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Response to Requests for Comments <- You Are Here
University of Maryland, College Park Response
to Requests for Comments from
the Department of Legislative Services
February 2007
President should comment on the progress of the proposed School of Public
Health toward achieving accreditation. Specifically, he should address how the
general funds provided to UMCP in the fiscal 2007 and 2008 budgets will be spent.
For accreditation, the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) requires the establishment of new academic departments and programs. The departments of Health Services Administration and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics have been created, along with the Maryland Institute for Applied Environment Health. Three new concentrations under the existing fully accredited Master of Public Health, three PhD degrees (Epidemiology, Health Services and Maternal and Child), a new Master's degree in Health Services Administration and the creation of the Maryland School of Public Health will be presented to the University Senate, the President and Board of Regents and MHEC by June 2007. When this step is completed, the University will submit to (CEPH) an official letter of intent for review as a School of Public Health with anticipated provisional approval of the accrediting body to follow shortly thereafter.
The funds provided in FY07 and requested in FY08 have been used for salaries, benefits, and start up costs for faculty and staff required to meet accreditation standards. In FY07 eight new faculty and three new staff were hired to support the new programs, including two faculty in Health Services Administration, three faculty in the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, two faculty in epidemiology and Biostatistics, and an Associate Dean for Research and Academic Affairs who holds a faculty appointment in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Seven additional faculty searches are underway for three biostatisticians, one epidemiologist, one environmental health specialist, one maternal and child health specialist and one exercise physiologist with specialty in obesity. These faculty are expected to begin in FY08.
President should comment on future plans to award more aid to students
with greater financial need as well a whether a student's EFC is a factor in what type of and how much institutional aid is awarded.
At the University of Maryland, College Park, we continue to leverage all sources of funding including state, federal, and private dollars to put together multi-source financial aid packages to meet our students' financial need. By leveraging other sources first, our institutional dollars go further to provide larger packages to needy students and to offer aid to more students, including the middle class. Last year in the 2005-2006 Aid Year, we met 71.8% of the total need for our in-state undergraduate students who had demonstrated need. A student's need is met through all of our types of awards, including Merit awards, Need-based Grant Aid, Tuition Waiver programs, and federal loans. An Institutional Need-based Grant is awarded predominately based on their EFC. However, other awards such as Merit are awarded based predominately on other factors and Tuition Waivers are awarded to employees and their dependents. These types of awards are applied towards a student's need, and then the student's remaining need is evaluated when the complete financial aid package is put together.
The specifics of our need-based programs are described below:
Pathways I enables resident students whose families have no financial resources to pay for college (EFC = 0) and who are willing to work 5-10 hours/week to graduate after four years without debt. This year, there are 382 students in this program, up from 175 last year. Next year, we project that 525 students will participate.
Pathways II award is provided to low-income working students as an amount equivalent to the Pell Grant for which they would have qualified had they not worked. Pell Grant eligibility is established by EFC level. 456 students received a Pathways II grant this year and this number is expected to increase to 506 next year.
Pathways III implements a debt cap to cover unmet need for graduating students who have accumulated $15,900 or more in federal need-based loans. Implemented for the first time this year, 75 students are participating. Next year this number will double.
UM Grant & UM Scholarship programs are our broadest and principal need-based aid programs that assist students with EFC's up to $9,000 and paid out over $6 million last year. In the last two years, we have increased the UM awards 20% from $2,900 to its current level of $3,500 to better assist students with tuition costs. Based on the Governor's FY08 budget, we anticipate that we can increase the award amount again next year.
The University is committed to increasing need-based aid. Under the Governor's budget, we estimate that $13 million will be applied to institutional need-based grants. This is an increase of more than 50% over the amount awarded in FY06. We estimate that 20% of the $16 million in Merit aid in the FY08 Governor's budget will actually be awarded to students with financial need. In addition, the University has undertaken a new campaign called Great Expectations: The Campaign for Maryland to raise an unprecedented $1 billion by 2011, and support for students is a major thrust. $350 million is the goal for student support toward which $100 million has already been raised.
President should comment on the progress of the two task forces that
were formed to address the conditional status of NCATE accreditation of the teacher
education program and what UMCP is doing to ensure a return to full accreditation
status.
National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) is the national accrediting agency for educator preparation programs. The unit of assessment for NCATE accreditation at the University of Maryland includes the College of Education and three additional educator preparation programs in Music Education, Physical Education, and Media and Library Information systems. NCATE's performance-based system of accreditation fosters competent classroom teachers and other educators who work to improve the education of all P-12 students. NCATE and Maryland State Department of Education have an agreement that make NCATE and state accreditation the same process for educator preparation programs at all Maryland institutions of higher education. The College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park has been NCATE accredited since 1954 for both its initial and advanced programs hosting site visits every five years.
Report on the NCATE Findings. The College of Education hosted the NCATE accreditation twelve-member team for a site visit on February 5-9, 2005. After the visit, the College was informed that it passed five of the six standards. The College submitted a response (rejoinder) to the Board of Examiners (BOE) findings on Standard II in spring 2005. At its October 16-23, 2005 meeting in Washington, DC, the Unit Accreditation Board (UAB) of NCATE reviewed the BOE report from the site visit and the College's rejoinder. We were informed that the UAB had decided to continue accreditation, with conditions, at the initial teacher preparation and advanced preparation levels of the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. The Unit Accreditation Board's decision to continue the accreditation with conditions requires that the college host a visit (no later than fall 2007) focusing solely on Standard II, Assessment, which was found unmet. Currently, the College of Education at the University of Maryland is accredited with conditions by NCATE and MSDE. This status will remain until reviewed during the NCATE revisit in Fall 2007. Following the revisit, the actions that may be rendered by NCATE include continuing accreditation without conditions or revocation of accreditation.
NCATE cited the following for needed improvement and noted that they applied to both the initial and advanced preparation levels:
The unit has little evidence of systematic collection and analysis of data based on the elements of the unit's conceptual framework at the unit level.
Testing of the unit assessment system for accuracy, consistency, and fairness is not occurring.
The absence of systematic performance-based summary data across all programs limits the potential impact of data driven changes at the department and unit levels.
The unit has not implemented an assessment system to coordinate the collection, analysis and use of department data to evaluate and improve the unit and its programs.
An entity for comprehensive unit assessment analysis does not exist.
Response to Unmet Standard. NCATE's decision to recommend that the College receive conditional accreditation set in motion a process that resulted in a revised assessment plan. Immediately after the BOE visit, we focused on preparing a rejoinder that organized our information on the assessment system that was in place during our initial visit. Under the guidance of the Dean, we organized a Logistics Assessment Team (LAsT) and began working on organizing data for presentation. The LAsT team consisted of the Dean, Associate Dean, 3 Assistant Deans, the Director of Web and Data-Based Technologies, a former retired administrator who served as the dean's special assistant, and two staff professionals who were data managers. Unfortunately, the rejoinder was not successful in changing the NCATE decision, and the college began working to review and revise our assessment system. The LAsT committee was also reorganized to include only the Dean, Associate Dean, Assistant Dean for Student Services and Assessment, and the Director of Web and Data-Based Technologies. The Chair of the College Assessment Committee and the Director of Professional Development Schools were added to the team. Renamed the E-LAsT Committee (Executive Logistics Assessment Team), the team includes all individuals involved with supervising the day-to-day assessment operations and, with its current membership, provides oversight for the logistics of assessment in the unit. E-LAsT has met at least bi-weekly for the past two years.
A number of other systemic changes occurred as the college continued to respond to the unmet standard. The College-wide Assessment Committee was re-constituted to incorporate more widespread participation from the program areas (including music, physical education, and school library media programs) and was approved as a standing college committee through the faculty governance system established in the college. A college wide assessment office was established under the leadership of the Assistant Dean for Student Services and Assessment and included two full time data specialists who were hired soon after our BOE visit. Later, another part time data specialist was assigned to assessment duties.
The restructured assessment system was put in place by December 2005 and was fully operational in the academic year 2005-2006. A year and a half after our BOE site visit, unit assessment activities culminated in a mock visit in which three outside NCATE/Assessment experts were asked to come to our campus for three days and review our assessment process as if they were a NCATE team.
The Mock Visit. June 23-25, 2006, the College assembled three professionals trained as NCATE team members from outside the college to conduct a mock focused visit. The two and a half day process resembled an actual Focus Visit. The goal was for the team to review what we had done related to Standard II and to judge if they thought our efforts would result in a positive Focused Visit based on the re-design of our assessment system. It was our hope that the team's comments would help us improve our assessment system and our response to Standard II. During their visit on our campus, the team interviewed faculty and students, talked in depth with the assessment committee and E-LAsT and became familiar with the assessment process and the website that we had designed over the past year. The team culminated their Focus Visit by producing written report based on the outline provided by NCATE to provide feedback about the unmet standard.
The report of the Mock Visit team was reassuring. The team focused on each of the citations noted under summary of unmet Standard II, providing suggestions for each one. Suggestions included ways to link directly to our conceptual framework, simplify the assessment system, improve data displays, involve additional groups or individuals in the assessment process, improve the website that contained our data displays, and provide better descriptions of the assessment process. One major suggestion by the Mock Visit team was that the college establish a new committee made up of program chairs from across the college. The team was impressed with the increased inclusiveness of the process, our ability to report data-based change at the unit level, the commitment of the E-LAsT Committee, and the data organization. Overall, the Mock Visit Team agreed that if we continue our assessment processes in the coming year, we would be successful during the Focused Visit targeted for Fall 2007.
On-going progress. The college continues to prepare for its focused visit scheduled for September 2007. During May 2007, the second year of the assessment implementation will be completed and culminate in an assessment retreat that involves all administrators and program chairs in the college. Concurrently, the college will complete the writing of the Standard II Report, complete with data produced by our new assessment system. Other logistics to prepare for the visit include development of web based reports and evidence and establishment of schedules for the two day focus visit. The next major event associated with the NCATE focus visit will be the assignment of the chairperson of the accreditation team. At the first of the summer, we will learn the name of the individual selected by NCATE, and the college will invite him or her to campus to complete plans related to the visit. The remainder of the summer will be spent in responding to suggestions and preparing the college for the September Focused Visit.
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