only apply to
duplicates within the same ActivityType.
For example, if a student participates in two research projects and one
public service course in the same quarter, the public service course is not
factored into the duplication processing of the two research projects.

Any time duplicates are removed, a Duplicates Report or Discrepancy Report
is generated to allow for manual inspection and override.

• Same quarter, same course: If a student is enrolled in the same course for
  the same course_no (e.g., they are enrolled in both a lecture section and a
  quiz section for the same course), only the section with the larger number
  of credits are counted.
• Same quarter, multiple courses: Students receiving credit for multiple
  courses in the same quarter are not de-duped, unless the faculty
  mentor/instructor is listed as the same for both course.
• Same quarter, multiple activities: Students who receive credit for a course
  and are also listed under an ActivityProject or ActivityEvent for the same quarter will only
  count the larger of the number of hours.

Dear UAA Colleagues,

Cathy Beyer in the Office of Educational Assessment and I have been meeting with faculty and students as part of an assessment of the Freshman Interest Group program. Last month, I mentioned a little about what faculty hope for students in their first year at the University of Washington. Now it’s students’ turn to tell us what they hope to experience at the UW. Here are a few quotes from students:

“I hope to learn how to design a circuit board through a computer aided program and build my own device or robot that improves space or medicinal technology. I want to learn how research ideas are approached and evaluated. I hope to learn all the aspects of calculus so well that I can explain it to anyone who asks me on the street about a specific problem.”

“I hope to learn how to use the diversity that I encounter to make myself more rounded and accepting as a person.”

“I hope to step outside my comfort zone and take challenging classes without fearing that my performance in them will hurt my GPA. I no longer just want to be concerned with grades I want to do the work for me and not my professors.”

“Brave, mature leadership.”

“How to be a better critical thinker, a better writer, a more insightful scientist, and more understanding of the world around me.”

What we celebrate this spring is our best effort to fulfill our commitment to our students—to help them achieve their goals as UW students. The Spring Celebration, Undergraduate Research Symposium, recognizing distinguished teaching are all manifestations of how our work impacts students. Additionally, we celebrate Goldwater and Morris Udall scholars and the University’s first Putnam Fellow who is also an Honors student, Mary Gates Scholar, and will be presenting in the Undergraduate Research Symposium.

We touch every student at the University in some way. Our purpose is to deepen and enrich their experience in significant ways by being agents of a mission that creates a proud and engaged community. The broad, three-dimensional part of our work of teaching, research, and service, is alive and vibrant and interdependent. UAA leadership in the undergraduate experience is evidenced in our work stretching from Mary Gates Hall and Guthrie Annex to Kane Hall and Roosevelt Commons.

The work of each unit within UAA builds on our collective purpose: to help students discover their discipline, purpose, or calling whether it be scholarship, research, or service. In The Triggering Town, poet Richard Hugo’s book of lectures and essays on poetry and writing, Hugo wrote, “Your triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words…your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary.” Hugo was talking about strategies for writing poetry but the same can be said for our work. By connecting students to the University, we are expanding their vocabularies. This leads to creating meaning. And from meaning comes purpose.

This summer, we will be handing incoming freshmen a slim anthology of poems compiled by the Common Book committee. As we enter the fifth year of the Common Book, having explored global health, climate change, immigration, and race and identity formation, we introduce poetry as a genre, as a way to capture voice, inspire imagination, and to highlight the power of the written and spoken word. Since April is National Poetry Month, I encourage you to take a moment and read a poem or a few.

Sincerely,

Ed Taylor